In the last post I suggested that the creative core of marketing is to get someone’s attention and to change their mind. That post was about how to get someone’s attention. Now let’s look at how to keep attention long enough to change a person’s mind.
Why do you need to sustain their attention? Because you are asking someone to listen carefully to your idea and to consider how you can add value to their life.
People may be open to your ideas, but if those ideas aren’t presented in a way that keeps their attention, you are going to lose them.
How to keep their attention?
Everyone loves a mystery. In fact, once we get started on one, we can’t resist their pull. Ever found yourself watching a ‘B’ movie at midnight, wishing you could just go to sleep, but waiting until the end of the movie because you had to know the ending?
What is it about the mystery that keeps us captivated until the end? A mystery is a “higher level of unexpectedness” according to Chip and Dan Heath in Made to Stick. In the last post we looked at how the unexpected can get our attention. With a mystery you can keep people’s attention by taking them on an unexpected journey to an unknown destination.
This journey works to keep us engaged because we want to know how it ends. In fact, we have to know how it ends. We can’t help it, our minds were made that way.
Cognitive scientists explain that we have to know how it ends because we need to fill gaps in our knowledge. As soon as we identify a gap, we are compelled to get the information that will fill the gap. We are all infovores.
We watch the rest of the sporting event because we want to find out who wins. We finish the puzzle because we have to see how it fits together.
But how does this work in marketing and sales, especially for complex products and services that are sold to another business? It hardly seems like there is any mystery there. You’ve got something that will meet the needs of your potential buyer, you explain the facts of how it adds value, and they decide whether to move forward and make a purchase. Right?
Well, no. No matter how much value you believe your product adds to buyers, they won’t pay attention until they believe there is a gap in their knowledge.
The key with the gap theory is to open the gap. It’s only when a gap is open that you can rescue the audience by closing it. Before jumping into the facts of how you can add value to potential buyers, create a gap in their knowledge.
To create a knowledge gap, start with information that your audience knows already. Then point out what they are missing.
Here’s an example. (I’m making this up.)
“Google runs large data centers in many cities in the U.S. But did you know that their servers use 50% less power than in the average data center?”
Here I’ve been told something I know, but then a gap was created. Now I have to know why they use less power.
Once the gap is created, take your time in closing it. In fact, don’t close it until the end. Take the reader on a journey, dropping clues periodically about why these data centers use less power. Unpack the story gradually; don’t give everything away up front.
Now we’ve come to the second reason why creativity is important in marketing. It takes creativity to generate the unexpected idea that will get a person’s attention. And it takes creativity to take the person on an unexpected journey that will keep their attention.
But is creativity in marketing enough to be successful? If not, what else is required? I’ll explore these questions in my next post.
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