Stop Paying for Attention. Start Earning it.

How today’s Attention Economy can be a game-changer for small business

Getting attention these days is a drag. Especially when you’re a small business in what seems like an enormous marketing pond filled with endless potential solutions. Seriously, ask Google a simple question like “How can I promote my business?” and a deluge of?solutions?will ensue with literally 100’s of ways to succeed on just the first page of search results: 12 tips to winning on social… 8 mistakes to avoid… 42 low-cost ways… 19 FREE Tips… and it continues.

Is this really helping? Good for you if it is, but for me it really isn’t. It’s overwhelming and actually sends me running in the opposite direction. And apparently I’m an expert.

No wonder small businesses struggle in knowing where to even begin to use marketing as a means to grow their business. In their eyes marketing in today’s world is complicated, and they’re not wrong. They are, however, misguided, and I’m here to begin to unravel the twisted ball of yarn marketing (at least for small business) has become, because that’s what I do.

I took a deeper dive into why and how marketing has become such a challenging endeavour for small business. Getting attention and making a good first impression has always been a crucial first step in branding and marketing, so what has changed?

Marketing’s first objective is to get attention. More specifically, the goal is to attract the attention of those who you deem beneficial to your business. Customers who not only care about what you have to offer, they see value in it. You hope to make a transaction and like any successful transaction, it all begins with a simple exchange of value. The currency in this early yet crucial stage is NOT money, it’s their attention. Your objective is to earn it. This is the crucial distinction that needs to be made up-front: If attention is not the currency, and money is, then you have chosen sales as your path to success.

Not wrong, just important to be conscious of and ready for what that path entails. I’m not a sales guy though, so let’s keep following the marketing route…

Getting attention isn’t as easy as it used to be

In fact, much research will tell you that as of right now, our attention has NEVER been harder to get. And I’m not just talking marketing here. As a husband and father of two young adults and one teenager, the effort I must make to get win their attention over what’s happening on their screen is often frustrating, although warranted. I also am fully aware that they could say the exact same thing about me.

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention,” — Nobel Laureate Herbert A. Simon

Even as I was doing my research for this article, at one point I paused and noticed how hard I had to focus my attention away from the ads for products and brands I’d recently searched, or banner units refreshing every 30 seconds promoting items I wanted… it’s called retargeting, and it’s way overused. The current wealth of information accessible to us is unparalleled, and it’s amazing. But it comes at a cost.

The Attention Economy

Here is the problem, when looking at the wealth of a resource in an economy, in this case information, we must recognize it always comes at a cost to another resource. For example, having a wealth of available housing comes at a cost to the value of the housing market. When supply is high, demand lessens, and so does value.

Q:?So, at what cost does this richness of information come?

A:?An unprecedented poverty of attention.

Our attention is a precious resource. Everybody wants some of it and we just don’t have any to spare. The value of our already-sparse attention span has arguably never been higher and it seems like the only ones who can afford to win it are big business with a crap tonne of money to disrupt and steal it.

Marketing seems to have become a very complicated, competitive, and expensive game. So what is a small business owner (like me) to do??Don’t play.?Take your ball, go home, and think about how to find a better playing field where you and others like you can participate in a fairer and more rewarding game.

Well that’s what I did and after following my own strategic process here’s where I got:

A NEW game plan for small business

The challenge:?Modern marketing is no longer a feasible investment for many small businesses. It has become a daunting prospect that is often perceived as too competitive, complicated and expensive.

Key contributing factors:?I’ve shortlisted three:

1. The rules and measures of success keep changing, and for the benefit of sellers of marketing ‘solution’ rather than the buyers.
2. Too many too-good-to-be-true solution options everywhere you look and for FREE! They?are?TGTBT and ‘free’ typically turns out to be either a misnomer, or worth every penny.
3. Everyone’s an expert all of a sudden. How is that possible when all the technologies being pushed are so new? And if they are an expert, why are they selling?

My?Wiseguy?conclusion:

The need to prove marketing success somehow takes precedence over marketing contributing to overall business success. Resulting in marketing that:

• Singularly focuses on the spending and making of money.
• Tries to be something it’s not: sales. And fails.
• Is way more complicated than it needs to be.

The Opportunity:?and it’s a big one…?There is a new economy out there, and for marketers the new currency is?attention, not cash. Everyone can play, especially small businesses, you just have to pivot your approach in these three key ways:

ONE – Earn their attention, don’t pay for it.

Paying for the attention of an audience will continue to yield the diminishing results the industry is seeing. Paying for ads/media is a viable option, but not until you’ve done your homework and figured out your plan once they’re paying attention. .Investing up front in earning the attention of a prime audience over time is the game strategy. Anyone telling you that $$ are the cost of entry don’t deserve your business.

TWO – Seek knowledge before solutions

Marketing ‘solutions’ is code for selling you something before you know what you need. Look for informative answers to your questions that are free, come from a knowledgeable and unbiased source, and require nothing from you other than the attention required to read them.

THREE – Loyalty is the ultimate victory

Don’t ever forget (because we all do sometimes) that the grand prize of marketing is customer loyalty. Something best measured in context with the overall success of your business, not merely marketing performance numbers on your ‘free’ dashboard.

If you can remember these three simple rules and begin to practice them on a regular basis, you are well on your way to game-changing marketing practices for your business.

It’s game time. Go get’em.

SPwiseguy out