For over a decade now, many neuroscientists and media researchers have claimed that they can crack the neurologic code of advertising effectiveness. Yet, the adoption of scientific methods to investigate and create more persuasive ads or websites has remained curiously low.

IS NEUROMARKETING A COMPLICATED FIELD?

First, when marketing and advertising executives discovered neuromarketing, they often felt that they needed higher education on the workings of the brain to understand and use it. It is true that neuromarketing studies generate gigabytes of information corresponding to complex mechanisms in the brain and that to manipulate this data requires the use of powerful software running cryptic algorithms. There is no question that the process of digging for neuroinsights is time‐consuming and somewhat intimidating. So, you may wonder: Can I grasp this quickly? Will it radically help me improve my ability to persuade without causing me additional headaches? Rest assured that with this book you will learn enough about the brain to understand the value of neuromarketing and apply it quickly.

WILL NEUROMARKETING REVEAL FLAWS OF PRIOR CAMPAIGNS?

Marketing and advertising executives are often afraid of what neuromarketing studies may reveal. After all, a scientific persuasion model may provide embarrassing or damaging evidence on the failure of prior campaigns that wasted thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Let's face it, we all avoid confronting information that may question the fundamentals of what we believe. Often, neuromarketing findings are surprising and call into question what we have learned and applied for decades. They tell us why so many of our efforts to influence, sell, or convince did not work. They may even reveal our incompetence or flaws. Peering inside the deep unconscious parts of the primal brain is surprising if not uncomfortable, because it is information that was not available before. We keep asking people what they want, but the evidence suggests that we cannot easily articulate what we want!

As you embark on your neuromarketing journey, praise yourself for having the courage to question what you know, to challenge what you currently do, and to admit that you may have wasted time and efforts creating messages that were never going to yield any measurable results. Adopting a neuromarketing discipline is humbling, but also empowering. But remember that you may face, if not confront, economic players that are not excited about the neuromarketing revolution.

CAN CREATIVE AND PERSUASION SCIENCE MIX?

Since the inception of SalesBrain, we have met many ad executives who claim they do not need neurophysiological data to understand or predict the effect of their campaigns. Often, they consider neuromarketing research disruptive to the creative process. They do not believe that revealing what cannot be said will provide valuable insights. Worse, they often see persuasion science as limiting their creative freedom. After all, many agencies rely on the power of their creative execution to differentiate themselves. The obvious problem from our exposure to dozens of agencies worldwide (some in the top tier) is that hardly any of them uses credible persuasion theories to support the scientific basis of their messaging strategy. So be prepared to challenge advertising or even creative agencies when you start your neuromarketing journey. They may push back initially until they realize (and accept) that you want more objective measures of the effect of the creative content you buy.

WHY ARE MARKETERS ADDICTED TO WEB ANALYTICS?

In the growing digital marketing space, web and mobile analytics are so easy to produce that marketers often insist that they can easily understand the true impact of ads without more science. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter spend millions of dollars to convince us that their algorithms can reveal and predict the quality of any digital message you create. Their survival depends on it. However, ongoing events have revealed how deceptive many of the web analytics can be. Worse, they often have poor definitions, questionable assumptions, and even mathematical errors. They are based on behavioral data that give a partial view of how people respond to messages. They ignore the invisible clicks that happen in people's brains!

In 2016, the world's biggest advertiser, Procter & Gamble significantly reduced its Facebook ad strategy claiming that targeting specific audiences was expensive and did not result in a significant difference [2]. Both Facebook and Google argue that they can help advertisers target specific audiences. However, P&G insisted that there was no evidence that precise targeting was worth the effort. Meanwhile, also in 2016, Facebook admitted that it had overestimated a key video metric for at least two years. Only video views of more than three seconds were considered to compute the metric of the average duration of video viewed. That means video views of less than three seconds were not factored in the average, making it much higher than it should have been otherwise. As a result, advertisers were given higher performance scores than they should have received. Although the social network claimed that this was a miscalculation of the average time users spent watching videos on its platform, many advertisers like Publicis were outraged. Publicis was responsible for buying 77 billion dollars in ads in 2015. Keith Weed, Chief Marketing Officer of Unilever, another big advertiser, commented that companies like Google and Facebook do not allow third parties to assess their platform, which means that basically, they grade their homework [3]. Without question, the miscalculation was an embarrassment for Facebook. The company formally apologized and said that they would fix the error in their algorithm. So be warned. Web analytics have limited value and are often flawed. A neuromarketing discipline will make you a smarter buyer of digital advertising by revealing the nature and influence of invisible clicks. As a result, big data players in the advertising space may not be as excited about neuromarketing as you may be.

Meanwhile, since web analytics do not give the complete picture of what happens when buyers' brains are first exposed to ads, you are forced to constantly change your headlines, switch pictures, basically modify your message many times. This ruins your chances to understand why so many of your ads fail to produce any return. Worse, you may select an ad that is still an ineffective ad overall, although it is the highest performing message of your test. Without gaining a better understanding of how ads affect the brain, testing messages (also called A/B testing) is a trap that gives billions of dollars to advertisers and media networks. The pursuit of perfect messages via testing is inefficient, costly, and defies the laws of how persuasion works in the brain.

WHY YOU WILL LOVE A BRAIN‐BASED PERSUASION MODEL

Our first book did provide a simple step‐by‐step process to improve any sales message using a holistic brain‐based theoretical framework. However, it was not a scientific book per se; rather, it popularized the value of centering persuasive efforts on the primal brain to ignite and engage the persuasive process throughout the entire brain. Our goal with this book, however, is to demonstrate the scientific and practical validity of a fully researched, fully tested persuasion model called NeuroMap so that you can systematically reduce risk, eliminate wastes and improve your ability to convince any audience.