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Marketing to Today's "Distracted" Consumer
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by
Lee Traupel
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The average consumer today is exposed to a deluge of
1,700 marketing messages during a single 24-hour period
according to recent advertising industry numbers. Look
around you, we marketers have pasted, injected and/or
overlaid marketing messages (read advertising) in any
possible place imaginable! Case in point, NBC will
start to digitally insert commercial "billboards" into
advertising content to be broadcast during the winter
Olympics - in essence a commercial within a commercial.

Marketing messages and processes must be condensed,
hard-hitting and presented in formats that are easy to
understand and digest - not MBA-speak or techno-jargon.
Long mission statements with flowery prose simply don't
cut it in today's "distracted economy" -
customers/clients/partners want to understand what
products and services you're selling, at what price and
how they are supported.

A one-page company Facts sheet is an essential
component of any marketing campaign - it provides a
snapshot of essentials about your company including
markets addressed, contact points, core technology,
products or services sold and business partners. A
well-written Fact sheet should be one page and provide
just baseline information, without any hyperbole.

Power Point presentations by their very nature force
you to distill your information down into bullets and
short sentences. Enabling you to make a presentation in
a meeting, or have content ready for viewing on a 24/7
basis via your web site. You can create several
iterations of the presentation which can be tailored
for customers, partners, investors, etc. - mixing and
matching your core 8-12 slides with others that "speak"
to different audiences.

I've written several articles on web-enabled marketing
and the need for simplicity when designing a web site,
with content that is tailored for the online community.
Many companies are still spending way too much money on
web sites that don't effectively work as an information
resource - unfortunately, many of these sites function
more as a testament to the designer's ability to use
cutting edge software graphics tools.

A great number of web sites still utilize text that is
just pulled from other marcom materials, ignoring
"rules of the road" for content on the web - the online
community wants information presented in short
paragraphs comprised of 2-3 sentences, with lots of
white space.

A good web site should act solely as an appetizer for a
four-course meal - whetting the appetites of the
viewers and motivating them to take some action that
moves them forward in the marketing process such as
contacting the company or registering via the web site
for more information.

Speaking of web site registration - this too should be
optimized for today's "information overloaded"
customer. Only basic requirements should be requested
(name, contact points, interest level) with a Privacy
Statement linked via the registration page clearly
stating your marketing policy; which by the way, you
should adhere to without any deviation, or risk the
wrath of your customers.

Opt-in e-mail has now become today's marketing
methodology du jour - it works and it's cost effective.
Approximately 50% of opt-in e-mail content is done in
HTML (graphics inserted) format and the other 50% in
text format. We strongly recommend text format to most
of our B2B (business to business) clients - and we
utilize a standard format that has generated 8-25%
response rates from numerous campaigns we've created.

We structure the e-mail message so it is in three short
paragraphs, with customer referenceability built in to
the message and we utilize at least 10% of the media
buy to test 2-3 different messages. The subject line is
one of the most critical elements - it has to get the
recipient's attention and cut through the clutter of
hundreds (typically) of other messages they will be
receiving during a 24-hour period.

So, the executive summary for this entire article can
be summarized in three words "less is more" - if you
repeat this mantra as you move forward through your
marketing processes you should be able to reach today's
"distracted customer" in a timely and cost effective
manner.

This text may freely be republished or distributed in unmodified form provided the following resource box is included intact either at the beginning or the end of the article and a complimentary copy or notice (link) is sent to the author at the address specified below:

Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of fantomaster.com GmbH (Belgium), < http://fantomaster.com/ >, a company specializing in webmasters software development, industrial-strength cloaking and search engine positioning services.

He has been a web marketer since 1994 and is editor-in-chief of fantomNews, a free newsletter focusing on search engine optimization, available at: < http://fantomaster.com/fantomnews-sub.html > You can contact him at mailto:fneditor@fantomaster.com
(c) copyright 2002 by fantomaster.com
All rights reserved.
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