What’s Attention Marketing, & Should You Use It?

Did you know that the cost of getting consumer attention has increased dramatically (seven to nine fold) over the past two decades?

It might not be surprising to hear, but overall our collective attention span has narrowed.

You may be wondering “What does this mean for marketers?”

As a marketer, it’s our job to attract people to our brand. We have to deliver almost magnetic messages in order to get our audience’s attention. But when you only have seconds, this seems like an insurmountable task (hint: it’s not like that, we have some ideas).

In this post, let’s review what attention marketing is and how you can use it to get your audience’s attention.

The term attention marketing was coined by Steve Jelley and popularized by Seth Godin to describe a business model that aims to grab users ‘attention through non-invasive content rather than interrupting users’ attention with a pop-up ad. With attention marketing, once you get your audience’s attention, you can get in touch with them and convince them to buy your product or service when the opportunity presents itself.

Before this concept was introduced, the marketing landscape looked very different when social media began. Brands typically market themselves extensively through television commercials, billboards, or radio spots. This means that they were unable to target individuals, but instead had to focus on targeting a wider audience.

With social media, brands can now find out what individual customers are interested in and then market them individually. Ultimately, it’s important to consider using attention marketing because you want your marketing resources to be engaging and engaging with customers.

Marketing attention span

Now that you’ve started thinking about grabbing your audience’s attention instead of interrupting it, let’s focus on the logistics. At first, you don’t have as much time as you think.

Years ago, Microsoft reported that a person’s average attention span was 8 seconds. A recent study shows that our collective attention span is decreasing.

Essentially, you only have seconds to grab your audience’s attention before they scroll further or click through to something else.

How should you get your audience’s attention? Let’s go over some ideas below.

Marketing Attention Grabber

1. Be platform specific.

A great way to get your audience’s attention is to have your content appear natively on your audience’s feed (if it’s social media).

For example, if your video is showing up as recommended on YouTube and they click on the video and it clearly matches your title and expectations, you can likely keep watching them.

However, if they click through and the content is a photo montage instead of a video (a big difference from what they expect), you might lose them.

If brands repost content from Instagram on Twitter instead of writing a separate Twitter post, users are less likely to click the link than if they saw the post directly on Twitter.

One important thing to remember is that some users are mobile and others are on the desktop. Think about how you can make your website or content specifically for these platforms so that the consumer can more easily interact with your content.

2. Write super clear messages.

If people can instantly see what your value proposition is, it will keep their attention longer. It might seem simple, but check out your marketing assets and ask yourself: “Is my value proposition clear to my audience? Can they see the value we can offer in seconds?”

If so, this will keep people’s attention longer because when they clearly see the value of your offering, they’ll want to take a closer look at your brand. Your messages should be clear, concise, and written specifically for your target audience.

3. Use built-in media.

Integrated media or a multichannel and multimedia marketing approach will help to grab your audience’s attention.

This means that you use different media including videos, pictures, podcasts, GIFs, memes, etc. Different types of media on different platforms will help you figure out what your audience likes and dislikes.

Your general marketing strategy should also include interactive media. In fact, 81 percent of marketers say interactive content is more effective than static content when it comes to grabbing consumer attention.

Ultimately, it’s important to play around with your media content – both the types of assets you create and the channels through which you distribute them.

4. Tell a story.

People love a story. They love to watch TV, read books, or listen to a podcast. If you can captivate your audience with a good story, it will be easier to market.

To do this, you can start your videos, blogs, or Facebook ads with a storytelling hook. Once you get your audience’s attention, you can get involved and excite them.

5. Consider emotional marketing.

Have you ever heard of emotional marketing?

This is the concept that your marketing assets should primarily use emotions to get your audience’s attention. If you use a unique emotion, your audience will naturally respond to your content. And isn’t the goal of getting your audience to react in some way?

6. Don’t forget about co-marketing.

Co-marketing is when you use brand partnerships and collaborations to grow your audience. It’s about working with another brand and sharing expertise and value with each other’s audience.

With this in mind, you can also work with influencers. 51% of marketers believe influencer marketing can get them better customers.

By using influencers or working with other brands, you can target their audiences – which are usually large and engaged – in order to market your product or service and get your audience’s attention.

7. Have a good website.

One of your greatest marketing assets is your website. It should be responsive, have a great user interface, and be user-experience focused.

If your homepage on your website can grab your audience’s attention in seconds, you’ve got it right.

Attention marketing isn’t just about creating viral content as the name suggests. It’s about really creating content that will grab your audience’s attention and keep it going over the long term.