Welcome to the Attention Age

Over the last few years, the Internet has created a profound transformation in the world of marketing. I’m not talking about Google, Technorati, YouTube, FaceBook or even the industry’s latest darling – Twitter. I’m referring to something much more fundamental, and far more precious to marketers: the diminished attention span of our prospects and customers.

Here’s the thesis. Just five years ago, Web surfers still enjoyed engaging in extensive online research before making their purchasing decisions. Now, those days are gone. Most of us feel so overwhelmed by the vast amount of information we have access to, and the ever-increasing directions it comes from, that we’ve basically stopped processing that data. This is information overload at its zenith. Customers and prospects have so little time to make informed purchasing decisions that they are simply opting out of making any decisions at all.

For marketers, this creates one heck of an objection to overcome. If our prospects feel uncomfortable making intelligent decisions, it’s high time we introduced a new way to engage them in the decision-making process. We call it the “Easy Button”, and our experience with it is showing some incredible results in practice. More on this in my next post.
Welcome to the Attention Age.