A consumer’s attention is one of the most valuable “currencies” of the digital age.
The ability for a brand to capture and hold the attention of the consumer is the translation of meaningful engagement.
For most of human history, access to information was limited. Today, the human brain has a wealth of information to access but this is done with the same mental processing power.
The number of minutes has also stayed exactly the same in a day. Today ATTENTION, not information, is the limiting factor.
“Attention” is defined as “selected focus on a stimuli”. When we “pay” attention to one thing, we deplete our budget of mental resources so that we have less attention available to spend elsewhere.
Research in this space has proven two things…
- “attention is a bottleneck in human thought”
- “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”
What does this mean for retailers/brands? How can attention be captured and held?
The answer? Contextual relevance!
Delivering relevant experiences and content in the context of the consumer’s interests/needs/wants.
This is why traditional media continues to drop in delivering business value. Consumers channel their attention away from stimuli deemed irrelevant to increase their capacity to take on what’s more meaningful.
You need to look no further at the dramatic lift in popularity of YouTube and Netflix to see this in action. People want to choose the content they want to see when it’s convenient to them.
Build your “attention” strategy by understanding....
- What your existing customers love about you, your products, your services
- What they want from you in the future
- How they want to engage with you
All your effort goes into bringing this to life. If you build your future around the consumer's future you can't lose: they will dedicate attention to you.
This article was as tagged as Customer Experience Design , Data Driven Decision Making