Mind-Reading Marketing

Knowing these secrets of the human brain will help you reach your audiences more effectively.

- Ann Handley

Knowing how the human mind processes information and images and putting that knowledge to use can help you become a more engaging and effective marketer.

Researchers in a new(ish) field of study are trying to figure out how our hard-wired preferences affect the decisions we make. Neuro marketing research is “the systematic collection and interpretation of neurological and neuro physiological insights about individuals using different protocols, allowing researchers to explore nonverbal and unconscious physiological responses to various stimuli for the purposes of market research,” according to the Neuro marketing Science & Business Association.

Put simply, neuro marketing is the study of how our brains respond to marketing and how it affects our behavior consciously or unconsciously explains Andy Crestodina, co-founder and strategic director of Chicago web design and development agency Orbit Media Studios, who speaks and writes about the topic.

“There are ‘cognitive biases’ built into all of us,” he says. “We can’t help it. Marketing either works with or against the cognitive biases.”

It’s critical to understand these predis positions, to know how our minds process information and images. “The competition for attention is fierce, so knowing what lights up our brains gives marketers an edge that can help them win,” says Grey Garner, vice president of marketing at Emma, an email marketing provider based in Nashville, Tenn.

So let’s take a look at some secrets of the human mind you can tap into from a marketing perspective.

Secret 1: We all have a primitive brain.