---

What Is 'Attention'?

The most important rule of Marketing: Attention is limited. People are expert at filtering, because they can't pay attention to everything.

To be noticed you need to find a way to be more interesting or useful than your competition.

You don't want_ just_ Attention. You want the attention of prospects who will ultimately purchase from you.

Business is about making sales, not winning a popularity contest.

Josh Kaufman Explains 'Attention'

Modern life is overloaded with demands on your Attention. Think of all of the things that are competing for your attention right now: there's work to be done, people to call, e-mail to check, TV to watch, music to listen to, and no end of Web sites to visit. Everyone has too many things to do, and too little time to do them all.

Rule #1 of marketing is that your potential customer's attention is limited. Keeping up with everything available would require way more attention than you actually have to work with. To compensate, you filter: you ration your attention, allocating more to things you care about and less to things you don't. So does everyone else, including your potential prospects. To get someone's attention, you have to find a way around their filters.

High-quality attention must be earned. When you're seeking someone's attention, it's useful to take a moment to remember that you're competing against everything else in their world. In order to be noticed, you need to find a way to earn that attention by being more interesting or useful than the competing alternatives.

Attention doesn't matter if people don't care about what you're doing. If all you're looking for is attention, don't bother with all of this business stuff: walking down the street in a pink bunny suit while yelling at the top of your lungs will get you all the attention you'll ever want. When it comes to business, some kinds of attention aren't worth having. You want the attention of prospects who will purchase from you.

It's nice to be the center of attention, but business is about making profitable sales, not winning a popularity contest. Being featured on national television or on a huge Web site is a wonderful thing, but very often this kind of broad publicity fails to deliver actual sales. Spending time and energy acting like a socialite reduces the amount of resources you can devote to creating real value for your customers, which is bad for everyone.

Earn the attention of the people who are likely to buy from you, and you'll inevitably build your business. The mental models in this chapter will show you how.

Questions About 'Attention'

• Whose attention are you trying to get?
• How? Why?
• What's in it for them? Why should they care?

---

"In an attention economy (like this one), marketers struggle for attention. If you don't have it, you lose."

Seth Godin, best-selling author of Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, and Tribes

---

---

Share this concept:

https://personalmba.com/attention/

---

---

---

---