4 Easy Ways to Capture and Maximize Customer Attention

Making your customers hear (and remember) your brand messaging is not easy as it might sound.  For that, you must make it memorable, relevant, and useful to them. That is not an easy task!

Be honest: how often do you binge-watch Netflix while checking your email on your laptop and browsing through Instagram on your phone? (We all do this every once in a while, right?)

It’s amazing how individuals nowadays simultaneously divide their attention among numerous screens and platforms.

However, capturing and maintaining the customer’s mindshare is a must. Especially when multitasking is at its peak and attention spans are at their shortest. So it is a constant struggle for brands and businesses striving to be relevant and present with their clients.

Here are a few concepts currently working for many recognized brands in a world where it’s necessary to deliver the right brand messaging. That breaks through all the noise and information overload. These techniques will help you effectively engage and maintain your customers’ attention and interest.

1. Always Deliver Snackable Content

Engage an increasingly distracted audience; a method is known as “content snacking.” It requires short, clear, highly relevant nuggets of information that people can consume on the go.

Consider this: If you’re on your smartphone while waiting in line at the grocery store, in a waiting room for a meeting, or an Uber cruising to your next location, how much information other than the task at hand are you consuming? It goes on all the time, and when time (and attention) is limited, bite-sized media bits are the easiest to ingest.

Providing your audience with relevant, visual, and attention-grabbing content, like videos on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, allows you to offer tiny brand messages that you can consume in bursts. Digital, enjoyable content is most valuable when personalized to the mobile user or, better yet, developed by the users themselves.

Once, J crew (American Apparel Outfitters’ sister brand) has reinforced its brand identity with its “J crew Right” campaign. That featured “unretouched” brand ambassadors and real-life customers, in short, very relevant films on its social media platforms.

J crew can hold viewers’ attention, establish a strong brand message, and build an emotional connection with its audience while exhibiting its apparel by reducing the clips to 30 seconds or fewer.

If movies or GIFS aren’t the best way to convey your message, text-based material should be clear, short, and easy to skim. Bullet points or numbered lists will always help you.

You have a good chance of making an effect if you create a powerful, unique narrative relevant to your audience’s interests.

2. Realize that Your Email is Still Relevant (Believe It or Not)

Generation Z (born between the late 1990s and the early 2000s) will not bring the end of retail — or your current marketing plan. On the contrary, the generational cohort, also known as iGen, is one of the largest consumer categories in the United States today, with a direct purchasing power of up to $143 billion.

Generation Z has grown up in a world of screens and information overload. Yet, while headlines continue to imply that humans have the attention span of a goldfish, we’ve evolved into highly evolved filtering systems.

In an age when social media appears to be controlling the world, email is far from extinct. According to studies, more than 80% of Gen Z check their email at least once each day, with the majority checking numerous times per day. Not a single person acknowledged never using email.

You can keep targeting your audience with targeted email marketing because we already know that email is one of the channels with the best ROI.

Take, for example, Spotify. The email below shows a call-to-action based on the user’s listening history, along with a special prize (access to a presale event).

Furthermore, by referencing a recently released single available on the streaming service, the email reinforces ongoing support and engagement. Spotify softly reminds the user of the benefits of the service and of being an active client without seeming like it is nagging or selling anything.

Remember that ROI (return on investment) is equally as significant as ROI (return on investment) (return on investment).

3. Make Use of AI-Based Personalization

The key to the customer castle is an innovative, tailored marketing campaign. Fortunately, a wealth of data is accessible to take personalization to a whole new level. The days of painstakingly searching through campaign insights to apply them after their expiration date is over, thanks to advancements in marketing technology. Here comes artificial intelligence (AI).

AI is a catch-all phrase for any software type (or subset) that engages in human-like learning processes. As a result, it is extremely efficient at personalizing the consumer journey across different channels.

The development of AI enables marketers to rapidly examine vast volumes of data and “learn” from it more quickly and efficiently than humans can. It allows organizations to maintain a competitive advantage by interacting and engaging with their customers in real-time.

AI can predict purchasing habits by analyzing underlying trends in shopping activity, such as the number and type of previously purchased products and the medium of sale and payment method.

Take, for example, grocery shopping. Kroger is leveraging smart-shelf technology. And a partnership with Microsoft to transform the shopping experience and offer personalized prices and products to people via its new mobile app and “digital shelves.” Customers can enter their demands into the app. The digital displays located in the aisles will flash a customer-selected icon to take them to the next item on their list rapidly.

In addition, Kroger has launched a virtual assistant app to promote healthier eating and support consumers’ health and fitness. The software may identify consumers’ brand and food preferences and assist them in making healthier choices by studying consumer data linked to loyalty cards.

With  AI technology gradually reducing the gap between the real and digital worlds, businesses may utilize learnings and predictive analytics to estimate demand and create a better, more personalized customer experience.

4. Create strategies for social responsibility and green marketing.

Customers generally are not just aware of our growing environmental concerns. Instead, they choose to support and engage with companies and brands who are doing their part to protect our world’s social and ecological health.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a developing practice that incorporates sustainable development into a company’s overall business model. This, in conjunction with green marketing (the promotion of environmentally friendly products and services), aims to implement sustainable practices, reduce excess or unnecessary waste (energy, water, transportation, packaging, and so on), and exemplify social awareness in all aspects of the business.

CSR is evolving a focus for stakeholders, employees, and consumers alike when associating with a company and being ethical.

 According to a Cone Communications analysis: 

• 79% of consumers actively seek socially and ecologically responsible products and enterprises.

Furthermore, 88% said they would actively boycott companies that engage in bad business practices.

Google is a great example of a for-profit firm committed to CSR. In 2017, the company achieved its objective of being entirely powered by renewable energy, becoming the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy. Google also encourages green commuting for employees, provides paid time off for volunteer hours, and matches employee charitable donations.

Actively incorporating CSR into your business is critical for the survival of the planet and the survival of your financial line. When strategically created and correctly implemented, a CSR program can improve a brand’s favorable image in the marketplace. However, just like rescuing the earth, it is a long-term endeavor that will pay off in the long run.

Maintain Your Audience’s Interest and Engagement

Consider short consumer attention spans an opportunity to produce snappy, creative, brief, and relatable content that cuts through the clutter to capture and maintain your customers’ attention.

There are numerous methods to connect and engage with (and sell to) your audience, ranging from enjoyable content to a business model that saves the world.