At Keplar we’re always on the lookout for new ideas to make online brands stickier and to build digital products which convert better, so we were pleased to finally read Martin Lindstrom’s 2008 bestseller on the new discipline of “neuromarketing”, Buyology. For the uninitiated: Lindstrom’s book is a Gladwell-esque distillation of his own experience using two brain-scanning technologies (uncatchily titled fMRI and SST) to help major corporations delve deeper into the consumer’s subconscious mind. Lindstrom makes a convincing argument that most buying decisions are largely shaped by the subconcious mind, and thus direct brain study is a much more useful tool for product development and marketing than the traditional tools of focus groups and questionnaires.

While there is a lot of sense in what Lindstrom says, there are two main difficulties in applying his central neuromarketing concept to digital businesses. The first is one of simple cost: using brain-scanning tools is beyond the budget of all but the largest online players. The second issue is a subtler one: brain-scanning may be much more informative than other sample-based research techniques (not least in revealing motive), but even small digital businesses typically have access to rich behavioural data across all their users, and moreover can experiment “in the wild” at relatively low cost, to see what really works and what doesn’t. No mind-reading required.

Even if Buyology’s central methodology is of limited use to online businesses, nevertheless along the way Lindstrom provides some interesting nuggets and insights about product marketing. If you haven’t got time to read the whole book, no matter – below we’ve listed our favourite insights from the book, and attempted to apply them to the online world…

1. 80% of new products launched in the US fail – Buyology’s answer to this is to try to pre-empt the failures through brain-scanning. The Keplar approach is a little more practical: plan for failure! Build a minimal v1, launch it as a pilot, gather data, analyse and build a v2 with a greater chance of consumer acceptance
2. The most enduring brands are “smashable” – Lindstrom gives the example of a Coke bottle: if you smash it into pieces, it’s still recognizable as a Coke bottle. Without physical product, digital businesses need to work even harder to make their brand intrinsic to everything they produce
3. Audio identities sell products as well (sometimes better) as visual identities do – so think about creating an aural signature for your business, and then spreading it using channels such as Spotify audio advertising
4. Sex only sells sex (although controversy sells anything) – strongly sex-themed advertising or marketing materials tend to distract from the product or brand being advertised. The high-profile sexual campaigns that are cited as successes only worked because they generated significant controversy and thus publicity
5. Consumers respond well to smiling faces – which explains the number of e-commerce sites which feature a smiling, confident-looking young woman
6. Sponsorship needs to be integral – of the three main sponsors of American Idol (Coke, Cingular and Ford), Buyology found that only Coke has truly benefitted from the association, because its brand has been so deeply woven into the show’s fabric. Make sure your sponsorship efforts create a “hero product” out of whatever you’re selling
7. Rituals make products and brands stickier – rituals around how you purchase or consume a particular product reinforce that brand as exceptional, and keep consumers coming back. Creating these sorts of rituals online is harder, but worth the payoff in terms of distinguishing your service from other, more generic offerings