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What captures your attention?

A pretty face? A televised car chase? The smell of baking cookies wafting through the room?

It doesn’t take much.

And what holds your attention?

That’s not so easy, is it? It takes something that has a more direct impact on your life. Satellite images of a hurricane bearing down on your town, for example. Or watching your children play.

After all, a hurricane could hurt your family, your neighbors, and your friends. And you have an emotional investment in your children. Anything that involves them matters to you.

The things that capture our attention are often not enough to hold our attention. As a marketer, this is an important concept for you to understand.

Take the TV ads that run during the Super Bowl. They can make you look. But they won’t necessarily make you buy. We remember the ads, but we don’t always remember the products being pitched.

No purchases are guaranteed, yet companies take a gamble and spend millions on those ads. Why do they do it? In part because of the free media attention they are sure to attract. That attention makes future purchases possible. Without it, there is no hope. And they get that attention by making their ads interesting — not only interesting, but exciting and fun.

In many ways, attention drives our economy. And in this, the Attention Age, your sales message must first be interesting enough to warrant attention.

But to hold attention, it had better be something more. Not necessarily exciting and fun — but certainly immediate, compelling, useful, and relevant for your target audience.

In other words, it has to be about them. Not about you, your company, or your product.

If you can communicate your message in a way that makes a direct emotional connection with your prospective customers, you will get their attention — keep their attention — and succeed.

Consider Starbucks. They didn’t invent coffee. They made coffee culture “cool.”

Starbucks founder Howard Shultz doesn’t really care if we like the taste of his coffee. He wants us to enjoy the sights, the smells, the sounds, the ambiance, and the emotions that come with the Starbucks experience.

Shultz envisioned Starbucks as a “people place,” not as a coffee shop. It’s a place where “tall” means “small,” where “grande” means “medium,” and “venti” means “large.” There is something about the lexicon that makes us feel like we are members of a club. (With club locations seemingly on every street corner.)

It’s a paradox: An “exclusive” club where everyone is welcome.

Starbucks captures our attention and holds it. Customers may learn to like — even love — the coffee. But they come back to Starbucks for the culture. It’s an Attention Age success story.

Apple is another attention-getter with a passionate following. Think about it: Have you ever been around an Apple enthusiast for five minutes without hearing them mention that they are, indeed, an Apple enthusiast?

Apple has what I call the “T-shirt factor.” People are such fans of the company and its products that they want to put the Apple logo on their T-shirts, their computers, their cars… you name it. The brand evokes loyalty because Apple makes their consumers feel like part of a winning team.

The most successful companies, like Starbucks and Apple, develop an innovative culture that serves as the basis for an emotional connection with consumers. As a result, the company, its products, and its people become an attention conduit for its sales message.

You can do it, too. The question is: If 100,000 potential customers were brought to the “doorstep” of your website right now — how would you capture and hold their attention?

By Rich Schefren

P.S. You can develop your own Starbucks experience with your online business and replicate the passion of Apple’s fan base. It’s just one of the strategies you’ll learn at this year’s Info-Marketing Bootcamp. I’d like to invite to join me — and a dozen other top Internet marketing experts — as we reveal the keys to online success.

 The Internet Ultimatum: Zero to $1.2 Million in Twelve Months Flat