The Second Reason Marketing Efforts Fail to Capture Attention: Inconsistent Messages
Capturing attention. It’s something all of us have been trying to do since the day we were born.
At first, we cried to get our mothers’ attention to get our needs met. Later, we learned to pester or act up around Mom and Dad, getting their attention in one way or another. In school we chose to get the attention of the teachers with our grades, our behavior, or our antics, and we tested methods of capturing the attention of the opposite sex. For most of us, if something worked, we stuck with it, only changing our methods if we failed in our attempt to seize the attention of our desired audience.
We should remember this lesson when marketing to our customers — but so often, we don’t.
Why are so many companies so quick to jump from one marketing message to another, sending inconsistent messages to their audiences?
Boredom
Sometimes, it’s because, internally, it’s easy to get bored. You’re so close to your marketing that you get bored with it — you see it every day, so you think it’s growing stale. It’s probably time to try something new, right? Wrong! Just because you see something every day doesn’t mean your customers do. They’re not living and breathing it like you are — right about the time you’re getting tired of something is when your customers are just beginning to recognize it and connect with it. Changing messages too soon will only confuse them, and you’ll lose any momentum you’ve built to that point.
Thinking you need to reinvent the wheel
The wheel is a pretty good invention, and while most things can be improved upon, many things are better left alone. Go back to the example above — when relating to people one-on-one, if something works, stick with it. The same thing is true with marketing, because good marketing really should be like relating to people one-on-one. If it works, maybe you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Try asking yourself if you’re just bored with your marketing message or trying to reinvent the wheel the next time you think about changing your marketing message. Changing for the sake of change results in inconsistent messages. Inconsistent messages don’t have the time or the traction to really capture your audiences’ attention.
[tags]attention, inconsistent messages, reinvent the wheel, marketing messages[/tags]
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