Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Did you know that the cost of acquiring consumer attention has increased dramatically (seven- to nine-fold) in the past two decades?
It might not be surprising to hear, but overall our collective attention span has been narrowing.
You might be wondering, “What does this mean for marketers?”

As marketers, it’s our job to attract people to our brand. We need to deliver almost magnetic-like messaging to grab our audience’s attention. But when you only have seconds to do this, it might seem like an insurmountable task (hint: it’s not, we have some ideas).
In this post, let’s review what attention marketing is and how you can use it to grab your audience’s attention.

The term attention marketing was coined by Steve Jelley and popularized by Seth Godin, as a way to describe a business model that focuses on capturing users’ attention through non-invasive content rather than interrupting users’ attention with something like a pop-up ad. With attention marketing, once you have your audience’s attention, you can then engage with and convince them to purchase your product or service when the opportunity presents itself.
Before this concept was introduced, around the beginning of social media, the marketing landscape looked a lot different. Brands would usually market themselves on a massive scale, using TV ads, billboards, or radio spots. This means that they weren’t able to target individuals, but instead had to focus on appealing to a broader audience.
With social media, brands can now figure out what interests individual customers and then market to them individually. Ultimately, it’s important to consider using attention marketing because you want your marketing assets to engage customers and pull them in.
Marketing Attention Span
Now that you’re thinking about capturing your audience’s attention instead of interrupting it, let’s focus on some logistics. To start, you don’t have as much time as you think.
Years ago, Microsoft reported that the average person’s attention span was 8 seconds. A more recent study shows that our collective attention span is narrowing.
Essentially, you only have seconds to capture your audience’s attention before they continue scrolling or click through to something else.
So, how should you capture your audience’s attention? Let’s go over some ideas below.
Marketing Attention Grabbers
1. Be platform-specific.
A great way to grab your audience’s attention is for your content to show up natively in your audience’s feed (if we’re talking social media).
For example, if your video shows up as recommended on YouTube and they click the video and it’s clearly in sync with what your title was and what they were expecting, then you’ll probably be able to keep them watching.
But, if they click through and the content is a photo montage instead of a video (a vast difference from what they might expect), then you might lose them.
In that same vein, when brands repost content from Instagram on Twitter, instead of making a separate Twitter post, people are less likely to click on the link than if they were to see the post right on Twitter.
An important thing to remember here is that some users are on mobile and some on desktop. Think about how you can design your website or content for those platforms specifically, so it’s easier for the consumer to interact with your content.
2. Write super clear messaging.
When people can immediately tell what your value proposition is, it will hold their attention longer. It might seem simple, but review your marketing assets and ask yourself, “Is my value proposition clear for my audience? Can they tell within seconds the value we can provide?”
If so, that will hold people’s attention longer because if they clearly see the value in what you offer, then they’ll want to look further into your brand. Your messaging should be clear, concise, and written specifically for your target audience.
3. Use integrated media.
Integrated media, or a multichannel and multimedia approach to marketing, will help grab your audience’s attention.
This means that you use several forms of media, including video, images, podcasting, GIFs, memes, etc. Different types of media on different platforms will help you figure out what your audience likes and dislikes.
Your overall marketing strategy should also include interactive media as well. In fact, 81 percent of marketers say that interactive content is more effective than static content when it comes to grabbing consumers’ attention.
Ultimately, it’s important to play around with your media content — both the type of assets you create and the channels that you use to distribute it.
4. Tell a story.
People love a story. They love watching TV, reading books, or listening to a podcast. If you can capture your audience with a good story, then it’ll be easier to market to them.
To do this, you can start off your videos, blogs, or Facebook ads, with a storytelling hook. Once you’ve got your audience’s attention, then you can proceed to engage and delight them.
5. Consider emotional marketing.
Have you ever heard of emotional marketing?
This is the concept that your marketing assets should primarily use emotion to grab your audience’s attention. By tapping into a singular emotion, your audience will naturally have a response to your content. And isn’t the goal to get your audience to respond in some way?
6. Don’t forget about co-marketing.
Co-marketing is when you use brand partnerships and collaborations to grow your audience. It’s the process of working with another brand and sharing expertise and value with each other’s audiences.
In that same vein, you can also work with influencers. 51% of marketers believe that they can acquire better customers with influencer marketing.
By using influencers, or working with other brands, you can tap into their audience — which is usually large and engaged — to market your product or service and grab your audience’s attention.
7. Have a good website.
One of your greatest marketing assets is your website. It should be engaging, have a great user interface, and be built with user experience in mind.
If your homepage on your website can grab your audience’s attention within seconds, then you’ve done it right.
Attention marketing isn’t just about creating viral content like the name might imply. It’s about truly creating content that will grab your audience’s attention and keep it in the long run.

