Attention Marketing: How To Grab The Consumer’s Interest

Stephen McCance February 18, 2019

Endlessly scrolling and mindlessly flicking through social media apps. Whether it’s the morning work commute, waiting for a bus or at home after a long day – we’re all partial to a quick peek to see what everyone’s up to. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by businesses, who have now moved a lot of their advertising online.

The only hurdle is keeping their target audience’s interest once they reach them. To avoid being just another advert to scroll by in order to see the rest of the feed. This is something now known as ‘attention marketing’.

 

What Is Attention Marketing?

Attention marketing is a term coined by internet entrepreneur Steve Jelley, used to describe a business model that revolves around the growth of social media and the internet. Essentially it emphasises the need for marketing to be attention focused to keep customer interest.

 

The 8 Second Rule

Just 15 years ago people had an average attention span of 12 seconds. Today, it’s more like 8 seconds. Although, depending on the social media platform, it could be even less. This means you have only a matter of seconds to engage customers with your enticing content.

 

Man scrolling through Instagram

 

3 Step Formula To Attention Marketing:

 

1.Attracting Interest – When your audience is scrolling through Facebook or Instagram they’re looking for content that jumps out at them. Whether that’s a personalised message, a vibrant image, crazy video or a shocking headline. This is because though marketing has developed leaps and bounds over the past decade, human core needs haven’t changed.

In order to attract interest, you need to understand the psychology behind your target audience’s behaviour. Intriguing, eye-catching content still reigns supreme. Particularly the content that’s current and fresh. Take KFC’s cheeky ad about running out of chicken. A tongue-in-cheek play on words had the whole internet’s attention! Push participation with competition posts and witty captions. This is guaranteed to get more interaction than simply selling to the customer.

2.Keeping It – Once you’ve sparked someone’s interest, you’ve got your opportunity to take it to the next level. You’ve hooked them with a limited offer, catchy headline or enticing image, now encourage them to consume more. Having a link directly to your site is the best way to do this, or on instagram this could be a ‘shop now’ button for ecommerce businesses. This is time to deliver the goods.

3.Repeat Custom – Having dynamic, interesting content is pointless if your customers don’t buy into your brand. Build a relationship with your audience. The best way to do this is with personalisation. Make recommendations based on their previous activity and email them offers you think they might be interested in. Keep it short and sweet, and relate to your audience on a personal level.

 

Getting The Controversy Level Right

Sometimes a little controversy can be a good thing. If you’ve created a great piece of content, then the 8 second rule goes out the window. The supermarket chain Iceland were trending worldwide before Christmas thanks to their emotion-evoking palm oil advertisement. It was banned by the advertising standards authority for being too controversial.

They’d originally intended the advert for TV, but after it was banned they it took to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The short clip was watched more than 65 million times across social media platforms. The result was a shift in how consumers perceive the brand, consideration of Iceland among consumers in the supermarket sector peaked at 5.9 points to a score of 21.6 – the highest of any retailer on YouGov BrandIndex.

Furthermore, razor brand Gillette recently released an advert calling out misogynistic behaviour and toxic masculinity. The 1 minute 50 seconds long video was tweeted with their new slogan, ‘We Believe: The Best Men Can Be’. The advert received as much praise as it did backlash – but it certainly got people talking.

 

Creating Customers For Life

Getting customers to hit that ‘like’, or better yet, ‘follow’ button is purely down to the content you’re producing. By taking into account the 8 second rule, you should be creating innovative, attention grabbing content that your target audience actually want to engage with. Attention marketing is the shift you need from sales pitches to customer-focused marketing.

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