I wish everybody would leave me alone…

I’m sick & tired of everybody trying to get my attention. Today, on the way to a meeting, I heard no less than 100 radio commercials, passed 50 billboards, saw dozens of electronic flashing signs at local retailers, had pop-up banner ads on my computer, 57 e-mail solicitations, received no less than 10 pieces of direct mail, had to ignore ad after ad in the morning newspaper, and endured at least 30 ads on T.V. while watching the evening news.

That doesn’t even include the telephone call I got from my phone company asking if I wanted to change long distance providers or the text message I got on my cell phone telling me that I can download my favorite ring-tone from their wonderful company.

Oh yeah, I have a beautiful wife, 2 great kids and bills to pay.

Does this sound familiar to you?

Most people have no clue how many people are trying to get their attention until they consciously focus on counting “attention grabbers” in their daily lives. Most adults have become so callused to marketing and advertising that they completely ignore most of it.

Without boring you to death, I’d like to briefly explain how this works…

Our brains have several levels of consciousness. Delta, Theta, Alpha and Beta. Delta is the lowest of our brain wave frequencies and Beta is the fastest. It is commonly believed in the world of brain wave research that we are in all 4 states of consciousness simultaneously. But - and this is the important part - we only observe, or pay attention to one at a time.

For the sake of keeping this relevant to marketing your self storage facility, we’ll discuss the highest two frequencies – Alpha and Beta.

Most of us spend time observing the Alpha and Beta states throughout our lives. It is said that we spend most of our days in the Alpha state of mind. Since it is a lower frequency, I’ll call it a conscious sleep. We can function normally in this state and perform most of our daily actions. Think of it like a personal auto-pilot mechanism.

Have you ever driven to the office and – after you had arrived – thought, “I don’t remember driving to the office today”? At a more basic level, we do things like breathe and walk without actively thinking about performing those actions. This is because our brains are trained to do an amazing number of things without conscious thought!

What happens when a dog or a child runs out in front of your car when you’re in this state? You pay immediate, intense attention to taking a different action than what you’re accustomed to.

In short, when we are actively focusing on something and thinking, we are observing our Beta frequency. When we are doing things passively, like driving to work and watching television commercials we are allowing our Alpha state to take care of business for us.

Knowing that your potential customers are in Alpha most of the time, the challenge becomes snapping them out of Alpha and into Beta so they’ll listen to or read your advertisement with full attention.

Without doing this, you’re message will be likely be heard or seen, but if they’re not paying attention to it, it might as well fall on deaf ears or blind eyes!

So the first part of cracking the marketing code is called ATTENTION or INTERRUPT.

Getting a person’s full attention is done through another part of the brain called the Reticular Activation System (RAS).

In our next message, we’ll discuss the second part of the marketing code, which is gaining INTEREST or ENGAGING them into your ad. This is every bit as important as getting their attention in the first place. Because, after you’ve interrupted them, you only have a few seconds to keep their attention before they move on to their next interruption.