Surprising Marketing Strategies To Grab Consumer’s Attention Instantly

June 8, 2023 | Digital Marketing

Surprising-Marketing-Strategies-To-Grab-Consumer’s-Attention-Instantly

Every website is vying to grab the user’s attention.

However, Nielsen Norman Group reveals that users leave webpages in as less as 10 seconds.

With the relentless onslaught of new and upcoming content in the teeming herd of busy-ness, we humans hardly let our attention stay on one thing for more than a while.

Even you might have a dozen tabs open and be shifting through right this instant.

The explosion of knowledge demands our attention and tickles our curious sides enough to always switch from one thing to the other.

We’re suckers for whims, and an already short attention span doesn’t help much.

Statistic Brain reveals that the human attention span has come down to 8 seconds in 2015 from the erstwhile 12 seconds in 2000.

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Source: Microsoft’s 2015 Study on Attention Span

Yep, it’s that bad.

So how do you hold your consumer’s attention? How do you get them to read your next business mail? What tactic can you adopt to inform your target audience about your new product feature or that brilliant piece of marketing content?

Think it’s hard?

Not so much. Here are 11 ways to grab your users’ attention from the get-go.

1. Web Push Notification

Easy to use, highly customizable, cross platform tool that slides in from the side, web push notifications ensure that heads are whipped to them.

A great tool, push notifications enable you to send any information to your users without needing them on your website.

What’s better?

You don’t need plug-ins or the hassle of an app. They support browsers and deliver your customized notifications directly to the user without any intermediary in real time. And they’re better than emails too.

Got an event coming up? An interview? A book signing event? New product catalogues? Martians landing on your company office roof?

Web push notifications whip heads alike. Maybe a little too much with the Martians bit, but you get the idea.

2. Live Videos & Alerts In Instagram

Video Marketing is darn good. Live videos?

Better.

According to Tubular, live videos had almost 8x the viewing time of VOD

People forget how good live video is. Instagram is awesome for it.

The moment you start a live stream, alerts slide into your followers’ view on mobile devices as well as desktop computers.

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That line “watch it before it ends” and Instagram’s disappearing videos create such an urgency and giddiness in your followers. At that moment, you own their attention.

Show off news & event snippets with live streams, do a behind the scenes or maybe interview sessions, show off a new addition to your warehouse, a tour of the office; it could be anything that engages audience.

And the notifications only add to your following.

3. Use the Word “Video” In Your Email Subject Line

Big goals don’t necessarily need a big strategy.

One of the simplest ways to get your subscriber’s attention is to use the word ‘Video’ in your emails.

According to this infographic, using the word ‘Video’ in the subject increases open rates by 19%.

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Although you should go ahead and test what is best for you. Make sample subscriber lists and test different variations of the inclusion of ‘video’ in the subject line; at the start like – [Video] – or in the middle of the subject.

The said email should, of course, contain a video. For example, if you are sending a business pitch mail, then you can include your product explainer video to increase your chances of conversion. JellyFish, a freight management firm, used an explainer video in their cold pitch email to close a $800,000 deal in just 7 days.

What’s your sales team waiting for?

4. Put An Explainer Video On Your Landing Page

According to an EyeViewDigital study, explainer videos on landing pages increase conversion by up to 80%.

And 80% increase is no joke. High time you churn up a great explainer video for your product.

Make a proper landing page with a dedicated video that matches in theme and content with your landing page,

Still wondering why you should do it? Here’s why –

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Crazy Egg increased its conversion rates by 64% by using an explainer video on their landing page. And, it led to $21,000 extra revenue every month.

You’re out of excuses.

Just be sure to put your explainer video above the fold of your landing page since this way your site visitors will notice the video right away. If your explainer video can communicate your business value, then conversions are sure to come your way like it did for CrazyEgg, Dropbox, RankWatch and many other startups and brands.

5. Chat Box triggers

It’s great idea to include chat boxes on your website.

You can put triggers in your chat box to automatically say hello to site visitors and prompt for an immediate response.

According to a Forrester research, 44% of online consumers consider having their questions answered in the middle of an online purchase as the most important thing.

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Not only this, having chat boxes means your call attending employees can attend multiple queries instead of having a call wait time, effectively minimising wait times for customers.

Answer your customers’ questions faster and you’ll foster better relations.

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A low key, minimizable chat box that sits quietly visible, waiting for the time of its need, is a great way to go. What’s more, you can even grab prospect’s name and mail id from chat box.

You can keep the transcripts of the conversations with the customers to identify pain points and grievances of customers to better tackle their needs and roll out better service and respond to sales queries in realtime.

6. GIFs On Homepages & Social Media

The home page is where your users first experience what your website is about.

Make sure that you make it memorable enough for them to stick around.

GIFs are a great way to surprise your audience with awe and interest. Have a look.

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Don’t be restricted to the home page, though.

