CXL Minidegree In Digital Psychology And Persuasion Review Part 4

Here’s my 4th review of CXL’s Digital Psychology and Persuasion Minidegree. For today, I will be covering the mini-course Applied Neuromarketing from the second module of this mini degree.

Before I proceed further, let’s look at the aim of this course and I will give my final thoughts on have this course has achieved at the end of this post.

The aim of this course is,

· To enable the course learners to be more effective in getting their message into the minds of their customers.

· Ensures the course learners are in control of how the content of a website and landing page is perceived by their customers

· Help course learners to increase motivation to buy of buyers with the help of their emotions and fears

Brain Fundamentals

In this section, André Morys explains that it was always about the customer experience that sells a product or services. André explains it in a clear manner using well-known brands such as Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, and Facebook. To understand what is André is trying to convey we need to know that behind every success story of brands; there’s a pattern of disruption and power of implicit codes. We will discuss these two later on, as for now let’s find out how does the brain works.

The Old Brain

Referring to our brain’s stem, the old brain is involved in many important functions of our body such as our breathing, blood pressure, heartbeat and motor control. To simply say it controls the automatic process of the body.

Little Brain

This brain is part of the old brain and it is also responsible for some of the automatic behavior. According to scientists some of the nerves connection is 200x faster than in the cerebral cortex. It’s quoted to be 75% of the “power of cerebral cortex in 50% of the size”

Midbrain

The midbrain controls our emotions, motivation, and a lot of our automatic behavior. But it also encourages negative things such as addiction. Responsible for producing endorphins, dopamine, things like that it is considered as system 1 by Daniel Kahneman. According to him the midbrain or the limbic system always does things in autopilot so you can do other things like enjoying the scenery simultaneously without any distraction.

New Brain

Considered as system 2 by Daniel Kahneman, the cerebral cortex @ the new brain helps in perception, cognition, thought, language, real calculations, and math. Surprisingly it is made up of the gray matter which is only 2mm thick in some areas of the brain. Geared to help make decisions, the new brain is cognitively exhausting. Common situations you can find yourself in system 2 is when you are in a foreign country driving on different side than you used to. At this point, you need to think a lot so your brain automatically will switch to system two.

This is where we can understand how disruption works, the key factor that causes it, and how brands utilize it.

Now let’s take Facebook as our first example. What drives millions of its users back to the site? Instant gratification! People always check their notification for any updates on how many people had liked their post. If someone had liked their photos their brain will immediately release dopamine which will cause them to be happy. Thus the user returns back to the site for more instant gratification.

Meanwhile, Amazon played the same trick by decreasing their delivery time as much as they could. As a result, they have outranked Google in terms of revenue.

Following the same disruptive pattern, Airbnb offered something that other players in the market didn’t have; the choice of choosing a house to rent like shopping for objects.

Can you catch a pattern here? If so, then congratulations! You are on the path to becoming a better conversion optimizer.

For those who are curious, the pattern lies in great customer experience. If you had analyzed correctly, you would have noticed that every disruptor moment is made when the companies are selling a very good customer experience towards their customers. To sum it up, they are not buying your product or services; it’s the awesome end result after using your product and services that sell.

So how do implicit codes work?

Remember in my previous article, I had mentioned how our brain will always prefer to be in system 1?

Due to this fact, implicit codes works well as it can be said almost 100% of the decisions are made unconsciously-pass through system 1 or the limbic system and then only to be rationalized by system 2 to come up with reasons to support the decision made by system 1.

Most successful ads make complete use of implicit codes. That is why BMW runs a successful ad then it’s cheap competitor. For example, at a BMW ad; you don’t just see a car. It’s always the way it is arranged that we need to focus on. It’s the background, the building behind, the lightning, the copy, “some of us are driven, the new 7 series”. Using the skyline of Dubai in an ad although completely photoshopped can evoke feelings that the position of the car is higher than the skyline of Dubai. So these all implicit codes about success, being better than others. That’s the reason most of us will buy that car, right? You have to show your neighbor that you’re a successful guy. And this is the difference why you don’t buy a cheaper car and, you buy an expensive BMW.

Basically, both of them are cars with four wheels and an engine and I move you to A and B, right? So it’s not about that explicit functionality. It’s all about the implicit values that this product shows. So basically, it’s what does that product do to you? Who are you with that product, right? Are you just a guy, or are you this successful guy that you always wanted to be? Whatever, I leave it up to you. But you might know this illustration. And when we talk about neuromarketing, we have to be aware that this implicit level, this power of values and motivations, the way our brain processes signals and how it matches these signals with what we really want, what’s the implicit purpose of our life?

Reaching the end of this post, I have realized I have not fully covered this course. Of course, you can access more on this course at CXL’s mini-degree.

What’s my thought on this course?

Has it achieved its aim? Yes! I am surprised by a large amount of marketing knowledge available with this course. It had taught me how to leverage the process of the brain making decisions to my benefit in marketing.