6 Rules for Grabbing People’s Attention

with guest Jamie Mustard #MakingBank S4E42

Jamie Mustard dropped so many amazing tidbits on the podcast this week about how not only to get people’s attention, not only to keep it, but also on how to capitalize on those precious few seconds you actually have it. 

In an age where we are all bombarded with thousands and thousands of ads every single day, the most difficult task you are faced with is how you can get people to stop scrolling or stop listening to their headphones and actually pay attention to you. But if you can’t do just that your business is as good as dead. 

If you do manage to achieve this tough task, once you get that attention you only have a short window to actually capitalize on it. Here are 6 rules for doing both. 

1. Keep it Sesame Street 

Don’t try to oversell yourself or communicate too much. One big mistake that many entrepreneurs make is trying to communicate every single service and every single benefit into a short segment. It’s understandable – you’ve worked hard to build a great product or service, and you want your audience to know all that it can do for them. 

BIG MISTAKE. Boil it down to one simple thing you want to communicate. Find your most valued product or service, and communicate it in a way that can be understood in an instant – no more than a few words and an image. 

Take this FedEx slogan for example: “When it absolutely has to get there overnight.” This makes a clear promise and is incredibly easy to remember, so even if there are competitors who can do the same thing, when you absolutely need to send something overnight FedEx is going to jump to your mind. Simple, communicative, effective. Marketing gold. 

2. Repetition 

The key to good advertising is to get your message to linger in people’s minds. One key to doing that is repetition. That means making sure your ads are popping up multiple times to the same customers, ideally across various platforms, and making sure you repeat the same slogans or jingles in each ad. 

How many times have you heard Geico’s “15 minutes can save you…” It’s not even necessary to finish the sentence, you know it so well you finished it in your head anyway. This has been repeated in so many different commercials over the past decade it’s burned into our minds. There’s nothing particularly catchy or overpowering about this phrase – it’s not as clever or potent as the FedEx slogan, but by constantly repeating it, it has stuck with us and become iconic. 

3. Big and Bold 

Once you find your message, be so over the top with it that no one could possibly ignore you. Write it in the sky, take out every single square foot of ad space on a subway car, hit Instagram, Facebook and YouTube all at once. When you have honed in on your message, when you know it’s going to convert, it’s time to go big or go home. 

4. Make it Catchy 

Remember rule #2? Repetition? If you have a jingle that’s catchy enough or a slogan that’s funny enough, your audience will do your work for you by repeating it to their friends, online, and you may even get free marketing on television or in movies. Think margarine’s “I can’t believe it’s not butter” slogan that is still getting repeated in pop culture 2+ decades later, or Verizon’s “Can you hear me now?” line that was so effective it even made its way into the ads of other companies. 

If you can get your ad to stick in people’s minds after they finish looking at it, think of all the extra marketing you’re getting for free! This is how you truly get the most out of your marketing dollars. Once it gets repeated enough it becomes more than an advertisement, it becomes a cultural relic. 

5. Give Them What They Want! 

Once you’ve got that attention lock – before they’ve had a chance to think – you need to make what you’re offering abundantly clear, and it needs to be something they want. If you grab your audience’s attention, then deliver them something of value, you’re guaranteed to get conversions. 

Figure out what it is about your company that people value most, and use that to draw them in. Once you’ve sold them on one main thing that they want, they will check out the rest of what you have to offer with a more intentful, dedicated eye. 

Touting all of the data your mattress can give people right up front may be too much, but simply promising a guaranteed 8 hours of restful sleep, no strings attached? Much more powerful. After you draw them in, then start explaining. 

6. Actually Deliver 

It’s not enough to simply deliver the right message, because if you don’t deliver on that message, you will be sniffed out immediately. What actually matters more than anything is the quality you actually deliver. 

In today’s day and age, no matter how good your ad is, almost everyone is going to look you up online before making a purchase. If you have great marketing, but a 1.4 rating on Amazon, you’re going to have a tough time selling anything. 

Think marketing marketing as a gateway to get people to check you out. Your real marketing is what people are independently saying about you online. If you have good marketing matched up with great reviews, you’ll be swimming in customers. 

A good marketing funnel is the basis for every digital business. If you’re not generating attention, you’re nothing. Literally. 

But the funneling doesn’t stop on your landing page, or even at checkout. It stops when they’ve begun using your products and writing reviews. If you focus on communicating value to people without actually providing that value, you are going to go braindead hitting your head against the wall, but if you focus on creating value for people, then follow these simple rules, the communication will take care of itself!