How to Attract Customers Online in Less than 8 Seconds
It’s not news to you. Your customers have the attention span of a goldfish as revealed by a Microsoft study and confirmed by marketers everywhere.
If you don’t get them invested in around 8 seconds, they’re gone. That is, if you were able to get their attention in the 2 seconds they offer up for you to get their attention.
It doesn’t matter how amazing, helpful, well-researched, or groundbreaking your content is if you can’t give your audience something to grab onto before they swim out of your fishbowl.
How Did This Happen?
The Internet keeps getting faster, and your target audience is bombarded with more marketing messages in a minute than they might have seen 10 years ago.
If something doesn’t immediately intrigue them in their feed, they scroll past it. If they click on content that doesn’t immediately grab them, there’s a back button. Swipe. Swipe. Gone. Next.
And if you put load time between a click and your content, that doesn’t bode well for you. One study found that the first 5 seconds of load time have a greater impact on conversion than anything else. If a website takes all that time to load versus engaging the visitor, it’s over.
Ultimately, people have options. Everyone is calling out to them, “Hey, over here.” They just swipe left, and unwanted messages are gone.
Because of fast load times, there’s no commitment when clicking on content. They can leave instantly and find what they’re looking for elsewhere.
What Does That Mean for Marketers?
This doesn’t mean we have to create content that people consume in 8 seconds. Such a misunderstanding of this phenomenon could lead to a return to an old-fashioned way of advertising that insults the savvy customer’s intelligence by skipping the right to “buy now”.
People don’t want that. They want content.
But they want content that’s worth their time. Offer then value, and they won’t just give you 8 seconds bobbing around in your fishpond. They’ll give you 10 minutes, an hour. Their hard-earned money, respect, reviews, and referrals.
The last thing anyone wants to do is feel like they spent time on your content and wasted that time like a bad first date. Those first 2-3 seconds help them judge whether your content is going to be a good investment.
Marketers are finding great success with videos that run around 10 minutes.
And you’re thinking: Wow! That’s a lot more than 8 seconds.
Once someone has decided to give you their time, don’t let them feel like they’ve wasted it. A 10-minute video is the perfect amount of time to add real value to a customer and build trust you can turn into conversions.
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Getting the Attention of Goldfish
Your customers aren’t, in fact, goldfish. You know that. You need to deliver more than 8 seconds of content to earn their trust. But do understand they have options.
If you want them to choose you, you must break through to them fast before the bigger fish disrupting the waters do.
How to attract customers online with content
You might think that your website is all about offering a product or service and leaving it at that. But you’re missing out if you don’t take advantage of this to attract customers who are ready to buy what you have to offer, as well as those who can be kept on board for future plans — and yes, even lifelong customers. If your business is an online store, then content is key. Your website needs compelling content that can draw people in and keep them interested enough to come back again and again.
Many websites use blogs, forums and articles as their primary means of communication with their customers — which is why we’ll be focusing specifically on creating high-quality content in this blog post. In addition to being the best way to attract potential customers, content also has other benefits too.
Content helps improve search engine responsiveness, which makes it easier for potential customers who are looking for information about your business online to find it quickly. It also puts less pressure on Google when pages or posts aren’t updated frequently — so you don’t end up penalizing yourself for using outdated information.
Lastly, articles tend to be more accurate than just copy-and-pasting text from your website into a forum or other piece of content in order to address questions from potential customers. Seeing why? Keep reading to learn how you can attract customers with content online by following these tips…
Create regularly-updated content
Regularly updating content is more than just a good idea. It’s an absolute necessity if you want to stay competitive and maintain your edge in the market. Content that’s updated frequently tends to be of higher quality, and it can help you maintain a sense of relevance in the marketplace. Another benefit of creating regularly-updated content is that it helps keep customers coming back for more.
You might think that it’s not necessary to produce content all the time, but consider what would happen if you didn’t do anything at all online. Your website would get overlooked, and your competitors would take advantage of this by competing with your business — even when they don’t have a comparable product or service to offer. NOTE: if you work in digital marketing, make sure that you’re learning from other marketers who are doing things better then yourself so you can grow and improve your skillset.
