5 Visualization Exercises Every B2B Marketer Needs to Know According to Neuroscience

Visualization refers to the practice of imagining the things you want to achieve in the future as if they were happening right now. 

It’s built on the foundational principle that thought precedes action and involves the use of all senses, including sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing to create an experience that is as real to your subconscious mind as possible. 

When you envision achieving your goal (with the related elation, and with full sensory awareness), your mind will start to focus on your end goal and keep you on track toward achieving it. 

Insights from neuroscience and business psychology have proven that visualization can help you reach your goals, and as a marketer, you can leverage visualization techniques to achieve better outcomes in your campaigns. 

Although there are people out there who still view visualization as some sort of mystical mumbo-jumbo, the truth is these days, thousands of people are benefiting from this practice, including elite athletes, CEOs, the super-rich, and many other peak performers in different fields - proving that you don’t have to be spiritual to benefit from this powerful technique. 

With visualization for marketers, you’ll be able to: 

• Activate your subconscious so you can start to generate creative ideas to help you create and run successful B2B marketing campaigns.
• Program your mind to more readily see and recognize resources around you to help you achieve your goals, ambitions, and dreams. 
• Build your internal motivation to continue to take the necessary steps for achieving your objectives regardless of what else is happening around you. 

So, if you’re ready to enjoy the benefits of visualization, read the rest of this article to discover different visualization exercises that you can employ to help you better market your products.

1. Visualize Potential Leads Interacting with Your Campaigns

Everything in creation was a thought before it became a thing. For example, think of the chair you’re sitting on right now. Someone had to think up the idea before they could create the actual chair. 

It's the same with the device you are reading this on, and everything else around you. Without the thought, the thing never would have been created.

In the same way, your successful marketing campaign begins with a thought of the steps it takes to move your leads from the beginning point to the desired outcome. 

Visualizing your potential leads interacting with your marketing campaign in this way is one of the most effective visualization exercises for B2B marketers and it will help you understand the general effectiveness of your campaign.

To understand how this works, you need to know that there are two types of visualization: 

• Process Visualization: Process visualization involves envisioning every step you’ll take toward your desired outcome. 

• Outcome Visualization: This involves only envisioning the desired end-point as if it’s already true. 

For example, as a college business professor, I use both forms of visualization when creating my syllabi and lesson plans. First, I visualize the outcome of the course for each student, which is typically full understanding of the course material and the ability to apply within a business environment for the intended purpose.

Then I visualize the process by which my students will learn each concept and how they can best use them together as part of their future business plans. 

By visualizing the outcome and process together, I’m able to create a course syllabus and individual class lesson plans that integrate together to ensure that my students actually learn something of value they can use in their future careers.

Likewise, I apply these visualization practices as part of my normal business practices. When creating online courses, I visualize similar outcomes and processes as I do for my college students and practice similar visualization exercises when creating email newsletters, creating new articles for my site, generating leads, conducting outreach, etc.

I even used applied process and outcome visualization when writing this blog article by visualizing you, the reader, using this information in your own lives and careers to maximum succes.

2. Visualize Different Demographics to Anticipate Different Results 

The merging of neuroscience and marketing is called neuromarketing, a fast-exploding trend, as suggested by the graph below which outlines how marketers rate the importance of neuromarketing to their overall success: 

Another smart visualization technique is to imagine different demographics, including sex, age, race, occupation, etc., to see if different results can be anticipated. 

This process can help you remove any biases or prejudice that may be present in your marketing campaign.

It can help to create a vision board to make this process easier for you. 

A vision board is simply a visualization tool with images and words that represent your goals. It's a simple visual representation of the things you want to achieve, and in this case, it will make it easier for you to see the different demographics in your campaigns so you can better imagine different outcomes for each one.

Alternatively, you can use index cards as a tool for effective visualization. 

For example, you might create a list with each of the different demographics you want to focus on. Write one on each card and go through your stack one at a time to help hone your focus and make it easier for you to anticipate what kind of results you can expect with each demographic.

3. Visualize the Success of Your Campaign Before Hand 

Visualize yourself creating a successful campaign before you start its development. 

As you’ve learned so far, there are two types of visualization: process visualization, and outcome visualization. Visualizing your campaign’s success before its beginning is the latter. 

This technique is so powerful it’s used by many of the world’s most successful athletes, including NBA basketball player LeBron James, Multi-gold medalist Olympian diver, Greg Louganis, and Free Solo Rock Climber Alex Honnold. 

These outstanding professional athletes understand that physical exercise alone is not enough, and use mental exercises like visualization to gain an edge over their peers. 

People in many other fields find benefit in visualization, as well, including CEOs, doctors working with stroke victims, ballet dancers, nano-influencers, chess players, and many others who use visualization as a way to rapidly accelerate their goal achievement. 