One of my favorite episodes of “The Office” is called Launch Party. During this episode, Dunder Mifflin hosts a corporate party, plus several satellite parties when its website launches. Hilarity ensues.
But during your corporate event, you probably don’t want to kidnap the pizza delivery person, and you might want to spell launch correctly on the sign.

As a business, you probably have several corporate events on the horizon, whether it’s a team-building event or a seminar.
In this post, we’ll learn about the different types of corporate events, plus give your party planning committee a few virtual event ideas.

Now, let’s dive into the different types of corporate events.

1. Seminars
A seminar is an event that’s focused on educating people, whether it’s your customers or employees. It’s similar to a conference or a workshop.
A seminar is usually a short event, while a conference might be a several-day event with multiple speakers. On the other hand, a workshop is usually a small, intimate event with only a few registrants.
You might consider hosting a seminar as a way to get leads and introduce people to your company.
2. Retreats
A retreat can be held to simply bond with your team, or you can sell tickets to customers. This is usually a several-day event with several workshops or seminars to attend.
Sometimes the purpose is just to relax, but other times it’s to learn, strategize, and plan for the future.
3. Team Building
Team building events are meant to boost team morale, and help people learn how to work together. Usually, these are collaborative events, where teams need to work together to solve something. It could be a ropes course, or perhaps an escape room.
Sometimes these events can even be formal if you’d prefer. For example, you could run a workshop about psychological safety or sensitivity training.
4. Milestones
Has your company just hit a revenue goal? Or perhaps you have a major anniversary coming up? Either way, it’s nice to celebrate with a corporate event.
These are similar to appreciation events (more on these below), where you can thank your team for achieving the milestone.
5. Launch Party
A launch party is when you throw a corporate event for the launch of something: your company, a product, a website (like “The Office”), etc.
These are celebratory events that are usually meant to create buzz around the release of something. Think Apple’s big product launch announcements.
6. Fundraising
A fundraising event is meant to raise money for charity, usually. Or sometimes it’s to help raise money for your company. These are usually concerts, golf tournaments, dinners, or festivals.
7. Appreciation Events
An appreciation event is meant to thank your customers, partners, or employees. These are usually fun events, such as holiday parties, private concerts, or a special dinner.
The goal is to spend informal time showing people how much you appreciate and care about the value they bring to your company.