Begin with a hook
The first thing you need to do is come up with a hook that will attract people to your website — something that will make them want to read more. Remember that you have 8 seconds to “get the attention of the goldfish”. What are the most important questions your customers have? Is it about pricing? Contact information? Shipping policies? Whatever it is, try to answer those questions in your content so that when shoppers are browsing for your product or service, they’ll be able to find what they’re looking for.
Make it human
The most important element of content is that it’s human. This is especially true for blogs and articles, which should be written in a conversational tone with an informal, personal voice. You want people to read your content and think they’re talking to a friend or colleague. Consider the following guideline when writing blog posts: ALWAYS write your posts as if you were telling a story to someone over coffee. This helps keep them interested and prevents your content from sounding too business-like.
Provide helpful information
First, you need to make sure your content is helping people. This can be done in many ways, but the most important thing is to ensure that what you’re providing is helpful and beneficial. You don’t want to provide incorrect information that could potentially cause a customer to buy the wrong thing for themselves or for their business.
Showcase your expertise
If you’re a business owner, your website is an important place for showcasing your expertise. It’s an opportunity to showcase your skills, let potential customers know what makes you different from other businesses in the same market and demonstrate your dedication to customer service. If you have a blog or other types of content that relates specifically to what you do as a business, then it will help attract people who are looking for more information on your niche.
Provide surveys and feedback loops
This helps you better understand your audience and their needs, which will make it easier for you to create relevant content. If you want to provide surveys, consider using a simple poll to get feedback from readers on your latest blog post or article. You can also ask questions related to what they like about your content or what they would like to see more of — these can help you keep track of trends in the market, too. You also should provide some type of feedback loop if you want to create compelling content that can keep people coming back for more. These could be as simple as a comment section on your website or blog or even an email address where readers can contact you with questions or suggestions for future posts.
Use video content to demonstrate your expertise
When you have a professional product or service that requires in-depth knowledge and expertise, sometimes the best way to show your customer your worth is by using video content. Video offers many advantages to businesses in terms of attracting customers: firstly, it offers a much richer experience than simply looking at text or images; secondly, videos convey complex messages much more clearly and effectively; and finally, they are often easier to share.
With that said, there are some drawbacks too — larger files make them harder for people with slower internet connections to view. As well as this, videos can eat up space on your website which can be a problem if you want to show off other items for sale. But if you want to give video a try for your business, there are ways around this too — use shorter videos on YouTube or embed YouTube videos onto your website so that potential customers can watch them without downloading anything.
Best regards, Nik Tsoukales, CEO
Direct Line: 617-315-1138
Main Line: 800.676.8350
Skype: nikitastsoukales
Email: nik@realtop.com
FAQs
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy that consists in creating and distributing relevant, engaging, and useful content to attract and convert leads into customers. It can help you reach new customers, increase engagement, and build trust and credibility. In addition to building your brand, content marketing can help you generate revenue by targeting the right people with the right message at the right time.
Finally, content marketing helps you to create a more engaged community of followers and fans who are interested in your company’s products and services. This enables you to gain access to a highly targeted audience that you can market to in order to drive more leads and conversions.
What are the benefits of content marketing?
Content marketing helps businesses generate traffic and leads by using social media platforms, search engine optimization (SEO), and viral marketing strategy. By implementing content marketing, you can create content that is:
- Attractive to potential customers
- Relevant to your business
- Unbiased and trust-worthy
- Compelling and Credible
- Controversial or Funny
- Diverse in topic and tone
Sharing the story of your business or conveying a message through content is a way of driving traffic and building a loyal audience. Finally, it can help you build brand awareness and drive leads and sales.
What type of content attracts customers to your business?
The answer is, it depends on your target audience. Browsing through the search engine results page and social media channels will help you learn what competitors are doing and if it would work for your own website or social media platform. However, it has been proven that the following content formats produce more engagement among users:
- Infographics
- Videos
- Blog posts
- Case studies
- eBooks
- Social media posts
There are tons of other types of content you could implement in your strategy. The key is discovering which one will work for you.