Big companies have deep pockets to afford neuroscientific insights teams. Small to medium-sized ones have access to customer relationship management systems (CRMs) to use behavioral data to find patterns in consumer behavior. Entrepreneurs, like Juan Cruz, have turned to Blindsight: The (Mostly) Hidden Ways Marketing Reshapes Our Brains for their marketing strategy.

Our book has resonated with entrepreneurs who don’t have the luxury that big brands do. To understand how they have applied neuromarketing insights to their businesses, let’s hear it from Juan Cruz’s first-hand experience.

Humans are profoundly complex creatures, which makes marketing a tricky but interesting business. We enter the consumer world not knowing why we buy what we buy, why we like and despise brands, or why we feel at ease browsing user-friendly pages, while hate the experience others offer. As an online marketer and entrepreneur myself, I don’t have that luxury. 

By approaching marketing through the lens of neuroscience, we can learn the inner workings of a consumer’s brain, and understand how to make evidence-based decisions. This is what the book Blindsight and neuromarketing—the study of our brains on brands—are currently doing for me.

My Journey as an Entrepreneur

Full disclosure: I’m a former student of the first-ever neuromarketing class built and taught by the authors of Blindsight—three years prior to its long-awaited release. It’s been a wild ride for me since then. 

Today, I have a personal development and philosophy YouTube channel and several SEO-optimized web pages. In a nutshell, I make a living on the Internet. I find value and provide value.

While reading the book, I had several “aha moments”, which shed some light on how I can apply neuromarketing insights at a tactical, actionable-right-of-the-book level. Professionally, I realized why we behaved the way we do, and more importantly, why companies make the marketing decisions they do. It has personally changed the way I approach and execute on my marketing strategies.

After reading Blindsight,  I took it upon myself to directly apply lessons learned to my YouTube channel and websites right away. Here’s what I learned and did differently.

Applying Neuromarketing to Creating and Growing a YouTube Channel

In my YouTube channel, the key metrics that measure my performance are the click-through rate (CTR) and absolute audience retention. CTR tells me how many people have clicked on my video after seeing the thumbnail, while the latter tells me how long they spent watching.

When I put in the work to improve on both metrics, the algorithm grants me the proverbial social currency by boosting my video—the algorithm loves when YouTube channels like mine keep its user base engaged on the platform. Perform poorly, and my content gets buried in the rabbit hole of thousands of videos that get little to no love with zero views. Here’s how I increased CTR and retention.

#1 - To increase CTA, apply a sense of incompleteness in your copy. To drive viewers to click, we have to grab their attention in the short amount of time we have. To improve CTR, I had to level up my copywriting skills on thumbnails and titles, but how? Blindsight summed it up clearly:

“Clickbait ads work by creating a sense of incompleteness, which then compels us to click on them to reach resolution.”

The key is to drive them to the point of wanting resolution. To influence users to click on my video, I created a bait (the thumbnail combined with the title), which I intended to pique curiosity. With the words “LEARN 10X FASTER” in the thumbnail, users may think their way of studying is slow to begin with (10X faster? What IS the Feynman technique?!). And only by watching my video can they learn the technique and reach a feeling of resolution (Woah, never thought of learning that way. That was good to know. Now, hmmm, who is this Feynman guy...).

#2 - To increase retention, apply a sense of randomness. “How do I keep the viewer engaged for long periods of time?” is a question I frequently ask myself to increase retention.

As explained in Blindsight, our brains are pattern-seeking machines. We’re constantly seeking them to make sense of our environment. If I, as a YouTuber, always do, say, and recommend the same things, common sense suggests that my viewers will get used to it, get bored, and more likely watch other knowledgeable videos to seek new patterns and ways of thinking about personal development and philosophy. To fight this natural tendency, I applied the unexpected power of randomness. As mentioned in the book,

“Pleasure is best served on a plate of randomness.”

“When you know what reward is coming and when, you begin enjoying it less and less. It’s the pleasure that we can’t predict that endures, fresh each time.”

