If you run an e-commerce business then you might have noticed that your audience’s short attention spans have probably incurred a significant amount of business expense for your company.

Today, the average internet user is connected to at least one social media network that sends constant updates about friends and family from all over the world. News gets updated within minutes, if not seconds, in real-time. Information can be gathered as fast as your fingers can type a question on google. And throughout the day, you also get constant email, texts, and calls. A person’s attention span can only take so much. And as a business, you’re not only trying to convince users that your product or service is worth paying for, but you also have to first convince them that whatever you have to say is worth listening to.

So, how can marketers the capture attention of an audience that keeps getting shorter and shorter? Read on and find out.

1. Avoid taking a hard sell approach

Based on results from a research using infrared eye-tracking technology, it turns out audiences generally don’t like an overtly hard sell approach. Audiences want to feel like they are making their own purchasing decisions. When they are shown something with prominent branding, it makes the entire user experience feel contrived and the audience tends to pull back.  

In the book Can’t Buy Me Like, Bob Garfield and Doug Levy note that: “This effect of branding avoidance is so strong that it seems to be incorporated into people’s subconscious—they are not aware of their own passive resistance to persuasion.”

So how then can you capture your audience’s attention? Be more subtle, Don’t emblazon your logo all over your website, or a blog post, or a video. Make sure that your content gets the spotlight in anything you do, and your logo is added as a discreet image in the corner or towards the end of the post, where it can be inconspicuous and unobtrusive.

2. Communicate a diverse emotional experience

Emotion is critical to connecting with your audience. Especially on the internet where content can seem perfunctory. That said, defining positive emotions such as joy and surprise in your content can quickly build rapport with your audience. But it doesn’t necessarily just have to be joy. If you communicate something inspiring, deliver something that will satisfy their search for answers or knowledge—all these lend themselves to creating a special connection with your brand.

3. Make sure you’re offering real value to your audience

Capturing the attention of audience means showing something that has substance. It has to be genuinely useful to the customer and relevant to their needs.

So instead of selling through your blog or social media platform, try to tweak your content so that you’re giving advice, informing them of pertinent information about your business, or saying something relevant to their needs.

4. Encourage open dialogue

Encouraging your audience to have conversations and communication with each other helps engage your community.

Start by asking a question to get the conversation started. Be sure these are questions are related to key trends and opinions so your audience can weigh in with their thoughts and insight.

Keeping your audience engaged works by building a relationship with the brand—a mutually beneficial relationship that is interesting. Ultimately you want a community that will highlight your audience’s loyalty and support for your brand. And this can’t be done with a single transaction or correspondence. It has to be sustained, consistent and steady.

5. Keep this in mind: It’s not about your product, it’s about your brand experience

No matter what industry you’re in, what service you’re selling, what product you’re advertising, your brand is all about the kind of experience you’re able to deliver your customers.

A good product will be marred by bad brand interaction, so pay attention to how you can give the best experience possible to your users. This can be something as simple as your website’s navigation to the kind of customer service that you are able to provide. It’s all in the details—take the time to focus on them to see how you can address it.

Bottom line?

Customer engagement isn’t just a simple objective that you want to achieve, it’s a journey that you have to take. And it’s a constantly evolving one that needs to adapt to the changing times and diverse audiences.

If you need help engaging your users, get in touch with us today and see how we can help.

And if you have more ideas on what brands can do to engage customers, leave us a message below.