Sponsor - Click to visit; Right Click for samples, personalization, and more offers
Sponsors - Click for samples, personalization, and more offers

Cut Through the Clutter – and Stop Boring Your Customers!

Your message has to be about them, not you.

3/22/2016 | Aubrey Collins, Creative Challenges

Since we all exist in a world where many can’t even walk to the bathroom without a smartphone, it should come as no surprise that in recent years, attention spans have dropped – like a lot – decreasing from 12 seconds in 2000 to just eight in 2015, according to a Microsoft Corp. study. Comparatively, the average goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds. Blink. Blink. Blink. This means as a culture, we have essentially turned into the equivalent of the dog from the movie Up.

Squirrel!

Despite our awareness of our incredible shrinking attention spans, many marketers, sales professionals and business owners don’t seem to realize how much it matters to them. If they did, the vast majority of small business websites wouldn’t be filled with copy so long and so boring that when you read it your eyes glaze over, you hear the “womp womp womp” of the adults in Peanuts cartoons, and you instinctively hit the back button on your browser.

No one will pay attention to us just because we ask them to pay attention to us. It is our responsibility to give our audience something compelling to pay attention to or they are as good as gone.

It’s Never About You – Even When It Is

To engage your audience, you need to provide content that’s relevant, useful or otherwise entertaining and exciting. Seems easy enough, right? The tricky thing is that when it comes to writing about your business, what you write can never, ever, ever be about you. Everything you write has to serve the customer and be related to something your audience cares about.

Think about the last time you were at a party and someone was droning on and on (and on) about something. You tried to listen. Really, you did. You want to be a person who listens. But as they were talking, you went into a trance and started wondering if you had turned off the iron before you left.

Then they said something that related to you. And — SNAP — you woke up.

Engage Your Audience with Specific, Honest, and Personal Content

The same principles of polite party small talk apply to content from your brand. The most successful stories are those your audience can relate to on a personal or emotional level or involve something they can picture themselves experiencing, even in some small way.

Story allows you to connect with customers. Being detailed, authentic, open, and vulnerable is what will hold your audience’s interest and help them pay closer attention. It is your best chance to cut through the bombardment of emails, phone calls, texts, voicemails, and push notifications – not to mention social media’s siren song that has a choke hold on our attention spans.

Deliver Quality Content You Would Want to Read

If you were a customer, would you read your copy? If your answer is no, then it’s time to revise, and revise some more, until you’re proud of the message your brand is putting in this world. Plus, creative and clever copy is much more fun to write than a value proposition not-so-cleverly-disguised as fresh content.

Interesting content is important to your marketing because it allows you to stay in front of your customers without it being a self-serving force-feeding of information. It’s a way to stay in touch without shouting, “Me! Me! Me! Pay attention to me! Buy something from me!”

By providing fun content that is valuable, worthwhile, and even amusing, you will keep your business front and center to your audience and build connections and credibility along the way. Then when it comes time to buy products or services that your company offers, you’ll be who they think of first – not the smarmy “Me! Me! Me!” guy. Everybody hates that guy.

Aubrey Collins is the director of marketing and communications at MediaTree, a supplier of branded digital entertainment cards. She fell in love with the promotional products industry in 2011 at her first PPAI Expo. She shares her perspective on everything from the industry and what parenting continues to teach her about business, to what marketing campaigns make her cry on her blog. Connect with her on Twitter or email her atacollins@mediatreegroup.com.

Next up from Creative Challenges...
Latest from PromoJournal...

Endurance Shaker from Garyline

Protein for days
PromoErrday

Conquering Fear

...and Navigating Business Challenges with Confidence
The Hustle

Love It or Hate It with Janet and Carrie

Video games? Participation trophies?
Love It OR Hate It