How to Get People's Attention in a World Where People NEVER Pay Attention!

Hey everyone, in this episode I am going to talk about how to get people's attention in a world where people never pay attention. 

Alright, so it is a known fact that in the 1970s the average attention span was 12 minutes, okay? 12 minutes. That means if you wanted to sell somebody something, you add 12 minutes to get their attention, which is pretty darn good, I think. However, today the average attention span is only nine seconds, which is coincidentally the same attention span as a goldfish. So that means today you have nine seconds to get someone's attention and make them listen to you. All right, so let me give you a, an example of a, something that just happened. Um, I usually try to do the thing I'm going to teach you here in a moment. I usually try to do it every time I put out any type of marketing. Cause if you do this thing that I'm about to teach you, you will be able to get the attention of your prospect most of the time and turn that nine seconds into two or three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever, uh, or even an hour if it's like a webinar. 

And this very specific thing, if you do it, it allows you to buy time and get people to actually pay attention to the rest of your content. But if you don't do it, people tend to just skim or only read the first part and not actually consume the information. I'll give you a perfect example. So we just sent out an email. And to give you a little background on this email, it's an email for our program. And what we do is when people watch the webinar, if they don't book a call with our team, we just keep sending them value and sometimes we send them, you know, valuable emails, tips, videos, sometimes funny emails, what have you. And there's always a call to action to book a call. 

And then eventually people get enough value. They book a call, they get on the phone with our team and if it seems like a good fit, we get them into the program. So that's the purpose of the email. Now, how this email came about was I was at universal studios recently and I was in the, um, this action where they have the carnival and there was our, maybe I was at Disney. I don't, I don't remember cause I went to Disney and then I went to universal. I don't remember. But anyway, there was a section where there's a carnival and there was this guy there that looked just like Stan Lee, um, Stan Lee from, you know, Marvel comics. And um, literally look just like them. I had to ask twice or I had to look twice. So I asked him, I said, hey, did anybody tell you look like Stan Lee? 

And he goes, yeah, I get it every day. I get it all day. I'm like, I'm like, well, you do. I'm like, you should be a celebrity. Lookalike. You know, I mean like you look like him. So I said, hey, can I get a picture with you? So I take a picture with them and I think, oh, this would make a great email. Right. Cause I'm always thinking that. And so today I grabbed the picture, I airdrop it from my phone over to my computer and I put it in an email and I'll read you the email here, but I'll actually, I'll read you the email in a second. But basically it was a funny like satire type of email. And again, the purpose was to book a call. So let me, let me just go ahead and read you the email. So the subject line was, so last weekend I met Stan Lee, so, so then it says he was happy to take a picture of me even though he was working. 

And then I showed the picture of Stan Lee, uh, me and Stan Lee, just like him. I'm looking at the picture now. Um, as to the rest of the copies. Yes. Sadly Stan stopped writing comic books and was only asked to do cameos here and there by Marvel. So he had to get a second job working the whack-a-mole at the carnival. I asked him how he felt about this and he said, I wish I would have created an online course so I could have got paid every day for years. It's true. Stan could have been making that course money, but instead, he is seeing the step right up blues. Don't make the same mistake stand made. Create a business that runs without you and pays you for years to come. The best business, digital products, online courses. If you've ever been asked how do you do blank, then you have marketable sellable knowledge. 

But unless you nurture that opportunity, you won't have a business and you may have to give away cheap stuffed animals every day like stand here. So click here to book a call, a free call at my office. We will take a look at your course business wear course idea. Identify what's holding you back and if it seems like we can help show you what that looks like, book your call now and then it says signed Dan. PS, I know this isn't Stan Lee, rest in peace to the man, the myth, the legend. This is a guy that just looks like him at the carnival, but I already told him you should get gigs as a celebrity look-alike and then sell a course on how to start your own celebrity look-alike business. Hopefully, he listens. And so do you book your call now? So that's the email. 

