Dissecting marketing: how to make creatives with high conversion
Due to the abundance of advertising, the CTR of banners drops, and the audience ceases to perceive advertising messages. To break through banner blindness, you can use neuromarketing techniques. In this article, the Go Mobile team explains what neuromarketing is and what ways in digital advertising you can use to draw the attention of the audience to the banner.
Neuromarketing is a mixture of marketing, psychology, and neuroscience that helps you to influence the consumer so that he performs the desired target action.
Neuromarketing relies on studies of human brain reactions and processes responsible for decision-making, the concentration of attention, aesthetic pleasure, memory, and much more.
Knowing what the consumer’s brain reacts to, you can create banners with good conversion and CTR. The «right» banner is a combination of colors, fonts, and text that make it understandable and attractive to the audience. Such creativity, shown in the right place and at the right time, is a component of the success of an advertising campaign and the result of using neuromarketing.
Simple but tasteful
Researchers divide creatives into four types, depending on the design of banners and the meanings embedded in them.
The first type is low surface complexity and low information saturation. Such a banner is easily perceived but does not convey deep meaning and does not contain complex elements. It can be a basic shape, for example, a circle. Such a design will be associated with emptiness and meaninglessness.
The second type is high surface complexity and low information saturation. The creative contains a lot of graphic details, but they lack meaning. The banner is perceived as a set of random elements that repel the user.
The third type is high surface complexity and high information saturation. It is a complex banner that contains many details, colors, and meanings. The success of such a design will depend on whether people want to understand it. If not, the design will seem confusing and will not attract attention.
The fourth type is low surface complexity and high information saturation. It is the perfect banner concept. The creative does not contain complex elements and many colors, but at the same time, it carries a hidden visual message that can be easily deciphered. This design is interesting.
In such a banner, the user is attracted by the meanings, composition, color combination, text layout, and syntax. Let’s take a closer look at how the skillful use of these components affects the audience.
Meanings
People do not always act rationally. Often their consumer behavior is irrational and is influenced by psychological triggers. Neuromarketers successfully use them to make catchy ads.
Advertising science knows several dozen such triggers, but we will consider the most effective mechanics.
Trigger «Now or never!»
Encourages the user to buy a product out of fear of lost profits. Such advertising appeals to the natural desire of the audience — to buy something cheaper than usual.
The Social Proof trigger
Forces a person to make a decision based on the opinions and actions of other people. People tend to conformism and therefore focus on the majority. This feature is used by the trigger. The number of views or subscribers, positive reviews, ratings, a list of successful cases, and major partners works well here.
Trigger «You give me — I’ll give you»
It makes a person feel like making a good deal. People don’t want to do something just like that. You need to give them something in return for their action: a gift, a promo code, or a free trial. Getting instant benefits will appeal to the client, and he will be more loyal to the brand.
Trigger «We did everything for you»
It shortens the path for the user from deciding on the target action since he will not need to take additional steps. This trigger creates a sense of time saved, and that’s why the audience likes it so much. The technique is illustrated by ready-made kits, collections of goods, comparative tests, and online calculation.
Trigger «Greed»
It attracts the user with additional benefits and appeals to his desire to purchase more goods for a lower price.
The Deadline trigger
It attracts the user as it reduces the uncertainty of future events. Usually, people like it when there is a warning about the exact timing: they value their time and love it when others respect it.
Using these triggers increases the banner conversion multiple times.
The location of the banner in the source
The context in which the user sees the banner affects his purchase decision. It is called the framing effect. For example, in the physical world, brand credibility is built largely due to the appearance and packaging of the product, where it is sold, and which sellers are at the checkout.
In the digital marketing world, the context of banner placement is also very important. Here there is the principle of Brand Safety and certain technologies that allow you to publish banners in places without a negative context. For example, exclude sites with a political agenda, violence, or pornography.
Many agencies offer placements in Brand Safety channels. It is a good solution if the company cares not only about high ad conversions but also about its reputation.
The banner location on the website or the app also plays a high role in perception. For example, the user is more likely to click on the mortgage advertisement at the end of the news about the decline in housing prices but quickly scroll through the article about the increase in the key rate.
Research also confirms that a person perceives advertising better if it is shown in an environment semantically close to the advertised product. For example, creatives with food delivery will work well on a website with recipes. Such a thematic combination increases the fluency of banner processing: people are already tuned in to the topic of cooking and are more likely to click on the banner.
Banner structure
The location of the blocks inside the creative also affects the conversion. It is better to place the text on the right and the images on the left. That is how our brain works: external signals from one area are processed by the opposite hemisphere.
So, the right hemisphere processes symbols and images better, and the left hemisphere processes logical and verbal information. By placing the image to the left of the text, you simplify the user’s perception of the entire banner.
To convey the message to the user as much as possible, it is worth using the edge effect. It consists of the fact that the main message is placed at the beginning and the end of the text. The banner attracts attention with the first phrase, and the second one convinces you to perform a targeted action.
Since user attention spreads from bottom to top, from left to right, it is better to place important messages in the lower left corner.
It is also worth placing price tags there. People perceive the numerical spectrum in a special way: they associate small numbers with the left and lower parts, and large numbers with the right and upper parts. To make the user subconsciously perceive the product as not so expensive, use this rule when creating banners.
Visual
According to the research, how people perceive colors strongly depends on their personal preferences, experience, upbringing, cultural differences, and context. In a banner, not only the choice of colors is important, but also their combination.
So, users like color sets consisting of similar shades with the addition of a contrasting accent. That is called the «isolation effect» when a person better remembers an object that stands out in a series of similar homogeneous objects. Create banners where the main advertising message will be designed with a contrasting color — this will increase the conversion of the creative.
Experts say that a dark background «collects» perception, and it is better to use it for complex messages, for example, for banking services. The light background makes it easy to read information and is great for simple, clear price offers.
Ads with human faces or animal faces whose gaze is directed at a logo or an advertising message work well.
This way, you can attract more attention to this area, because people tend to follow the views of others.
The presence of people works well for banners with a short contact time when you need to quickly attract attention to them. For example, pop-ups on the site that the user usually closes quickly.
You should also not forget about fonts and working with space. You can read these and other secrets of advertising typography in our article.
Text
There are also techniques for creating text on a banner.
While creating texts, it is better to use two digits or two epithets. It will strengthen the advertising message and give a better effect.
Do not give baseless estimates of the advertised product or service. Where possible, replace them with real examples — they will better convince the user of the product’s merits.
Some experts do not recommend using words with a negative connotation on the banner. It’s not only about the particle «not», but also about the words «problems», «errors», «expenses» and others like that. It is believed that these expressions can alienate the user.
Others believe that the use of denial stimulates spontaneous action.
A negative particle in the text indicates a problem the product can solve. Since people tend to avoid pain, they tend to notice negative stimuli. Therefore, banners with negatively colored phrases cause an immediate behavioral reaction.
The classic text technique, without which no banner should be: a call to action. The words «order», «issue», «buy», and «look» help the user understand what he needs to do and increase the CR of the banner.
After we have analyzed effective neuromarketing techniques, let’s see what makes our fourth type of banner attractive.
Conclusions
Neuromarketing is a new scientific direction that is just beginning to be actively used by marketers. However, its use brings visible results already.
The techniques we have described are not the final list. Perhaps you know other neuromarketing techniques. Write them in the comments — this will be very useful for us and other readers.
