5 Ways You Can Recapture Your Multi-screened Buyer's Attention

Deb Monfette

Graphics by Deb Monfette

I think by now most marketers have seen the stats that digital lifestyles are shrinking attention spans to mere seconds. But here’s what you may not know. How short attention spans have actually affected three things. Our focus, our memory, and dealing with distractions. Key factors for marketers to consider when planning and creating content. 

In this article, you’ll discover an interesting report by Microsoft Canada. It explains the impact of digital lifestyles on attention spans, regardless of age and gender, and what marketers can do to adapt and recapture a buyer’s attention.

If you think spending more time online has completely gobbled up attention spans, you may be surprised.

A Digital Day in the Life of ...

Categories

All Customer Center It Repurposing It Visualize It

Imagine how your day digitally unfolds. You multi-screen your way from your smartphone to check your emails to grabbing your iPad to read through white papers. Then you hop on over to your laptop just in time for a webinar while wrapping up projects.

When you get home, you browse through car sites on your tablet to find your next car, while chatting with your daughter on your cell, and glancing at the TV. All at the same time.

Suddenly it’s time for the Game of Thrones. It pulls you in. It hijacks your attention from all your other devices and people in your life. You crank up the volume. Your focus is now on the show and Jon Snow.

Your attention span may have been scattered throughout the day as you jumped from one device to the next. But, when that one thing grabs you by the eyeballs and sucks you in, you give it your full attention. You focus.

What About Focus? 

The report released by Microsoft Canada is called Attention Spans. It's a study based on neurological research along with a gamified, online survey of more than 2,000 Canadians, ages 18-65+. 

It highlights the effects of digital lifestyles and shrinking attention spans. The results of the survey show how they're affecting our focus, processing information and remembering it, and dealing with distractions.

Let’s start with focus. 
Our ability to focus our attention on a single task has shortened, especially in the non-digital world.

Why?

Because of five different behaviors:
​

1. Craving and accessing a variety of media.  
2. Ease of constant multi-screen searching.
3. Obsession with social media.
4. Quickly grasping and adapting to tech devices, apps, software, you name it.
5. The thrill of getting instant gratification when finding something new.

Marketers need to grab their audience’s attention pretty quickly online, and hold onto it, before they lose it to the next click.

19% of online viewers defect in the first 10 seconds. 
Vertical Measures / Attention Spans    

Here’s where it gets interesting. 

Shorter Focus Leads to 2 Other Key Findings 

Buyers are inundated with information. Content that stands out among all the others at just the right time, and sparks a buyer's interest, leads to shorter bursts of focus. As a result, there are two key findings that have changed digital behaviors and also affect your marketing.

Even though digital buyers are challenged to focus, they’re getting better at processing information and remembering it. Especially the bits of content that they can relate to. ​

Apparently, filtering out distractions is not based on media consumption, social media use, demographics, or specific devices. It’s based on people who frequently use multiple devices simultaneously.

The report reveals that 75% of Canadians are multi-screeners. That means the majority of digital buyers, and I don't think it's just Canadians, are more easily distracted. But, challenges like these can lead to opportunities. 


You Can Get Their Attention Back
​
It appears that digital lifestyles haven’t completely gobbled up attention spans. Because of things like multi-screening abilities, access to a wealth of content, and social media usage, buyers are more engaged with short bursts of focused attention. They shift back and forth, grabbing bits of content from different sources that spark their interest at the time. Content that they can relate to. 

This means you haven’t completely lost their attention. You can get it back.
​
Here are 5 ways for marketers to recapture attention with their content. 

 Summary

Human attention spans and the ability to focus on a single task have dwindled. Our digital, techie lifestyles involve craving a variety of media, multi-screening, obsession with social media, multi-tasking, adapting to new technologies, and instant gratification.

What does this mean for marketers? First, there are new opportunities to capture attention.

Microsoft Canada discovered in their study that digital lifestyles have enabled people to be more engaged with short bursts of high attention-grabbing content. They're more efficient at processing this information and remembering it. Short bursts of high attention-grabbing content are relevant, useful, surprising, to the point, and available when they need it.

But, there are also challenges. Because of using multiple devices at once, digital buyers are easily distracted by the next shiny object.  This means that it can be more difficult to get their attention.

However, you haven't completely lost it. You can get it back. Microsoft revealed 5 ways to adapt and recapture your multi-screened buyer's attention. Try these new ideas and see how they work for you.

Now, once you’ve captured their attention, you have to hold on to it. 

That’s where repurposing​ your content is key. Take your short attention-grabbing content, like checklists, and expand it into longer research reports, white papers, guides, and technical content.

How are you recapturing your savvy, digital buyer's attention?

Check out this article on one type of high, attention-grabbing content, checklists.