You must get your prospect’s attention before you can sell her anything, or let her know how wonderful you are. Simple enough. Sure, that makes sense, Marcia. Just like I had to get your attention — maybe with the headline, maybe with the illustration — before I could impart the wisdom of this article to you.
The brain is funny like that. In order to understand, the brain has to focus on specific information. And attention helps us screen out the irrelevant, consider an appropriate response, and choose which information will enter, and stay, in our awareness. In other words, our attention decides what to pay attention to, because we just can’t pay attention to everything.
It’s a pretty handy tool for the brain. As a business owner, you really need to know how it works.
Your prospective client’s mind works like your cat’s mind works:
It’s very selective. So, we have to give it a reason to pay attention.
Here are some obstacles to attention, and why it’s so difficult to get people to pay attention to us — even if we have the best product or service in the world, and can really help them.
Obstacles to attention
- The proliferation of available products and services
- Increased competition
- The multiplying methods of disseminating products and messages
- Buyer sophistication
- Information overload
- The desire for instant gratification
All of these things are roadblocks for us in the getting-attention game — so we’ve really got to be good at it.
I’ll be talking about the two main reasons your marketing and promotion efforts fail to capture attention in my next post, “Capturing Attention: Why Marketing Efforts Fail, Part 1.”
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Well you certainly got my attention Marcia :-)
Looking forward to reading the follow up posts too x
Hi Heather! Yay, that was my intention. :)
M