This post is a follow up to “Capturing Attention: How Your Prospect’s Mind Works.”
There are two main reasons that marketing and promotion efforts fail to capture attention:
1.) The message is unclear
2.) The message is inconsistent
Let’s take a look at where we’re going wrong when we put out unclear messages, and some steps we can take to fix that.
Unclear messages
Help them see what you see. You might be using your own “me” filter when creating messages about your company, thinking that everyone sees things the way you do.
But they don’t.
People won’t “hear” you until they perceive what you perceive. So you’ve got to make your position really clear — help them to see what you see, using story, description, personal experiences, case histories, anything that will put the prospect in the right position to understand your message.
“What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you’re standing.”
— C. S. Lewis
Make it personal. When something becomes personal, it becomes important. Personally interesting or perceptually meaningful information can grab attention, bring clarity, and help it slip right into your prospective client’s awareness. You don’t have to do a lot of explaining to tell someone his house is on fire.
Use emotion. Emotion is also a great way to bring clarity to your business messages while making it personal. Emotion has the triple bonus of adding clarity, giving clients a reason to talk about you and your business, and triggering the circuits in the brain that activate behavior and decisions.
Don’t be cute, clever, or use insider language. You only have a few seconds to capture someone’s attention with your words and visuals, so don’t take chances with clever or cute, which is often lost on people. (Okay, the cat illustration I used in my last post on this very subject was cute, but it also made the very specific point I was talking about, so don’t tell me I took a chance with cute, because I don’t think I did, in that instance.) Don’t use inside jokes or industry terms, either (unless appropriate for narrow niche marketing). These tactics only tend to confuse audiences – and a confused mind does not pay attention.
I’ll be talking about the dangers of the second reason marketing and promotion efforts fail to capture attention — inconsistency — in tomorrow’s post, “Capturing Attention: Why Marketing Efforts Fail, Part 2.”
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