How Do You Get Consumers' Attention?
This was the scene at my kids' swim class the other night. Swim class lasts 30 minutes and yet in this photo ever parent is doing the same thing, staring at the phones. So if a your adorable kid who is learning to swim and is yearning for your attention for a mere 30 minutes can't get it, how can you as a brand?
So what do you think most of these parents where doing? Facebook is a good guess. Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest are likely candidates. Maybe a few are playing a gamer or reading the news. If brand is lucky they might be on their website looking to buy a product. If they are how do you think they got there?
Consumers may be browsing a social site and they might even see you ad, but they are on social sites because they want to see what their "friends" are up to. These may be people they know personally or just people they follow or people they found searching on a topic but they are people the have come to trust on some subject over time. Don't get me wrong - I don't care about who follows you or who you follow. I care about the relationships you create. Following does not equal relationship. Your social graph does not equal a relationship. Consumers use these relationships as a filter for information they spend their give their attention to, when they should be watching their kids.
Marketers know that the holy grail of marketing is Word-of-Mouth yet the platforms and now marketers have turned social media into a platform to push advertising. We hear about things like native advertising. Nothing is more native or genuine than getting consumers to tell other consumers about your product. That may not be directly but they love to talk about the experiences they had or what they created with your products. This is why building community matters and why influencer matter. Influencers aren't people who create the most impressions (usually guided by the number of followers or friends) but those people who drive a community that you want to reach.
So what's the point? Kids can't even get their parents attention why would a brand think they would? What are you doing to add value to your customers. Why will they care? Can you be more compelling than this?