So we, I literally sent this email maybe 10 minutes ago, not even maybe like five to 10 minutes ago. And I'm sitting here, I sent it out to go on about my day. And Brandon, uh, Brandon comes in here and he's like, dude, he's like, did you just send out an email about like Stan Lee or something? And I'm like, I'm like, yeah. And he goes, we're getting all kinds of emails in the support box, responses to the email saying like, what the heck? Stan Lee’s dead. Like, how could you have met Stan Lee? He's dead. Like, what are you talking about? He died already. And I'm just shaking my head here going, do these people not read the email? Like did they not read the end where it said, I know it's not Stan Lee. And it was a, and it was like a satire thing and I, and then I realized, I was like, whoa, wait a minute. 

I was like, as as you know, entertaining as I thought that email was. I thought I did make a mistake. Now actually if I look at our email metrics, uh, we already have a really good click rate and open rate. So I'm not really worried about that. But, uh, what I'm trying to do is show you the reason why people didn't pay attention to cause this does not tend to happen with a lot of our other emails and it's because I didn't make a, a bold promise of what they will gain from the email at the beginning of the email. I just went right into it. And this is a common mistake that is made in all forms of marketing, whether it be ads, video marketing, webinars, emails. It's a common mistake that's made. And you know, I didn't do it in this particular email because I was just trying to be a little artistic and whatnot like that. 

And we'll see how the email performs. But 95% of the time you really want to do this. And what you want to do is you want to make a bold promise of what they will gain from the content and what's covered. So for instance, I'll give you a few examples. If I was sending out an email where maybe I was linking to a page. Um, so okay, one of our top-performing, um, pieces of content is how to get your ads, how to get your ads approved if they're getting disapproved. And basically people watch that piece of content and then they get really excited because it really helped them. Then they book a call with our team it is probably one of our top pieces of content. And so at the beginning of the email and the video, I basically say, hey, if you have trouble with disapproved Facebook ads, this email or this video is going to solve your problem for good. 

Right? So I've made a bold promise. I've said, hey, I've got nine seconds, right? And nine seconds is enough to read the subject line, open the email, and read the first sentence or two or watch the first nine seconds of a video. And I say immediately I say, Hey if you have this problem, you will find the solution in this email or this video. And so now that promise has been made and now they can say to themselves, all right, well I do have that problem. I really want that thing, that solution. So I'm going to take what I would have just skimmed and I am now going to actually focus on it and read the rest of it and really comprehend it and assimilate the information and pay attention. And when I do that, we definitely see an impact on our marketing. And I do it most of the time. 

But in this particular email I didn't and I'm not really sure if I could have, um, because there really wasn't a, I mean, I guess I could have said, uh, um, hey, by the end of this email, you'll understand, uh, the, the top business you can start, that'll pay you for years to come. Or something. Like that. But, you know, I just didn't, I just thought it'd be a nice sort of satire, artistic email. Um, but that's just to give you an example, uh, of, you know, what happens. Like, it's a short email too. It's literally maybe 300 words, maybe, maybe three to 400 words. It's short that like, literally I just read it to you. It doesn't take long to read, but people, people don't read take to not read. They have like, yeah, I'm probably in the next 10 to 20 years, they're going to have the attention span, not of a Goldfish, but of a, a freaking Amoeba. 

You know? And the thing about it is, is yeah, we could sit here and complain about how people just don't pay attention. But in reality, there is a solution to this. And that is to get their attention at the very beginning before they can skim or leave or whatever, and make that bold promise and tell them what to expect and what they're gonna gain immediately, uh, so that they actually pay attention and consume the rest of the information. And I see this mistake in ads all the time. People will start a Facebook ad and a Facebook ad is even worse. Like, you send an email, somebody, it's, they're in their own email box, right? But that on Facebook they're just scrolling through the newsfeed. So at the beginning of like a video ad or even the copy, you know, people, I see these, these ads where a video start and the person will be like, ah, seven years ago I was broke. 

