Neuromarketing tips for nonprofits from Roger Dooley
- Mon, August 16 2010
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
I really hope you didn’t miss last week’s amazing presentation by Roger Dooley on neuromarketing - and how it relates to nonprofit marketing. If you did, don’t worry. You can still listen to the presentation he did for Network for Good here. (It’s free.)
A couple of my favorite points:
1. Priming can be a key principle in fundraising. Priming is presenting a person with subtle cues or context that then affects their behavior. Dooley likes to cite a study by Greg Miller and Kathleen Vohs that shows that if you get people to think about money by putting posters of currency around them, they tend to be more anti-social and less generous. They concluded that priming people with money puts them in a state of mind where they don’t want to depend on others and don’t want others to depend on them. He says good fundraisers prime their audiences by focusing on good works and great stories, not dollars and cents. I agree.
2. People and images matter. Dooley also says that study after study shows that when presented with a web page or flyer, people look first at any human face present on the page. If the face is gazing at something, like a headline, the viewer’s eyes follow the trajectory of the gaze. When you’re trying to get people’s attention and direct it, pick a person’s image to do the job. Remember this in your fundraising appeals. While we’re on the topic of images, he also notes that people are very sensitive to their own image. When people look in the mirror or can see their own image, they are more conscientious and generous in their actions. I guess we can’t put a mirror in our appeals, but we can use images of donors – not just recipients – to create that connection.
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Comments
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I think the first point on focusing on good work and the “feel good” side of things is critical in fundraising anymore. People have become so cynical about feeling badgered by the constant barrage of marketing messages on TV, the web, the radio, billboards, etc. that it really makes sense to change the focus of the conversation.
Grat point.
Really very good article.
“People and images matter.”
This is so true in print any print advertisement. The direction of the eyes is important to get the attention of the viewer.
I guess it always comes down to personal connections. People connect with people, not words—especially when those words are trying to separate them from their money. I find it amazing that they can tell what point on a page someone is looking at. I’d like to observe some of those studies.
Roger got a point on this.If you are looking on a web page the first thing attracts most is the image before the content.somehow it is my own points of view.
@Lizzie: I absolutely agree with you. Images are the most important eye-tracking point because they are able to appeal customers in an emotional matter ... thats great. No content can attract people in that way.