First Impressions in Marketing

There are many aspects to marketing, but one of the most important is in being able to quickly capture the attention of potential customers and clients. The art of attention seeking, without being overly persistent or irritating, is an important art to learn.

You will be told throughout your life that the most important thing you can do is make a good impression. Whether it is putting on your best and most professional outfit for an upcoming job interview, creating the perfect presentation, or writing an amazing first line in an essay or an article, first impressions are what grab the attention of the person you’re marketing to and make them want more.

The field of marketing relies on good first impressions; it’s one thing to grab the attention of a potential client or customer and another completely to grab their attention for all the wrong reasons. While a good marketing degree program can teach you the techniques you need to grab this attention it is only through time, experience, and great insight that you learn what really captures the interest of consumers.

There has been some debate in recent years over guerilla marketing techniques, which are sure to grab the attention of consumers but which when handled poorly can also ruin your credibility. There is a big difference between a man in a monkey suit, a series of videos uploaded online, and a huge performance art piece meant to drive traffic to your business. A big part of deciding which tactics to use to draw in attention are things you learn not through a marketing degree program but by analyzing what excites, interests, and entertains the audience you are marketing yourself toward.

One interesting recent marketing move was by the makers of a brand of security glass which filled a box made of the glass with thousands of dollars and invited people to attempt to break the glass in an effort to win the money. This tactic not only made an impression on the people who took part in the attempt but on the individuals who saw the advertisement afterward online.
It is almost important that, after grabbing the attention of your audience, you don’t lose sight of what the product or service that you’re offering really is. This has been a common problem for marketing agencies in the past few decades, and has given rise to the common customer complaint that while they were entertained by an advertisement or a gimmick they were left without a real understanding of what the advertisement was trying to sell.

Marketing degree programs can’t teach you how to come up with great first impressions. But they can teach you to understand your audience and their interests in order to come up with a mutually beneficial attention-getter; one that interests the audience while at the same time driving up interest in what you have to sell.