And, um, I, you know, I was depressed and I was driving in my car and all I could think was, you know, life just isn't working out. And like, there'll be like two minutes in and I'll be like, all right, well this is a sad story, but I have no idea what this video is about, why I should watch it or what the heck you're even talking about. Right? But instead, if that video started and said, hey everybody, this is Dan from getting clients not common. In the next two minutes, I'm going to show you exactly how to get your ads approved on Facebook and stop getting those disapprovals so that you can run ads and therefore make money. Because if you can't run ads, you can't make money. All right? So let's start. Uh, I remember the time when I w thought I was on top of the world. 

My Facebook ads were converting and then all the debt, all of a sudden, all my ads got disapproved. And that next week we barely made any money. And I felt terrible because I thought I had it figured out, but I guess I didn't because this thing happened. Well, let me show you how I fixed it. See, now I can get into sort of a story and, you know, get all emotional and all that stuff. You know, people will listen, people will comprehend, and people will assimilate it. And stories do sell getting, you know, I'll be honest with you, I'm not that much of an emotional person unless we're talking about my son. Because when my son was born, we didn't know if he was going to make it for 10 days. Um, he was in the NICU for 10 days in very critical condition. 

So when I talk about that, I get a little emotional. But other than that, I'm, I'm, I don't let things really affect me much. And either way, I'm aware that story selling works, you know, selling through story works, it allows people to, um, assimilate the information better and comprehended better than just facts. Right. And they say that, you know, on average when you're attending a speech, I don't know the exact numbers I remember reading, but it was something, something crazy. It was like 60% of people remember stories and only like 6% remember facts or something crazy like that. Don't quote me on those numbers. Um, but I know it was something, there's a big difference. And so I just, um, I remember that. And so I know I acknowledged story selling works, but you have to get them to listen to the story. Think about all the movies that you've ever seen their stories, right? 

But what happens at the beginning of every movie? Do they just get into the story or does the movie always seem to start with some sort of like a shocking or bold thing that makes you go, oh, and you pay attention, right? The same thing with shows, right? You know, I just got done binge-watching, finally binge watching stranger things cause I actually watched all three seasons in a row. I'd never seen it before. And just like the walking dead, just like breaking bad, just like all those shows, the very beginning of each show is something that shocks you or that makes you go whoa. And then they go into the intro sequence and they start the story. And then, you know, after the intro sequence, after the, uh, um, you know, that completes, oftentimes it’s slowed down and the story begins and it's not as intense as that initial beginning part of the show. 

And that's because it doesn't have to be because they've already hooked your attention. They've already hooked your curiosity and you're now willing to watch the rest of it, um, and pay attention and give up your, your attention. So think about this. Um, the next time you're creating a Facebook ad, a Webinar, an email, or just a video you're posting in the VA in the first, I like to do it within the first three to five seconds. I don't like to push nine seconds, cause you know, if all of a sudden we go from nine to five and all my videos are out there and I get to the point at nine seconds, I'm behind the game. I want to be ahead of the game. So I usually get to it immediately. First thing I say, Hey, this is Dan from getclients.com and in this video I'm gonna show you this. 

Boom. Okay, so try to do that. Try to just set the expectation, tell them what they're going to gain from it. And if you want to supercharge it, you can also add this so you can, so if I say in this video, I'm going to show you how to stop getting your ads disapproved. I can strengthen that by saying so you can run ads that make you money. Because, as we all know, you can't run ads, you can't make money. So you can also as well do that. Um, or like if you're, if you have a health product like you know, in this and this, uh, video, I'm going to show you my 30-day plan to drop it, one dress size so that you could look good for that next big event, whether it's a wedding, a reunion, whatever, right? So you can, so that's another way to strengthen it. All right, so I hope this helps. And remember guys, whenever you put out a piece of content, make a bold promise and tell them what they will gain from consuming the rest of the content at the very beginning. And you will see your marketing, and PR, improve immediately. All right, talk to you as soon. See in the next episode!