Consumers have more power over your company’s success or failure than ever before. Yet, keeping their attention and brand love is becoming harder than before. Diminishing attention span, brand trust, and customer experience are not going away. They are becoming key deciding factors when choosing a brand.
Noisy World
The battle for consumer attention is increasing ad clutter. Consumers receive, on average, 5 thousand ads per day. But consumer attention is decreasing. According to eMarketer, GenZ attention is four-seconds less that the millennial generation. Moreover, 3 out of 4 consumers use ad-blocking services or social media apps like WhatsApp to avoid ads.
Broken Trust
Brand trust is a deal-breaker. 81% of consumers say a key purchasing deciding factor is their ability to trust the brand to do what is right. Yet, the sentiment is that brands are abusing customer relationship with them. A ThinkNow study found that 34% of Millennials feel brands take advantage of them. Accenture found that 54% of the 7,000 businesses they study, experienced a material drop in trust. And Edelman’s Band Trust Barometer found that only 1 in 3 consumers is can trust most of the brands they buy.
With changing conditions, how do you get and keep consumer attention? Here are 4 actions to increase consumer attention.
Experience as the point Entry
Positive customer experience fosters trust and delight customers. And is one of the biggest brand areas to focus on. 64% of consumers say their standard for good experiences is higher than ever. And 79% say it as important as a company’s products and services according to the 2018 Salesforce survey.
Create meaningful experiences that appeal to what your customer values. Start by mapping a holistic experience, not only marketing communication. Look at how the different touchpoints interact with your customers. Then select what moments can delight your consumer, and see how you might close those gaps. The goal is to establish connections that are so memorable that they want to tell the world.
Social Influence
Design peer to peer communications. People want to hear from people like them. Leverage people’s strong desire to fit it and conform to the behavior of the group. Start to build a community and identify consumers whose advice is sought out. Encourage them to spread positive messages.
Create Cultural Tension
Consumers expect brands to take a larger role in society. This doesn’t mean public relations stunts. It means being an active participant to make the world a better place.
Take a stand. Understand your customers’ world view. And figure out how your brand values align with them. Then, think about what change you would like to see, and how the brand can help make the change.
Talk to the Heart
Customers with an emotional attachment to a brand are 52% more valuable. They will pay more attention, buy more, care less about price, and spread the word. Create stories that resonate with your consumers’ cultural values, desires, and key motivators. The payoff is much greater.
Customer brand expectations and media behavior have shifted. Capturing and keep their attention is getting harder. They are expecting brands to a force to social good and they don’t spend time in one place. Marketers can start to maximize their consumers’ attention by forming long-lasting relationships with these four actions.