I read a recent post on Twitter from Mitch Joel with the following excerpt from the book "Let the Elephants Run: Unlock Your Creativity and Change Everything" authored by David Usher: "Today, value is measured by attention". This excerpt from the book seems to sum up the state of today's marketing environment. There are a lot of metrics out there which attempt to measure attention: bounce rate, average session duration, pages/sessions, and cost per thousand… just to mention a few. Attention is the most coveted thing in effective marketing.
Getting attention and maintaining attention are equally important and equally challenging. When you're developing your marketing, how frequently are you asking yourself the core question of “why should someone pay attention to your company's message”? To the issue of getting attention, there are some commonly used techniques including:
- Comedy - when done right, very powerful, but can be difficult
- Illustration - how your company/product provides a solution can be powerful as long as it can be brief enough to capture your target audiences' attention
- Video- The power of sight, sound, and emotion used in a concise and consistent manner can garner the attention of your prospect to want to engage with your company
- Storytelling - using the techniques from the 2008 book from Chip and Dan Heath titled “Made to Stick”, they talk about how stories drive action through simulation (what to do) and inspiration (the motivation to do it). Stories not only garner attention, but they are memorable if done right.
So if you accept that value is measured by attention, then you have to develop an attention-getting strategy that uses all the creative skills of your marketing team to create a powerful connection with consumers.
