If you’re a business wanting to capture the attention of potential customers, you need to know about ‘day trading attention’.
From the moment we get up, we’re bombarded with people trying to get our attention.
The kids want breakfast, your partner needs us to help them find their car keys, the train station operator tells you your train will be late, the barista shouts at you that your coffee is ready. And that’s all before you reach the office.
If you’re a business wanting to capture the attention of potential customers, it’s a very crowded space. That’s why some of the world’s most successful marketers are focusing on a trend known as ‘day trading attention’.
If we can have your attention for a couple of minutes, we’ll explain.
What is ‘day trading attention’?
‘Day trading attention’ is a term coined by Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia and progressive marketing thinker, to describe a marketing practice that he uses to grow social media following and businesses.
Basically, it’s the nuanced art of paying attention in order to get attention.
Day traders are professionals who deal in the buying and selling of stock and shares, and are renowned for having their ears to the ground and for their eagle-eyed attention to what’s happening at any given moment, and how they can leverage it.
Day trading attention is applying that same skillset to marketing.
It’s a theory that is also based on the fundamental truth that before we can market anything to anyone, we need to get their attention.
Vaynerchuk describes it as “always watching, always playing, always looking for that next opportunity”.
“Attention is an increasingly scarce commodity,” he recently explained in an interview.
“People lead busy lives, and we are all overstimulated by the millions of inputs we receive on a daily basis. So, getting people’s attention is a very important skill that entrepreneurs and marketers have to develop.”
Day trading attention is the practice of noticing and understanding popular culture trends as they unfold on social media.
To reiterate, day trading attention means always watching and always looking for that next opportunity.
How does focusing on ‘day trading attention’ relate to marketing?
Day trading attention is all about understanding your customers more deeply, and in real time.
If you are a stationery store, for example, you might be able to say your target customer is the parent of tweens and their big shopping time is right before the new school year. If you were a stationery store that practised day trading attention, you would also know what stationery style the kids are going crazy for right now, and concentrate your marketing activity on that.
It’s about placing your brand in line of sight of your audience’s attention at any given moment.
Day trading attention puts you ahead of the game, and focusing on it allows you to identify popular culture trends before your competitors. It enables you to develop and roll out marketing campaigns while your competitors are still getting their morning coffee.
“It’s all about your eyes and ears,” Vaynerchuk said in the interview.
“It’s about where the customers’ attention is… If you, as a marketer, content creator, whatever, are not there – where the attention is –, if you’re not day trading that attention, if you’re not playing properly within that realm, you’re going to lose.”
How to identify missed opportunities in your marketing
Limiting your marketing thinking to what you have always done, or what you know to have been true in the past, can lead to missed opportunities.
Day trading attention means paying attention to where your audience is engaging and what they are engaging in. For example, you may have ridden the wave of Instagram popularity and be focusing your marketing on that platform – meanwhile, your target audience is over on LinkedIn engaging with your competitors.
What is your target audience talking about? What conversations are they participating in? Learning more about what your customers care about right now can produce a myriad of new opportunities that would otherwise have been missed.
The key to getting the attention of your customers is to place yourself right in the middle of their conversations, and creating content and posts that speak to them about what they care about.
The importance of a marketing mix
Not every individual responds the same way to marketing activity, which is why your marketing mix is essential to day trading attention.
A robust and effective marketing mix can include social media posts and paid social media advertisements across multiple digital platforms, search ads, influencer marketing, and digital advertising, as well as offline marketing options.
Your marketing mix should target customers at every stage of the buying the cycle, including the phases of awareness, research, consideration, purchase and retention. By applying a mix of marketing activities, you’re more likely to reach a wider range of prospective clients at different stages of their purchasing journey.
At the heart of every piece of your marketing mix is unique, quality content that addresses the issue being experienced by the customer, how to resolve it, and why your company is the best one to do it.
When you target potential customers from several different angles, it builds your brand, and provides a fuller picture of who you are and what you offer.
Speak to the marketing experts
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne, and we’re paying attention – not just to marketing trends, but to what your potential customers are talking about and responding to right now.
To find out how we can help your business, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or send us a note via the contact form below.