Neuro Nudges
Certain principles are shown to drive positive consumer responses in the brain. Here’s a healthy handful of Neuro nudges that Roger Dooley shared with the crowd of around 250 at Mima:
- Liking – Establishing affinity with your customer is a sure-fire way to get them to like you. If your customers have dogs, consider pictures of happy people at your company with dogs.
- Setting Expectations – People enjoy a product more if they’re given a realistic expectation of what their experience will contain. Set lofty, yet realistic expectations for people and they’ll likely enjoy your product more.
- Fairness – Roger asked two audience members to make a deal to split $10. He pointed out that the fairness of the deal carried a lot of weight with each participant, and that socializing before making a deal increases the fairness. Tip: if you’re negotiating business, go out to dinner first and then talk business.
- Doppelgänger Effect – One of the best ways to get someone to buy something is to help them envision themselves using the product. Roger used the example of taking an opt-in social profile picture and inserting it into a dynamic ad. Mirror neurons vicariously enjoy what they see, and nudge your brain to purchase what it sees as possible.
- Rudeness – Just like in real life, rudeness sparks revenge. As we’ve seen from countless brands, a quick and sincere apology is often all it takes to insulate a brand against social backlashes.
- Scarcity – People are more likely to act if they think a deal won’t be available in the future. Scarcity drives conversion — limited quantities, time frames or offers all induce the scarcity effect.
- Gender – Men think more short term and grow impatient when shown a picture of an attractive woman. They also show riskier behavior. These “mating triggers” can be very effective on men but not so much with women.
- Cognitive Fluency – This means that you associate difficulty of tasks with the difficulty of the instructions. Make your fonts and explanations simple of you’re asking for a simple action from your customers. Conversely, use a more complex font if you have an expensive or complex product to convey higher value and/or importance.