Getting people’s attention is sometimes one of the hardest things to do in this busy world, especially when we are all glued to our cell phones.
We are constantly bombarded by texts, tweets, push notifications, ads, Facebook posts, emails and more, and our brains get hooked on all that stimuli. We crave more and more new information, and it can be difficult to pay attention to any one thing for very long.
Conversely, it also makes it difficult to hold anyone’s attention for very long. This creates a significant challenge for marketers, whose entire job is to cut through the noise and meaningfully engage with consumers.
The good news is that there are still ways to hold attention. Nielsen research suggests that pages with a clear value proposition are able to hold people’s attention for much longer.
Be Clear in Your Messaging
Focus on UX and ease of navigation. Keep your messaging short and sweet. Appeal to consumer desires – tell stories.
There has been a lot of debate over long versus short copy and which is more effective. While both types of content have their place, more often than not the KISS principle wins.
Take it from Nick Dutko, the CEO of Auto Transport Quote Services, “Ultimately, the goal of a solid content marketing strategy is to drive good ROI. There is no point in having content that does not add to your bottom line. For this reason, simple, clear content will always win.”
Your content strategy should go beyond just creating content and strategy to help you maximize content created. In fact, website accessibility is as important as other parts of your strategy.
Research has established that a single second delay in how long your site takes to load will cost you 7 percent in conversions and that 40 percent of people will simply exit your website if it takes longer than three seconds to load.
It is important to realize that at this point in time, we are more impatient than ever. And very few people will trade extra seconds of their time for reading your content because they feel it is very valuable.
Use Video
In today’s over-saturated digital world, marketers need smart strategies for making the most of the eight second attention span.
This requires including images and visual storytelling tactics that will capture and hold attention before something else does. In fact, this phenomenon has a name — the “picture superiority effect,” whereby concepts presented with visuals or pictures are better learned and more easily and frequently recalled than those without. That’s why including an image with your social media posts delivers 180 percent more engagement or 150 percent more retweets. Words alone only have 10 percent recall, but adding a visual element increases retention of the content to 65 percent.
Here are some stats on the conversion power of videos:
Video marketers know we lack patience. So they’re starting to tailor content for our dwindling attention spans. In fact, 56% of all videos published in the last year are less than 2 minutes long.
And that 59% of senior executives would prefer to watch video than read text where both were available? We’re biased but the data definitely fits what we’ve been saying – video is a great way to override the shrinking attention span.
In today’s over-saturated digital world, marketers need smart strategies for making the most of the eight second attention span.
