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Neuromarketing

Shelley — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:16:00 +0000

What exactly IS Neuromarketing? The simplest answer is that it is where brain science and marketing meet.

The puffspeak for what Neuromarketing is goes something like this -

Neuromarketing:
A technique that measures how consumers will react to brands and advertising. The brain is mapped, using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to record conscious and subconscious responses to advertising, products or brands.

So why would anyone care about this emerging field?

Well in this economy getting people to spend on anything is tough. Most people have been hard hit buy the recession and if they are going to spend money on a product/service the value add has to be apparent or they aren’t going to buy.

There are three parts to the brain -

The new brain that thinks. It processes rational data. The middle brain feels. It processes emotions and gut feelings.The old brain decides. It takes into account the input from the other two brain, but the old brain is the actual trigger of decision

Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer’s Brain

The old brain makes all the decisions regardless of how advanced we are as a society. In a recession people are more likely to think more carefully about what product/service they buy. However, if the product/service you are selling fulfills a need they will buy regardless of the economic climate.

Resources to learn more about Neuromarketing:
Martin Lindstrom
The Brain: Marketing To Your Mind
neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/
Neuromarketing Ning Group

Use these 6 websites and you’ll be a freelance ninja

Shelley — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:44:00 +0000

Batchblue is a small business customer relationship management website or CRM so it is great for managing contacts, conversations with current and prospective clients and even keeping track of searches of relevant topics on Twitter.
Outright is a free bookkeeping service that helps keep track of those pesky expenses that one must track or the IRS will get you. I don’t want to get audited so I use this service to help me do a rather mundane task that I HATE! Outright works with two other great services Shoeboxed and Freshbooks.The tax calendar is awesome. I never remember that stuff…the site has it available for iCal, Outlook and Google so you will always be on time with the tax man.
Shoeboxed is where receipts and business cards go to die. Well not really. You send them there to get scanned so you can actually make use of all the cards we all collect at networking events but never do anything with.
Freshbooks is awesome for invoicing. I have been using them since they were called Secondsite.biz (I did say I was an early adopter in my bio)
Tickspot is good for tracking the time you spend on projects and syncing with Freshbooks for invoicing. It has a free iPhone application that uploads data to the website. You can create budgets for projects and see how much time is left. A great tool to see how efficient you are at your job.
Try Gist if you are an information junkie like me and want to know everything about everything. You will never be out of the loop again. I’ve been using it for a few months. It just went into public beta.