It’s like you’re surrounded by a gaggling crowd, shouting, “Mate, we’re doing half price on bread!” “Don’t listen to that bread guy! Come and buy a necklace today!” “Nah, you want some flowers. Half price!”
Eventually, this shouting crowd builds up until your argh becomes ARGH and those advertising messages blend into one big mess. Before you know it, you’re considering buying a bread necklace for half flowers.
And once you’ve had more ads thrust at you, they stop even blending together in a comprehensible way, becoming nothing more than a bothersome white noise.
This is even truer in the world of the internet, where the barrage of adverts onsite reduces the average attention span of a consumer to that of a confused cocker spaniel.
According to national newspaper The Guardian, 32 per cent of consumers will abandon websites with slow loading times, and that’s before you can even appeal to them with an ad!
So, what can your business do to stand out from the crowd and make customers perk up their ears? Here are just a few of the more unconventional options.
Sniff up a storm of goodwill
Most advertisers, broadly speaking, usually only try to appeal to a customer’s sight. They’ll make their graphics and copy pop and snap at the retinas of anyone who sees it, but they won’t consider how to win over the other five senses.
A certain smell, for instance, can pack one hell of a punch – a quick sniff is responsible for 95 per cent of the taste of food, according to the BBC, and certain smells from the past can even boost memory.
That’s where more pioneering marketers step in, with scent marketing becoming a staple for many businesses. With a pleasing smell tailored to your brand or business premises, customers will associate that warm welcome from their nostrils with your products.
So, pipe an appealing scent into your business to stimulate even more of your customer’s senses.
Find a strange space to place your ad
You’ve gone from argh to ARGH and all those ads have fallen into white noise, so what will pique your interest again, let alone your customers?
Well, you could take a leaf out of supermarket chain Morrisons book – they recently hired the world famous Angel of the North sculpture and projected a baguette onto its wings to help sell bread.
While arguably a tacky idea – and one that didn’t please the statue’s designer – the stunt generated a ton of newspaper headlines for the company, proving that unconventional locations are your best bet for maximum publicity.
Make your website brief, punchy and to the point
You can see why the internet makes peoples’ attention spans turn to mush – you can have fifty tabs open at the same time, allowing all sorts of sights, sounds and colours to swarm your eyeholes. It’s like some sort of mad information carnival.
That’s why you’ve got to make your webpages snappy, witty and to the point. Place your hard sell at the top of your page (the first place that will load) and make it a “call to action” that will coax a viewer to interact with your brand in some way.
Not only this, you could turn your message into something novel by using popular web services such as “micro video” site Vine or photo-sharing hub Instagram. That way, you’ll make an impactful statement and look hip to the times.
