About Giulia Panozzo

Today we have Giulia Panozzo. Giulia is a neuroscientist turned marketer who uses her academic background to investigate what makes customers trust and buy and the biases that influence information processing and decision making. She founded Neuroscientive, a consultancy and training company to help businesses understand their customers better. Today we’ll talk to Giulia about neuromarketing and the psychology behind great SEO.

Table of Contents

• Who is Giulia Panozzo?
• Current Projects that Excite Giulia
• Tactical and Strategic Neuromarketing Advice from Giulia
• Where Does Giulia See the Future of Neuromarketing and SEO?
• How to Get in Contact with Giulia
• Conclusion

Who is Giulia Panozzo?

Giulia Panozzo’s path from neuroscience to marketing is quite unusual. Born in a tiny Italian village called Tresca Conca with only 500 inhabitants, Giulia’s early ambitions were shaped by an unexpected source – her mother’s addiction to the TV show ER.

“When I was little I remember distinctly I wanted to be a doctor and specifically a brain doctor,” Giulia says. “I think I blame this on my mom being obsessed with George Clooney on ER.”

But life had other plans for Giulia. A major obstacle emerged in the form of hemophobia – a fear of blood. This ruled out a career in medicine.

From Therapy to Neuroscience

During her teenage years Giulia went through a tough time and started therapy. This is where she discovered the power of the brain and that it can change without surgery.

“That’s where I learned about neuroplasticity and challenging behaviors and challenging mental schemes, but also the kind of connections and the signals that the brain sends,” Giulia says.

This newfound interest led her to change her study path. She did a bachelor in psychobiology, then a master in cognitive neuroscience and clinical neuropsychology. Her academic journey involved working in various labs, mostly on attentional, social and motor processes.

The switch to Marketing

Giulia’s switch to marketing started when she moved to the UK on an Erasmus scholarship. Financial constraints forced her to look for a job and she ended up working as a translator for a fintech company. This role turned into an SEO internship and that’s when her marketing career started.

“From translator to SEO. They needed somebody like an SEO intern,” Giulia says. “And then, yeah, I built my tiny blocks and started working in agency as an SEO executive, then SEO manager, then moved to client side.”

Today Giulia is director of customer acquisition for a global marketplace and runs her neuromarketing consultancy, Neuroscientive. Despite the career change she still loves studying the brain and decision making.

Current Projects that Excite Giulia

Giulia’s current focus is split between her full-time job and her research in neuromarketing. She’s particularly excited about two projects:

1. Corporate Neuroscience-Based Trainings: Giulia is launching a series of corporate trainings with two colleagues. These trainings apply neuroscience principles not only to marketing but also to personal wellness and professional development.
2. Electrodermal Activity Study: Giulia is conducting a study using electrodermal activity to analyze how people react to different types of marketing stimuli. This research aims to prove a substantial difference between various types of stimuli.

Insights from the Pilot Study

During the pilot phase of her electrodermal activity study, Giulia made some interesting discoveries:

• A Procter & Gamble Olympics-themed advertisement, which Giulia expected to trigger significant emotional responses, did indeed show high electrodermal activity. However, the participant’s questionnaire revealed that the emotional response was due to negative associations with the company, not the intended emotional content of the ad.
• Conversely, a control advertisement that was expected to be neutral triggered unexpected electrodermal activity in one participant. The questionnaire revealed that this was due to personal associations the participant had with elements in the ad.

These findings highlight the complexity of emotional responses to marketing stimuli and the importance of combining quantitative data with qualitative insights.

Giulia reflects on these results: “It’s so, you know, we can isolate certain responses, but we can never tell the full story unless we really go and look for it. And even emotional experiences, we can sort of forecast based on the data that we have, even at the neural level, but we can never tell from a personal perspective in which way they’re gonna be skewed.”