With Facebook & Twitter introducing GIF support in line with all other major social media platform, it’s time you let the trends of GIF take you over.

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Indulge your audience a little with sneak peeks, snippets, small animations, how-tos, and product previews. They’re a great way to generate interest over the social media.

7. Visual Cues

Visual cues are small sensory tick for the eyes that makes the brain pay attention to them.

They are used for directing a user’s attention to where you want it to be.

They can be small arrows –

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Or cleverly designed background photos that direct your attention by virtue of the featured people looking in a particular direction, like here –

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Neat, huh?

According to ConversionXL, arrow cues on website fare better than the human line of sight one which direct user attention to a particular space on the site .

There’s no one-size-fits-all, so you need to test with different variations and see what works for your website or product, But DO use these.

8. Infographics

Infographics are a great combination of visual cues and a load of information.

A well made infographic can easily make you an authoritative figure in your field since they consist of deep seated stats and reliable data that offers explanations.

You’re not restricted to making brand based informational graphics. You can even make how-tos present event stats, comparisons and what not. Just remember to attribute it to yourself.

Infographics have great backlinking potential. Leverage that viral potential they have,
This infographic, Future of SEO, that we made for RankWatch got over 1.4k likes within just 24 hours of going live.

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Infographics are easy to digest and present information in a very reader friendly way with snappy graphics and perky colours.

Get the colours right. It helps a lot.

9. Minimalism

You don’t have to add as many elements to your website to draw user’s attention to.

Put in too many elements and your user might be deterred from your website.

Adopt the minimalistic approach and be smart about. Minimalist offers absolute simplicity enabling you to put in clever colour coded thematic cues on your pages to draw a user’s attention to an exact spot.

Dropbox’s old homepage is the perfect example of grabbing the user’s attention instantly.

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This landing page was limited to just a short explainer video exploring the product’s value and a call to action button below the video. The strategy was simple- people watch the video, they understand the product’s value and how great it is, then they download the software. The uncluttered white page directs the user’s attention towards the video and CTA button.

Using this minimalism approach, Dropbox increased their landing page conversion rate by 10% and generated around $48,000,000 in extra revenue.

You can use this strategy to draw users to buy a particular product or service or simply have them sign-up on your website.

10. Autoplaying videos

With the introduction and tremendous success of autoplaying videos, it’s a great time for your to be posting videos on social media websites.

Facebook recently experimented with its autoplay feature and rolled out its new feature which plays videos unmuted after receiving a positive response from its users.

Autoplay videos need to be catchy since people scroll past their newsfeed fast and only stop at things that are interesting within the first few seconds.

Utilise that information. It’s a great way to utilize content for popularity and conversions.

11. Pop-Ups

A good pop-up can do wonders for your conversion.

A strategically placed, relevant pop-up can attract the attention of a user and maybe get you a conversion too.

You have to have a fair idea of where people spend the most time on your website, and then place pop-ups accordingly.

A good example of a well done pop-up –

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It’s a good idea to strategically place pop-ups as users scroll through your website to prompt them with different things at different points as the user reads through an article or goes through your website.

Have a care in how many pop-ups you put in, though. 1-2 is a good number to swear by.

3 is stretching it more than that would probably make you lose customers than gain anything,
This is a good example of a pop-up.

Nice and clean, it doesn’t blot out the content entirely but dulls the page enough to draw attention. There’s nothing flashy about it; it gives a clear CTA with compatible colours and gives the user a clear and visible option to close it.

Conclusion

Right then. Here we are at the end of a not too exhaustive list letting you know of a few handy strategies to help you wave to your competition as you whizz past them.

New trends are constantly popping up in the field of marketing; platforms are changing their functions and features and you have to be up to snuff with whatever comes out and draws enough attention.

So this has been a bunch of things to swear by for grabbing your user’s attention.

Hit us up in the comments if you see something amiss, or share your experience with any of these methods that you implemented.

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3 Comments

  1. Thanks for providing great insights. In the wake of decreasing attention span, it has become really difficult for websites to retain visitors. Combining all the above mentioned features or picking just a few of them judiciously will definitely capture user’s attention, but holding up beyond 10 seconds is the real challenge. A catchy heading followed by quality content is the next thing you need. If I were a user, I would really want to explore the website with features like these, especially the infographics.

  2. Thanks for providing this information! I’m going to discuss these strategies with my marketing team and see how things roll. I liked the idea of explainer video, as it provides the desired information whilst keeping visitors engaged. Chatbox is also a great feature, but correct timing is crucial to conversion or call to action. One must give visitors ample time to go through the content before the Chatbox pops up.

  3. Wow, this blog was truly amazingly insightful! I never knew there were such surprising marketing strategies out there. I tried implementing some of these tips for my small business, and the results were really amazing. Instantly grabbing the consumer’s attention has become a reality, and my sales have seen a significant boost.

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