1. Virtual MasterChef Team Building Event
A great corporate team building event is to host a virtual MasterChef. To do this, you can have one person host and send out a list of ingredients (or modified ingredients for dietary restrictions) and supplies.
On the night that you host the event, everyone will dial into Zoom and cook the same meal as the host walks them through the recipe.
When everyone is done cooking, you can have a virtual dinner party together. This is a great informal team-building event for your team to hang out and get to know each other.
2. Airbnb Online Experience Appreciation Event
One of my favorite virtual corporate events that I’ve researched is the Airbnb Experiences. On Airbnb, hosts put on virtual events that you can book for your team.
This is a great appreciation event idea for any team, customer, or partner. There are scavenger hunts, drag shows, and even remote escape rooms.
3. Mystery Dinner Partner Event
Mystery dinners are a fun way to treat your partners. You can have partners sign up to be a part of mystery dinners. Every month, you can select a partner randomly, and then host those partners to a mystery dinner party.
This could even be virtual if need be, and it’s a great way to show appreciation for your partners and to get to know them.
4. Professional Development Workshop
The classic corporate event is a professional development workshop. You can find workshops like the Disney Institute and have your team learn something from the experts. This shows appreciation, but also is a great learning opportunity.
5. Splash Webinar
If you need software to host a virtual corporate event, then Splash is a great product for you. Let’s say you want to host a webinar? You can do so on Splash. This helps with the registration process, invitations, virtual waiting rooms, and even post-event content. Everything you need for a corporate webinar is on this software.
Hosting a corporate event is a great way to boost morale, get to know your team, show appreciation, and even develop your company. Plus, hosting virtual events has never been easier.

There are certain characteristics that should be at the core of any successful business. For instance, every business should have a great product or service, awesome employees to keep the internal engine running, and loyal customers who support through purchases and advocacy.
There also has to be underlying elements to help establish the aforementioned characteristics. And one of the most necessary is clear and effective communication.
Communication is at the root of every interaction for businesses. Without transparent communication at every level, there’s more room for error, and — depending on the magnitude of the error — it can make or break a business.
But, while 89% of people feel communication is extremely important for work, 8 out of 10 people rate their own business’ communication as either average or poor.
Developing a communication strategy for your business will help you understand how your company best communicates, internally and externally, and can give you measurable results to better understand the efficacy of your communication tactics.
In this post, we’ll explain how to create a communication strategy and plan for your business to ensure efficient, cohesive communication with colleagues and customers alike.
What is a communication strategy?
A communication strategy is a process developed by the appropriate stakeholders to identify where communication efforts need to be improved. The next step in this process is to ideate and select measurable actions that will be used to develop a communication plan to achieve your desired outcome.

1. Use a communication plan template.
HubSpot’s Communication Plan Templates are a great resource to help you develop actionable steps without having to spend too much of your time on this task.
Your communication plan will clearly go through all of the steps you need to take to address the challenges you’re up against — like completing an audit, setting SMART goals, and understanding how long each step in your plan will take. Depending on your overall strategy, you may develop multiple plans to be carried out to meet the needs of different audiences.
You’ll want to break your plan into steps so you can easily make and measure progress on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Additionally, as you’re creating your communications plan, you’ll need to factor in a working timeline, potential budget, and ensure you’re delegating tasks to the appropriate team members.
Over time, you want to be able to reflect on what changes have been made and if these changes are actively contributing to helping you achieve your ideal results.

Download HubSpot’s Crisis Management & Communication Kit today!
2. Determine current and potential problems.
Identifying the problems hindering your company’s communication efforts is the first, and most important, step of developing a solid communication strategy.
Start by asking questions like:

Are we experiencing communication problems internally or externally?
If externally, is this across all channels of customer communication, or a specific team or department?
If internally, is this a company-wide issue, or specific team or department?
Is there a specific issue that arises consistently? If so, what is that issue?
What are the problems that aren’t consistent, but still present challenges?

