How to Grab Your Customer’s Interest in 3 Seconds or Less

September 27, 2006 9:31 am by Jarom Adair

(Without Firing Gerbils Out of a Cannon)

Outpost.com shot a gerbil out of a cannon during a Super Bowl commercial. A while later they showed a pack of wild wolves attacking a marching band. They certainly got the attention of people watching the Super Bowl commercials, but what were they trying to accomplish? Did it work?

In this world of advertising, businesses need to know how to properly and effectively grab the attention of the the people they market to. If done wrong, your marketing efforts will be wasted. How can you effectively grab the attention of the people you hope to make your customers?

You’ll know the answer to that (and the result of Outpost.com’s commercials) by the end of this article.

The gerbil commercial is one company’s attempt to make an impact on their audience. In any form of advertising–billboards, yellow pages, commercials, web sites…you usually have 3 seconds or less to get the attention of your visitor. In any situation the most successful advertising is memorable, informative, entertaining, intriguing, and profitable, all at the same time.

Anatomy of a Successful Ad

There is a process that every consumer goes through when they see a piece of advertising. They see so much advertising every day that they have developed ways to filter information. These filters look like this:

The First 3 Seconds

This is your chance to get the interest of your potential customer. If what you say isn’t entertaining, interesting, or intriguing enough in under 3 seconds, you’re out. People don’t have time to pay attention to things that don’t interest them. Even if they would love your product or service, if you can’t communicate something to catch their attention quickly they won’t listen.

For this reason, the first 3 seconds can’t include details. The potential customer doesn’t want details at this point. If you try to front-load as much information as you possibly can in your initial attempt to get attention, your potential customer will reject it. As far as they’re concerned, you haven’t earned the right to put information in their brain at this point.

You really only have time to present one idea, which should be related to the main benefit you can offer a consumer. To be memorable this idea has to be emotionally engaging. To be effective it has to be informative. To be both memorable and effective is your goal.

If you do catch their attention in those critical first few seconds, they will stop and pay attention to see if you continue to interest them. This means you have their permission to draw them farther into your message.

The Next 10 Seconds

If you’ve passed the first 3 seconds, you have a longer period of time to get your message across. Depending on how you worked the first 3 seconds, this period of time can be 10 to 30 seconds long. At this point your potential customers are evaluating whether they want to dedicate a few minutes or more to your message (a significant amount of time for the average busy person). Your message still has to speak to them in terms of entertainment, interest, or intrigue.

In the next 10 seconds or so you can include another benefit or two. Here is where you can make promises that if they take time to learn more about what you offer, they will receive something that is beneficial to them. This usually takes the form of beneficial information, or something they can receive for free. You are not trying to make the sale here. You’re trying to give them a reason to investigate your offer.

If what you say in 10 seconds sounds good to them, you now have the opportunity to give them details. These people are now prepared to allocate significant time to your message. They are interested and want to learn more. You now have a few minutes or more to present the facts, line up the range of benefits you offer, give them the information they want, and allow them to buy from you.

Examples:

Here’s a quick look at living examples to illustrate the concepts above.

Logoworks Billboard

• 3 Seconds

  I love this billboard. It’s funny (memorable) and effective (informative). You know what they’re selling immediately, and who wouldn’t visit a site called “StinkyLogo.com” just for kicks? It’s even better if you currently need a logo done.
  

• 10 Seconds

  If you go to StinkyLogo.com, they introduce some of their services and even have a quiz you can take “So you can decide if your logo stinks or not”. My only problem is the quiz is off the bottom of the screen when you first arrive. Otherwise it’s great.
  

• The Next Few Minutes

  You can peruse their portfolio, contact them, visit their main site…everything you need to make a decision to have them make your logo.
  

This Article

• 3 Seconds:

  An article’s title has to be good to get the visitor to read the opening paragraphs. I tried a title involving “Firing Gerbils Out of a Cannon” to attract interest–it’s not very informative, but it is intriguing and does relate to the main message
  

• 10 Seconds:

  Whatever a reader finds in the opening paragraphs must be interesting enough for them to want to read the rest of the article–in this case I tried to introduce the need for properly grabbing your customer’s attention in the second paragraph and promising the answer to the Outpost.com question, hopefully keeping a reader’s interest enough for them to continue reading
  

• The Next Few Minutes:

  You got this far in the article, so I guess I did something right
  

Outpost.com Commercial

• 3 Seconds:

  They presented something that made the viewer want to watch the rest of the commercial–firing gerbils out of a cannon.
  

• 10~30 Seconds

  they kept their audience’s attention very effectively through their stunts, but were very short on actual benefits of their offering
  

• The Next Few Minutes

  Their call to action was to send complaints about their commercials to Outpost.com. Upon arriving there you find out it’s a site that sells computer products. See the commercial here.
  

So was Outpost.com successful in their marketing efforts? Their message was memorable because viewers were either entertained or outraged by what they saw (both high emotions). They certainly got many people to their web site. They were the #5 fastest growing company in 1999, receiving the 1999, 2000 and 2001 #1 PowerRanking for Computing by Forrester Research.

But that’s not the whole story. The dot-com boom ended and we got a look at what was really happening. Outpost.com had massive layoffs and eventually were acquired by Fry’s Electronics. We found out that their growth was fueled largely by investment money, and not by sales. One of the problems with their commercials is that they were memorable because of the emotions they elicited, but not effective because of the lack of information. In the end their outrageous commercials were better at attracting investors than customers.