Are your clients paying attention or is your marketing money going nowhere?

Are you measuring the success of your marketing? Do you know how to start or what to measure?

Many estate agents are guilty of sending out leaflets or creating a Facebook ad and never measuring what the outcome of their expenditure vs results were.  This important task can be time-consuming but will make a huge impact on your ability to easily provide engaging content as well as ads and, when practiced successfully, will impact your bottom line. One of the most important parts of measuring the success of your creatives (ads, content, emails, leaflets) is the Attention Metric. Here are some things to know about this metric – what it is as well as some examples of how to measure it.

What is The Attention metric, and why is it important?

The Attention Metric is based on the rule that the audience must pay attention to the message for it to have an impact. Because attention is considered the foundational truth in advertising, it is now being recognised as the new gold standard for consumer purchases of both tangible items and services. Simply put: if a person isn’t reading your leaflet, watching your video or clicking on your ad, then they are not engaging with you.

Researchers and cognitive psychologists, even up to 10 years ago, saw attention as a spotlight that we focus on in the world. What’s been discovered is that this is much more complicated (isn’t everything?) and because of sensory overload, and inattentional blindness, attention takes some creative thinking in order to effectively market yourself. 

People are so busy and their attention is often diverted quickly within moments. (Think about watching tv while on your phone and your partner or friend is talking to you. You may be able to maintain two out of the three at the same time, but something has to give!)

Attention is measured in the level of engagement someone has with what you’ve posted or put out into the world – did they click? Did they give you their details? Did they mention you in a post or @ someone in a comment? All are increasingly good signs that they are engaged.

How do I measure The Attention Metric?

There are many academic and business groups who have been researching and providing insight into why the Attention metric is important. Google has found that there is a direct positive relationship between visual attention and the recall of the consumer. In other words, when someone looks at your ad, with more than a glance, they have better recall about your company and what the ad said. The longer the attention is, the more likely you are to have a response. This is why ads that are piggybacked with great content are more successful. 

Technology is getting better and better when it comes to tracking this metric with items like T-Vision’s head tracking in televisions to Lumen’s eye tracking on mobile phones and laptops – the future is bright.

But what about now? 

Many agents mistake the ‘Facebook reach’ as a viable source to tell you how many people have seen your post. This feature only measures anyone scrolling by which means they could be looking or mindlessly scrolling – it does not help you measure attention. The same goes for the number of people who have seen your ad which Facebook provides. 

With a very busy world that is constantly begging for your customer’s attention, ‘seeing’ an ad is just not enough.

What is great is that there is technology specifically for estate agents to track how many people have clicked on a blog you’ve posted on social media. 

You are also able to see in digital ads (Facebook, Google) how many people have clicked on your ads. This is a good place to start when measuring attention – see which ads work best (get the most attention) and change the ones that don’t have a good response. 

For paper leaflets, studies show between 7-13% of leaflets sent to the home cause a conversation within the family and less people actually take action by contacting you. The best way to track anything that is paper is to provide a QR code on every leaflet that leads the person to a trackable site or form to fill out. Otherwise, its back to excel lists and exhausting admin.

In short, as the digital age continues, more and more ways of tracking attention will be introduced into estate agency but there are already ways to begin measuring the attention your brand creates now so that you can increase it and grow your business.

Today is the best day to start any new project that will help your business reach your intended audience.