The attention span of the average ad viewer is growing shorter and shorter. On top of that, ads that require sustained engagement are less likely to click with many audiences. So how can you capture this shrinking resource with your digital marketing tactics?
To pique a viewer’s interest, you’ll need to incorporate a couple of tips for keeping it short, punchy and useful.
Clarity is the key
Your guiding principle should be to create something that’s useful or interesting to the viewer and doesn’t make them work too hard for it. Tell them in a sentence or less why they should care about your ad. One way to create clarity is to give the viewer a simple and concrete concept to latch on. Such as a new feature, a strong testimonial, a short phrase that uses active, exciting language, a pleasant or exciting image that creates an aspirational desire.
It takes practice to develop digital advertising strategies that get the customers attention. When in doubt, consider the limitations and advantages of the medium in which you’re working.
Get to know each digital platform’s particularities
Each digital advertising platform has its own set of rules. Know the terrain of the digital landscape. Make sure that you can articulate your message in different ways depending on the platform.
With Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media platform advertising, you’ll need to be especially aware of this. If your social media posts aren’t getting enough engagement, consider that they might need to be tailored to the platform better. Review some best practices and stay on top of recent updates when writing for different social media.
Familiarizing yourself with each platform’s unique standards, such as their character limits and post formatting is also important. Overall, always consider the end-user, what they will enjoy seeing, and how you can best help them.
Get more out of your digital content
If you’ve got a cool informational video or article that’s long and involved, consider splitting it into parts. This accomplishes several things:
- Gives you more search engine real estate and can allow you to segment your audience more effectively based on the individual interests you’re addressing in each section.
- Makes the content more readable or viewer-friendly.
- Maximizes the utility of your content by turning a single post into a week’s or a month’s worth.
- Try to keep paragraphs relatively short and break up text with lists. Make it snappy, make it relevant and, if appropriate for your brand voice, make it fun.
Personalize your ads
In an age when consumers see thousands of ads per day, personalization is an effective way to make your content stand out.
Whether it’s social media PPC, search engine PPC or email marketing, there’s probably a way to personalize your ad displays. PPC ads are particularly attractive. Platforms like Facebook and Google offer robust targeting tools built into the ad buy system and solid metrics to track your ads’ performance.
Whether you like it or not, the lightning-strike attention span is the new normal. Successful 21st-century marketers will address that need by finding ways to communicate more information in smaller bites. And doing it in a way that respects the constant demands our world places on a consumer’s time and attention.
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