Felix Cao, The Role of Neuroscience in Marketing – InnovaBuzz 464

Felix Cao, Happy Buying Brain

In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, Felix Cao, a neuromarketing expert and business growth strategist with over 15 years of sales and marketing experience. He has been featured on major media outlets, such as The Huffington Post, Adweek, and Authority Magazine.

Felix has appeared as a special guest on a major Canadian radio show where he talked about neuromarketing and the 2019 Canadian election. He also makes frequent appearances on the top business podcasts in the world and contributes to popular publications where he shares the most-up-date insights on how businesses can take their sales and marketing to the next stratosphere by implementing neuromarketing strategies that will give companies the game-changing edge that separates them from the rest of their competitors.

Felix’s business is Happy Buying Brain, where he works with businesses on their marketing strategy and how to apply neuromarketing to create a clear separation in their brand perception from their competitors and expand their customer base by better understanding what truly makes consumers tick during the customer journey process.

In our discussion, Felix talked to me about:

• Some of the future trends of Ai
• The role of neuroscience in our buying behaviour and implications for marketing
• The importance of empathy and relationships in marketing

Listen to the podcast to find out more.

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Show Notes from this episode with Felix Cao of Happy Buying Brain

Key points and takeaways from this episode include:

• It’s important to connect with people but also provide value in a way that would help them to continue to improve and thrive both personally and in their businesses.
• Neuroscience is at the core of a lot of innovation.
• Combining emotions and Ai is all about delivering our service or brand in a way that has as many human touchpoints as possible. 
• The whole point of integrating Ai into the customer journey is to reduce friction points.
• Machine learning picks up how humans process information and makes adjustments to it for the future. 
• Ai is very human-like in a way that it has the ability to learn and make sense of data. The only difference right now is how fast they could integrate and make those adjustments.
• Ai and chatbots shouldn’t be an extra step for customers to get some help. They are made to reduce friction points and guide processes to make the problem solving journey a lot easier for consumers. 
• Neuromarketing is where digital marketing meets neuroscience. It takes into account how the brain and body respond to marketing stimuli. It’s applying neuroscience to sales and marketing strategies to help businesses solve their challenges more effectively.
• The primal brain is the oldest part of the brain. It operates below the level of consciousness and influences up to 95% of our every day decisions. It is the first area in the brain that processes information.
• The primal brain has 2 main functions; to ensure survival, which parlays into safety, and to increase the chances of a person’s reproductive success.
• The 6 primitive instincts that a brand needs to break through are survival, reproduction, safety, security, sustenance, and status. A brand needs to help an individual fulfil and enhance these primitive instincts in order to break into the realm of a person’s true desires and motivations.
• Good marketing relates to emotions. Emotions are the foundation of marketing.
• It doesn’t matter whether your business is a B2C or a B2B. All businesses deal with people. All businesses deal with the primal brain, which is always the main decision maker.
• It’s important to position your brand in a way that signals to the primal brain of your client that you are a safe partner to do business with. 
• Getting on video is a great way to engage emotionally. It encodes a lot of tangible senses and feelings that come with your brand. The more senses that you could engage, the more it is going build trust, because that is how we communicate with each other and understand the world around us.
• Sharing stories is a great way to build empathy with customers. Stories build rapport and bridges the relationship a lot quicker.
• Mirror neurons are responsible for the vicarious way we learn when watching somebody perform a particular task. 
• Stories enable us to connect with customers in a way that creates an emotional bond. 
• Understanding some of the underlying mechanisms that influence a person’s ability to create an emotional response enables you to position yourself and your brand as though you are having a conversation with a customer side by side. 

The Buzz – Our Innovation Round

Here are Felix’s answers to the questions of our innovation round. Listen to the conversation to get the full scoop.

1. #1 thing to be more innovative – Keep an open mind. Remove the ego from the situation. Self-awareness is the beginning of all transformation. It’s all about really understanding what is going on internally with our thought process and emotions. 
2. Best thing for new ideas – Being around people. Ideas are always collective and synergetic. There is no person in the world that knows every single thing. We could always learn something from anybody.
3. Favourite tool for innovation –  Amazon Kindle, Apple iBook, and Zoom
4. Keep project/client on track –  Create a schedule and routine. Create a game plan where you can facilitate and help your clients realise where they’re currently at and transform to where they want to be. Make sure that all communication processes and channels are always open.
5. Differentiate – Humanise your brand.

To Be a Leader

Know your self-worth. Know that what you can contribute to society matters. Don’t be afraid to go out there and build relationships. Talk to people. That one conversation that you have with somebody could totally have a huge impact in terms of how they view themselves or the people around them. Collectively together, these have a compounding effect when that person helps another person. Everything grows geometrically so that the world becomes a better place.

Reach Out

You can reach out and thank Felix through their website.

Suggested Guest

Felix suggested we have a conversation with Chris Reynolds of The Business Method. So Chris, keep an eye on your inbox for an invitation from us to the InnovaBuzz Podcast, courtesy of Felix Cao.

Links

• Website – Happy Buying Brain
• LinkedIn

Cool Things About Felix

• Some of his notable milestones include starting off in the App space in 2010 and created everything from social networks, games, and emoji apps.
• His social network app, SurprzeMe, was one of the hottest apps in April of 2016.
• He’s appeared on radio news shows to talk about neuromarketing and the 2019 Canadian election.

Listen to the Podcast