Ideally, the more questions you ask, the more you’ll be able to clearly identify areas for improvement that will influence your overall strategy. If you’re struggling to come up with questions, reach out to team members within your company, and/or your customers.
You can issue surveys, start organic conversations in the office or via social media, schedule one-on-ones — whatever you feel will get the most relevant answers.
When there are issues that directly impact company employees or customers, people are more willing to provide feedback. It’s also possible that someone may already be working to find a solution to some of the problems you’ll identify — which brings us to our next step.
3. Select key stakeholders who need to be involved.
Now that you’ve asked the right questions, you need to make sure that you involve the right people to help you carry out building your communication strategy.
If you’re at a smaller organization, it’s possible that you may be the only person you need on your team. However, for larger organizations, you’ll most likely want to include a few of your co-workers to help you divide and conquer.
Selecting which individuals should be involved should directly relate to the biggest challenges you identified from your list of questions. If the most pressing challenge is customer-related, you may want to include someone from your organization’s customer service or customer success team. If there’s an issue about how a product or service is being advertised or sold, include a representative from your marketing or sales team.
You’ll also want to make sure that appropriate leadership team members are aware and as involved as they need to be. This way, if you end up wanting to make any major company changes like purchasing a new tool or restructuring teams, leadership will already be aware of what’s happening.
If your coworkers are maxed out and don’t have the bandwidth to assist you, or the problems are more significant than expected, you may want to source an external agency or a consultant to assist your company. For instance, if you’re addressing a major external communications crisis, you may consider contracting a PR agency.
Overall, use your best judgment to select who will be involved and make sure they’re involvement ties directly into the specific challenges you’ve identified.
4. Understand your audience.
Understanding your audience is fairly simple. The audience is either internal (meaning your coworkers, and the company as a whole), external (meaning your customers, shareholders, etc.), or a combination of both.
From there you can get more specific:

Are you addressing the entire company?
Are you addressing a certain department or team?
Are you addressing all customers?
Are you only addressing certain customers? If so, can you segment by buyer persona or stages of the buyer’s journey?

It’s important to take the time to thoroughly understand who your audience is so you’re truly speaking to them in a way that will be well-received. Once you know who your audience is, you’ll be able to use audience insights to inform all stages of development for your communication strategy.
5. Brainstorm your ideal results, and then work backwards.
This is when you use all of the information that you’ve gathered to propose what your ideal outcome will be. This is a high-level goal that will be achieved through the implementation of a well thought-out plan.
If your business has struggled with communication regarding events, an ideal result could be improving internal alignment and providing clarity for customers.
Alternatively, if you find that employees at your company feel it’s difficult to voice their ideas or opinions, your goal might be ensuring all employees feel heard by developing a specific feedback system.
Whatever you specify as your ideal result, keep it simplified so it can be easily understood by anyone. It should carry weight because you’re addressing challenges, but it shouldn’t be too complex, either. Think of it as the central mission or vision statement of your communication strategy. The details will come after.
Developing an effective strategy is a process and may take a few different tries before you figure out what works best. However, it’s a necessary investment to ensure you’re clearly communicating the best way possible.
Check out How to Write an Effective Communications Plan [+ Template] and download HubSpot’s Free Communication Template to start achieving all of your communication strategy goals.

Onboarding new employees could be tricky. Teaching people the essentials requires you to convey a relatively fixed set of information. So why not make your life easier while you’re at it? Read on, and we’ll explain how we did it at GetResponse.

Pardot users – where can I find my click through rate and click to open rate %? If possible I’d like to get an average percentage over a particular time if that is possible.
submitted by /u/PrettyAd6040 [link] [comments]

I’ve also worked in different platforms but really enjoy working in Hubspot for it’s UX and functionality. I have a non-profit client looking to house and nurture leads through email automation. I thought we could get Hubspot to cut us a deal but I don’t think they can discount as much as we want. Our budget it 4k and would love something similar to work in for my 10 month contract. I’ve worked in Act-on, Pardot, and Hubspot in the past. Anyone know some comparative platforms that function well, have solid integrations, and within our budget? ​ Thanks in advance!
submitted by /u/jlaut6 [link] [comments]

Last Updated on February 8, 2021 by Rakesh Gupta Looking to be more productive in 2021? Entering data into Salesforce manually can be time-consuming, but an online form builder with a powerful Salesforce integration can be extremely helpful in improving … Continue reading →
The post Streamline Data Collection with Salesforce-Connected Forms appeared first on Automation Champion.