Tactical and Strategic Neuromarketing Advice from Giulia

Understanding Neuromarketing

Neuromarketing is the intersection of neuroscience, marketing, and economics. It aims to understand processes of decision making and persuasion at a deeper level than traditional marketing metrics. Giulia explains:

“It looks at neural activity and it looks at cognitive biases, for example, and applies these insights from brain science to marketing to better understand what works as a marketing stimulus.”

Applying Neuromarketing to SEO

Giulia emphasizes that SEO has evolved towards a more user-centric experience. She suggests several ways to leverage neuromarketing insights in SEO:

1. Analyze Search Console Data: Look for question-based queries with low click-through rates (CTRs), especially for branded searches. This can reveal gaps in your content or areas where user needs aren’t being met.
2. Improve User Experience: Make important information easily accessible. For example, if users are searching for delivery or return policies, ensure this information is prominent on your site.
3. Address Trust and Familiarity: For international websites, consider including size conversions, shipping information, and localization elements. Users are more likely to trust sites that feel familiar and cater to their specific needs.
4. Use Microsoft Clarity: This free tool provides heat maps and scroll maps, helping you understand user behavior on your site. It can reveal issues like non-functional buttons or ineffective CTAs.

Leveraging Cognitive Biases

Giulia cautions against overusing cognitive biases as “tricks” to manipulate users. Instead, she suggests using them thoughtfully to enhance user experience:

1. Serial Position Effect: People tend to remember the first and last items in a list. Place your core message or value proposition at the beginning and end of your content.
2. Numerical Biases: Users process percentages and fractions more quickly than discrete numbers. However, be cautious not to mislead users, as negative experiences have a stronger impact than positive ones.
3. Scarcity and Risk Aversion: Limited-time offers can be effective, but don’t overuse them. Emphasize risk reduction (e.g., free returns, money-back guarantees) to appeal to risk-averse users.
4. Familiarity: Ensure your content and offerings align with local culture and expectations, especially for international audiences.
5. Emotional Connection: Create genuine emotional experiences by showcasing your value and building trust.

The Importance of Trust

Giulia emphasizes that trust is crucial in modern marketing:

“Trust really is what seals the deals and positive experiences have shown to correlate with the perceived trust.”

She cites a study on AI chatbots, which found that users were more likely to trust and share information with chatbots that had more human-like features. This underscores the importance of maintaining a human connection in digital interactions.

Neuroscience for SEO

For additional context, here is a series of articles from Giulia.

Where Does Giulia See the Future of Neuromarketing and SEO?

Giulia predicts that neuromarketing will become increasingly integrated with SEO and other marketing disciplines. She highlights several trends:

1. Interdisciplinary Approach: More professionals from UX and psychology backgrounds are entering the SEO field, bringing new perspectives.
2. AI Advancements: Artificial intelligence will make it easier to predict neural responses to content, although these predictions will still need to be validated against real user experiences.
3. Evolving Search Experience: As search engine results pages (SERPs) continue to change, neuromarketing insights will be crucial in understanding and adapting to new user behaviors.
4. Focus on Trust: With the proliferation of AI-generated content and online scams, building trust will become even more critical. Neuromarketing can help brands understand how to create authentic connections with users.

Giulia emphasizes the need for ongoing research and adaptation: “Whatever is relevant now will not be relevant in the future. And that’s where neuromarketing can give a bit more detail into how we evolve and how we strategize to capture the user and also hopefully make them trust us.”

How to Get in Contact with Giulia

You may want to add her social media profiles, website, or other contact details here.

Conclusion

Neuromarketing offers valuable insights for SEO professionals and marketers looking to create more effective, user-centric experiences. By understanding the cognitive biases and neural processes that influence user behavior, we can create content and experiences that resonate more deeply with our audience.

As Giulia Panozzo has demonstrated, the intersection of neuroscience and marketing is a rich field for exploration. As search engines and user behaviors continue to evolve, the principles of neuromarketing will likely play an increasingly important role in shaping successful SEO strategies.