By introducing pattern-breaking elements in my videos such as different shots, real-life exercises, notable examples, or approaches to the topics, I keep my audience on their toes. As a result, they subscribe to my channel and watch my new content. 

Applying Neuromarketing to Sell More

On the other side of my business, I create numerous SEO-optimized pages that sell products on Amazon. When a purchase is made from my affiliate marketing link, I earn a commission. It is, therefore, critical that I design pages and write content that is close to 100% optimized for selling to increase the percentage of people that click and buy from my page. Designing pages and writing copy may sound like fundamental skills, but when I peeled back a layer after reading the book, I realized how fundamental it is to have a robust understanding of how humans think, feel, and behave in the consumer, e-commerce world. Here’s how I implemented a few techniques from the book. 

#3 - Design product pages based on the neuroscience of impulsivity. We’re all a little too familiar with impulsive shopping. It turns out, there’s a measurement to find out how you position yourself on the impulsivity-control spectrum. 

In Blindsight, I learned that the K-factor is a scale that measures impulsivity versus control. High-K individuals spend more time studying and analyzing options before buying, whereas low-K people are more impulsive in making purchase decisions. But the “K” isn’t a permanent state on the spectrum, as we might wish. It’s fleeting in nature.

When consumers buy expensive products, they tend to behave as high-K buyers would because an expensive purchase is often tied to being an ‘investment’. Knowing this, I can craft my product page design and copy based on the type of product I’m selling and what kind of consumer I’m targeting. 

Let’s say I sell high-end, high-quality sneakers that fetch $500 a pair while other competitive brands in the market only go for $100 a pair. Given this information, the design and content of my product page will likely involve comparisons from other sneakers, country of origin, and detailed description of imported high-quality materials to help customers make an informed purchase decision. On the other hand, if I’m selling generic, cheap sneakers, my website will feature flash sales, limited offers, and even mention free shipping, and so on. My understanding of the fundamentals of impulsivity helped point me to the right direction in my design and copywriting skills. 

#4 - Use comparative pricing tables to optimize pricing strategy. Comparative tables work well for both low- and high-K consumers. But after reading Blindsight, I thought I could hone in on its influence to conversion rates by using two different strategies.

Firstly, I used to put the most popular product on the left side of the comparative table (assuming that is where people look, since that’s how we read—from left to right). But I was mistaken. I’ve learned from the book that the most bought product is the one in the middle. By taking this into account, I started intentionally putting the product I really wanted to sell in the middle of my comparative tables.

Secondly, I applied what the book calls “anchors”. Its sole premise is that we always have reference points for everything and anything. Prices don’t just come out of thin air; we compare them with other prices in the market. With this in mind, I decided to put the most expensive product in my comparative table on the first position (left-hand side). This way, when the user reaches the middle (my core product), they have referenced that this is a more ‘realistic’ purchase as compared to the expensive one, which helps them make informed decisions better. Reference points exist everywhere—it’s just a matter of how well we can execute on making comparisons and, of course, most importantly, provide value.

On a Personal Note

These are just a few strategies that I’ve applied from the book to my businesses. So far, the results have not disappointed. Blindsight is one of those books only a marketer and neuroscientist can truly write. Based on my first-hand experience, the knowledge gap between neuroscience, psychology, and business is far too real. Just a change in color, positioning of products in a comparative table, or by framing a benefit as a potential loss can have hugely positive outcomes in your business. 

About Juan Cruz

Juan Cruz is the founder of Inerize, a personal development platform, specializing in topics like psychology, philosophy, motivation, and spirituality. Juan Cruz has a Bachelor’s in Business Administration with a major in  Entrepreneurship from Hult International Business School in San Francisco. 

Apart from being a personal development enthusiast, he also works in the marketing field. Currently, he has a company focused on building and designing SEO-optimized pages. His ultimate goal is to bring profound, life-changing ideas to the mainstream culture and revolutionize the way we think about ourselves, the world, and our place in it.

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