May I have your attention please!!?

How often have we heard this? More declaration than question. Do you give it, curious as to what’s to follow or tune it out?

Earning attention from the RIGHT people is one of the most important jobs you need to do as a brand.

We talk about the ‘noise’ via the ads and emails and beeps and notifications we receive every day making it harder and harder to standout. If fact, we’re often told we’re exposed to 3,000 - 10,000 ads per day. Which makes you wonder how anyone can standout.

Yet that’s not true. Assuming you’re awake for 14 hours during the day, 5,000 ads would mean about 6 ads per minute which is not at all likely.

The reality is no one REALLY knows exactly how many ads we see but some research pegs it closer to 100. It depends on your level of media consumption.

The question is how many ads to you REMEMBER in a day? How many of your customers remember your ads?

Simply being exposed to ads you don’t see is like the invisible cellular waves whizzing through the air around you.

It takes about 7 impressions for recognition to kick in. Yet if they’re not seen, you need more than that.

To get attention, you need to interrupt your customer. Stop them in their tracks. To keep their attention, you need to be relevant or at least interesting long enough that they want to learn more about you.

Too often in B2B, brands simply say “Hey, check out our demo. It does this and this and this. Want to buy it?”

Brands think rationally and miss the hook. Too eager to get into the unsexy bits and close the deal. Logical thinking is what smart business people think is the ticket to success. Be illogical and you won’t get hired. Or you’ll often get laughed out of the room. So few want to take that risk.

Yet being logical always gets you to the same place as everyone else. Like your competitors. Doing what everyone else is doing is hardly going to make your memorable.

Human behavior isn’t rational and logical. Even in B2B. Remember that concept of emotion we talked about earlier? Yep, it’s a thing.

Of course you need to have reason and logic to back-up your claims. Expensive B2B purchases need it.

So how can you be irrational and silly?

To get you thinking, here’s something ridiculous: Donut frisbee.

Say you’re a data analytics company. What if you used your software to analyze which types of donuts fly the farthest and then created a report? Then launched a donut-flying competition and measured how far they flew and how long they lasted.

You’re now THAT company that has fun with donuts. Oh, and you make some killer software people want. This makes you human. Someone people want to do business with. And you stand out from all the other data analytics companies out there.

Attention isn’t just valuable for brands. It’s everything. Without it, you’re invisible and invisible doesn’t sell.

It comes down to being memorable. Many people think they just need to shout louder. Rather, be interesting, being real. Maybe a little weird.

Attention equals mindshare. And mindshare equals business. Get this and you’ll get some word of mouth.

Be unexpected and you just may get their attention.

This week’s kickstart

Take a look at your marketing. And then take a look at your competitors’ marketing. Can you swap logos and it still feels the same? If so, it’s time to rethink it.

If it’s practical and make sense to you, but customers aren’t clicking or converting, it means logic isn’t winning the day.

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