Attention can make or break a business. In order to turn a consumer into a customer, you need to grab their attention and keep it. In today’s world there are advertisements everywhere you look, but there are a few tricks that can help you beat out competition
Measuring Attention
Currency can be measured in attention. More money can be made the longer we hold someone’s attention. The best advertisements echo and hold attention long after they’ve been experienced. The very best advertisement becomes culture. The creation of culture is also called “art,” and art requires courage. Courage can lead to spectacular success in advertising. Without a willingness to take bold steps to gain attention, you may as well stop trying.
Return Attention
Similarly, if you find yourself giving your attention to aspects in your life that don’t return on the attention invested, move on fast. Your time and attention have value. In your professional life, you must measure the profit of putting your energy into what you do. This is simple risk assessment, which every businessperson understands. This applies in all aspects of life, from school, family, to work and marketing.
Notice What Grabs Your Attention
The time you spend looking at something, listening to someone or experiencing something has worth. We create money – money does not create us. Since we are the creators of currency, we manipulate and determine its value. Think about the phrase “pay attention.” It combines two important elements of business – currency and attention. In order to master the ability to hold people’s attention over time, you need to become a leader. To do that, you can start by noticing where you pay the most attention. What thoughts do you allow into your life through the media? What are the brands that you most notice? Do you spend a lot of time at Target, Starbucks or Macy’s? These brands have their patrons’ loyalty (or not) for good reasons. The products a given brand offers might be the best in the market at a given price, but not always. Most likely you are comfortable with a given brand and trust it. People gravitate to the familiar and known.
Branding
From the marketer’s perspective, everything is a brand of sorts. This can be a useful way to see our capitalist environment. Your employer is a brand. You have a brand at your job. Call it your “reputation” if you like. Your relationships, taste in music, food preferences, religion and political ideology are riddled with brands, brand identities and competing figures. We think of a donkey when someone mentions “Democrat,” an elephant when someone mentions “Republican” and a cross when someone mention “Christianity.” Brands are comprised of messages and symbols, combined to form metaphor, which in turn generates a set of feelings. Much of this happens subconsciously. We don’t even notice we’ve formed these elaborate associations. Try to imagine “Nike” without the corresponding logo and motto – hard to do. Knowing the world is awash in brands can inspire us to make conscious decisions. Everyone advertises something and that’s okay. What isn’t okay is to remain oblivious to that concept once you know better.
As soon as you understand the motives behind people’s actions, you can make informed decisions toward your goals. Likewise, when you advertise, you can respect your audience’s intellect, empathize with them and treat them with the integrity people deserve. While doing that, you will provide them with something may not have even known they wanted until you show them. Now go ahead. Just do it.
Kellen Kautzman is the founder and operator of Send It Rising Internet Marketing, a Las Vegas-based internet marketing agency. Kautzman is a well-regarded expert on growing small business with digital marketing and SEO, a public speaker, and published author of the book, “Everybody’s Doing It – Advertising Redefined by SEO Expert Kellen Kautzman”, which initially launched as the #1 New Release on Amazon.com in the SEO category.