How To Get Attention For Your Marketing (No, this article isn’t about clever subject lines.)

by | Oct 8, 2013 | Articles, Branding

LinkedIn ElevateOctober 8, 2013: It’s an age old problem – one of the biggest issues in marketing. You can lovingly work on your copy, have a great value case for your product, be exactly what your customer needs – but, if you can’t grab their attention for that precious fraction of a second, you might as well as not have created your ad.

Attention is the first portion of the Attention-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA) sequence. Without attention, advertising simply doesn’t work. Self evident, yes? However, getting attention and making your point without being annoying is trickier than it looks. Further, you want to get the right attention – the only good leads are qualified ones, or so they say in sales. All the attention in the world is worthless if it’s from those who will not convert. Thus, we want relevant attention. In our view, relevancy creates attention and starts the journey down the sales funnel.This is a hard task for smaller scale marketers. The easiest ways of getting good, qualified attention have already been taken up — at least in terms of the search arena — by the major brands. Attempting to compete with large players in the traditional media or PPC arenas is like trying to shout over a marching band where you are alone and have only a kazoo. So, how do we get that attention, that initial notice? Here are a few tactical ideas that can help in getting the initial notice so that we can start customers down the sales funnel –

  • Be Relevant. The real thing in getting attention is getting attention from the people we want to talk to. While those with huge budgets can simply spam their messaging out into the world, the rest of us will have less in the way of resources. Nothing gets attention faster than a message that matters to the customer and deals with their needs.
  • Buck The Trend. In our email marketing here at Didit, we’ve noticed that the best performing communications were pieces with provocative and compelling headlines that are still also related to the product or service. We once used a subject line of ARE YOU INSANE? for one of our e-mails. While gratuitous shock and non-relevant creative should be avoided, creative that breaks out from what everyone else uses should be embraced. This is a careful line to balance, but it’s a necessary marketing balancing act. This also goes for promotions, contests, live events and other tactical maneuvers designed to break out and get the attention of prospects.
  • Ride The Trend. This can be risky, but tapping into the buzz around a current event can give us a short term boost. A good example of this was evident in the buzz surrounding the birth of the child of Princess Kate. The event spurred many conversations on social media concerning child rearing, fashion, the place of the royals, media, and motherhood. Done with a careful eye towards relevancy (as opposed to crash shilling or transparent attempts to gain free publicity) can capture the attention of your audience and help lead into your messaging.
  • Test, learn, test, and test again. An basic and foundational lesson for online marketing is to test different varieties of creative and measure customer results. Keep track of results. Zero in on the customers whose attention you want.
Didit Editorial
Latest posts by Didit Editorial (see all)
The owner of this website has made a commitment to accessibility and inclusion, please report any problems that you encounter using the contact form on this website. This site uses the WP ADA Compliance Check plugin to enhance accessibility.