This is a very gray time of year. Where I live, all the leaves have fallen off the trees. Just a few weeks ago, they were displaying brilliant colors. The color has all gone away, and what is left are stiff gray twigs sticking up over a gray landscape covered by a gray sky. Gray just isn’t that exciting. In fact, it just makes me want to yawn.

Has your marketing turned gray with your customers? Has it outlived its impact so much so that the only reaction you get from them is a yawn? Right now is a great time to make plans to start something new to market past the blasé gray. Where do you start? First, understand that marketing campaigns have a shelf life. Even the cleverest marketing starts to lose its impact right after it has saturated your target market. So you have to plan on changing out your campaigns on a schedule that keeps fresh marketing in front of your audience.

The second aspect to understand about marketing today is you are competing with many, many other marketers for the short attention of consumers. You have to make a splash with what you are showing them, and you must convey critical information in a short amount of time. How long is your marketing window open? It depends on your medium. For instance, recent statistics say that for a one-minute video, 16% of people stop watching at the halfway mark and 66% will watch it to the end. If the video is two minutes long, 24% will stop watching halfway through and 59% will watch it to the end. Double the length to four minutes and 35% will stop watching halfway through and 50% will watch it to the end.^* (You should measure your video to see what your analytics reflect about your customers.) From a marketing perspective, this should tell you that you need to make your sales pitch very early in your video and keep the length short.

What is the critical information you need to convey in that short space? You have to answer these three questions: What are you selling, why do they need it and how do they get it? Video is just one medium and the attention span for other mediums is much shorter than it is for video. How long do you look at social media or browser-based ads? It may be just a split second. Those questions have to be addressed in that glance. So your marketing has to first, catch the attention of consumers. This is where creativity is used to garner a second glance, but you can’t just stop with a pretty picture, a catchy phrase or a memorable jingle. You have to give the consumer a reason to find out more and give them an easy way to take the next step to do so. In other words, collect more than their attention and reap their interest. Pull them closer to a sale and create a lead. That is the job of marketing.

If you find that your marketing is on the gray side, take some time to map out a new strategy. Plan to launch and then re-launch campaigns throughout the year. Give your consumers a reason to take a look at you. Make your point in a catchy way in a short amount of time. Answer the three questions with your marketing and make it easy for the consumer to take the next step with you. This will add color to your marketing plan and help you market past the gray.

*Video in Business Benchmark Report 2023, vidyard.com/blog/video-length