One of the most perplexing elements of marketing is capturing the attention of the audience. No matter who your intended audience is, they are bombarded with information. The question of how to cut through the clutter and grab prospective audiences’ valuable and fragmented attention is paramount — without it, we have nothing.

One thing is for certain: you must capture your prospect’s attention before you can sell him anything, change his mind, or move him to act. In order to understand, the brain has to focus on one source of information at a time.

Attention:

helps us screen out the irrelevant

helps us consider the appropriate response

chooses information that will enter in, and stay in, awareness

Your prospect’s mind works like your cat’s mind works, screening out all information it doesn’t consider relevant.

While not many of us know what all-consuming information (or lack thereof) is cluttering our pets’ minds, we know lots about what’s occupying our prospects’ attention. The following are a few of the many obstacles that must be overcome when vying for prospects’ attention:

The proliferation of available products and services

Increased competition

The multiplying methods of disseminating products and messages

Buyer sophistication

Information overload

People want instant gratification

You have to give your prospects a reason to pay attention.

While I’ve got your attention, I’m going to ask you to ponder this for a day or two. Then please return for further discussion on capturing attention, including the two main reasons most prospecting and marketing efforts fail to capture attention, and how to overcome them.

[tags]attention, prospects, prospecting, cut through clutter, marketing[/tags]

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 17th, 2007 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Capturing Attention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.