Shaan Rais is a professional speaker and leadership and organizational development consultant.
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There is a lot of rivalry for your audience's attention online, with roughly a billion websites. Although many of those websites aren't direct competitors, they do present a lot of distractions that you'll have to overcome if you want to capture and maintain your audience's attention.
It's one thing to know your target audience and quite another to know how to interact with them effectively. That is why, to capture your clients' attention and eventually influence their purchasing decisions, you must use a strategic approach to media and marketing communications.
Businesses that want to stand out will have to extend their reach and deliver a consistent message across various channels to secure their portion of the market share. And this message should be valuable and meet the needs of their target audience. So to grab your target audience's attention, consider the following:
Ensure that your target audience finds value in your content at the time of reading.
Reading is worth it when you have not only guessed what is interesting to the individual as a whole but also when you have fallen into their mood and wants at the time. This results in offering a product that is needed at the right moment. This means going back into researching what your target audience wants. Check forums where your audience congregates to receive help or support and see what questions they post for help. Examples of these places are Facebook groups, Reddit or Quora. You can also check local community groups. Find out about their upcoming events or meetings you can attend. Your goal should be to meet people, have a discussion and ask if they need help with anything related to the problem you solve. You can then understand how badly they need such help and what the problem is costing them. This is an opportunity for you to identify how valuable your service is to your audience and what’s a priority to them at that moment.
Leverage the emotional impact.
Emotion is a powerful force. It has a lot of power since it can affect people's decisions and motivate them to take action. As a result, it has shown to be a successful marketing method for motivating people to do specified activities and achieve company goals. According to Nielsen's study released in 2016, there was a 23% increase in sales as a result of the emotional response of consumers. It further states that people are 8.4 times more likely to trust brands they have an emotional attachment with, buy from brands 7.1 times more and forgive brands if they make mistakes 6.6 times more than brands with average ads. This means the brand utilized deliberate, persuasive messages that appeal to human emotion to establish a strong bond with the audience and achieve the intended outcome.
It's difficult for audiences to remain disinterested when you develop content that interacts with them unconsciously and elicits powerful emotions. Your target audience will be more likely to share your content, and thus you will have a higher chance of being remembered. In marketing, users share content that makes them happy or is humorous. Make sure you create content that doesn’t leave your audience sad, even if it makes them angry. End your content with some positivity since what they seek is a breakthrough from the problem they might have.
Create content that focuses on your target audience and not you.
There is a place and time to talk about yourself and your company. Whatever marketing channels you choose, if you want to grab the attention of your target audience, talk about the clients and not yourself.
To do this, you start by tapping into the impact, what they think is the problem they have or the solution they need. You get these insights from forums, discussions or other social platforms your target audience flocks to, as mentioned earlier. You can also get insights from running surveys or speaking with a few members of the target audience to understand what impact means to them.
Use these insights to create content that will resonate with them. Imagine, for example, that you're a business coach and your target audience wants to make a six-figure income. Find out from your discussion during your research what the problem is — that is, what’s stopping them from hitting the goal of a six-figure income, and how they have tried to solve the problem so far. Once you find a list of problems and symptoms from your research, outline what needs to be done to overcome the challenge or experience a breakthrough. Create content that shares insights on what causes the symptom and/or how to solve it. When you outline problems and solutions, take each one as a topic to discuss in forums or share as content to your target audience.
Ideally, share belief-shifting content about how the insight you offer differs from conventional wisdom or from what they have previously done to solve this symptom or problem. Be sure to make the insight deep and complete. Do not leave any gap in your explanation. This will not only hold their attention, but you will earn some credibility as an expert.
Contextualize your message.
Explain how fixing the symptom will help them achieve your offered outcome. Discuss what the outcome should look like and how long it should take to reach. From your research, you should understand what their expected outcome is and if it aligns with the overall outcome of your offer. Leverage the information you got from your research because you want to focus their attention here so that they can take action.
The point of creating content is not only to grab your target audience's attention but also to encourage them to take action. Be sure to include a strong call to action with a link to where they can get the most out of their inspiration.
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