Marketers, too, stand to benefit a lot by visualizing their marketing campaign’s success before it has happened. 

When you can see the outcome clearly in your mind (engaging all five senses) and imagine the emotion attached to that outcome, you’ll set yourself up for success in all your future campaigns.

4. Visualize Yourself Pitching a Successful Campaign to a Client

Another visualization exercise you can use is to see yourself pitching your marketing campaign to the client successfully. 

When used in this way, visualization can be a great tool for building self-confidence, reducing stress, and lessening anxiety. 

Think about it…

If you visualize yourself pitching to leads successfully before you pitch, when you do conduct the actual pitch, you will behave and act in a way that will increase the chance of being successful. 

As any marketer will tell you the more competent you feel, the more confident you will be, which is why this sort of mental rehearsal is so effective.

It involves process visualization and increases selective attention so you focus only on the desired outcome. 

When these things are envisioned, you are essentially programming yourself to take these pre-planned actions (even with no conscious thought on your part, in some cases). You'll naturally engage mental pathways that fine-tune everything from your movement and body language to your tone without you even realizing it. 

Also, this type of visualization technique helps to reduce anxiety by directing your attention to the details of the outcome you seek. In the process, it reduces the noise of many of the less relevant distractions you may face. 

It’s easy to see how this would be a powerful technique for anyone, but most importantly marketers who need a reduction in anxiety and a boost in their confidence levels when presenting in front of clients. 

5. Visualize to Boost Motivation and Create Momentum

In addition to the exercises outlined above, all of which are designed to help you achieve success in your campaigns, you can also use visualization techniques as a way to motivate yourself to focus on your future ideal state. 

You can use the practice to build the determination, discipline, and self-confidence required to become a more successful marketer. 

Not only will you set yourself up for success in your next campaign but in all your future campaigns, as well. 

Your selective attention will be constantly directed toward fulfilling your vision of being a successful B2B marketer whether you focus on a specific campaign on not.

And remember, the more detailed your visualizations, the more real they will feel to you. 

The more real they feel, the easier it will be to affirm your desired outcomes and the quicker it will be to achieve them.

Why is Visualization So Important for Marketers? 

The world we live in these days is one of digital overload. Marketers, especially, are constantly having to deal with never-ending cycles of information and news, and it's very easy to become distracted. 

Visualization is a great practice that will help you step back and focus more on the things that matter the most in helping you achieve your objectives. 

With visualization, rather than responding to your environment, you can set a vision of your future and then direct your mind to focus on making that future reality via a process that involves selective attention. 

Here's a great example of this:

Have you ever bought a new outfit or car, only to then notice that everyone else seems to be wearing that same outfit or driving that same car? 

Those things were already there, but you didn't notice them before you purchased your own. It proves that the brain notices the things that we choose to focus on. 

Don’t believe me? Take this Awareness Test and you’ll see what I mean.

Bottom line, as a B2B marketer, visualization will allow you to subconsciously sort through the never-ending barrage of information you’re faced with every day to find the nuggets that will help you succeed in your marketing efforts. 

If you need help putting all of this information into practice, you might consider enlisting the services of a digital intelligence agency. 

Important Note: Visualization works whether you imagine positive or negative processes/outcomes. Keep that in mind the next time you’re worried about a campaign that might not turn out as you desired. 

It’s always better to imagine all the ways it can go right if you want to increase your chances of success. 

Conclusion: A Final Word on Visualization in Digital Marketing

I hope this article has helped you understand what visualization is, why it's important, and how you can start to benefit from it in your B2B marketing campaigns. There are two main forms of visualization I discussed are process and outcome visualizaiton and various way you can use each to maximum effect for your business.

However, you can take visualization a step further. Instead of just visualizing how you will be able to reach some end on your own and the actions you have to take, you can also visualize how your B2B leads and clients will interact wil the various elements of your digital marketing mix.

If you build a website, you should think about the way your clients and leads will interact with each page, image, CTA button, heading banner, logo, social media button, blog article, and every other piece of content down to the smallest detail. 

By visualizing the end-user’s interactions in this way, you can better create stunning and intuitively engaging on-site content that you can use across your digital marketing mix.

Process and otucome visualizaiton work just as well with your social media channels, email newsletter, podcasts, online courses, blog articles, and every other piece of your digital marketing channel. 

It’s important if you do this to take the time to create branded visual assets so that your followers can easily recognize your platform throughout the journey.  You can hire an expensive graphic designer for this, or just use a logo maker that will also create complimentary branded assets.

Using visualization effectively means thinking about how you will accomplish something or how you can create things that inspire others to take desired actions such as getting a business to reach out for a consultation, opt-in to an email newsletter, interact with social media content, and — most import of all — convert and become a loyal, recurring client and brand ambassador. 

Are you ready to start using the exercises in this article to harness the power of your subconscious mind with visualization? Share your thoughts below!