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Can you and should you "buy" attention?
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5 Answers
What you are asking is when should you buy marketing or PR since both results in attention and requires some investment. Generally you should consider investing in visibility when that visibility can be used to accomplish a goal. That goal could be, though not limited to, to sell a product, sell a property (including stock), sell an idea or position, or sell yourself (politics). Once you have identified a current need to change more people than you can change on your own it is time to invest in a resource. You then match the resource to what you need to accomplish limited by your budget and that should dictate the resource and optimize your budget.
Brian,
these are two questions that I would like to answer independently of each other.
1. Can you buy attention?
2. Should you buy attention?
The answer to question 1 is simple: Yes. Of course one can - at least statistically. There are enough people/companies that do marketing, PR, product placement, and the likes. Thes people/companies e.g. sell tweets by celebrities to their followers. A simpler scenario involves radio or TV advertisements, adverts in general. Experience shows that this resonates to some reasonable extent. So, statistically, you can buy attention.
SHOULD one buy attention? Now we are talking ethics. The simple answer is that this is hedonistic behavior. Unluckily the world is not that simple and, even more complicated, your offering mght be far superior to that of all those hedonistic peeps ... So should you? As a matter of principle: No - if you want to survive or thrive - unluckily yes. Unless you found something better, that is...
Cheers from down under
Thomas
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with investing in visibility for yourself, your organization, your products, or your services.
In making the business decision to invest in "attention," the real issue is whether the visibility is positioned to help differentiate. That is, will you get lost among a herd of competitors who pretty much all look like you? Or, will you find yourself surrounded by mega-competitors who can out-credential you?
If the attention, whatever form it takes, is not differentiating, it's probably not worth the investment.
Can you? Sure. Should you? Absolutely.
I agree with Art. And I say that the Number One objective of marketing should be to Differentiate your product/service from the other guys. Which is the Number One thing every potential buyer WANTS to know — what makes you special, unique, different than your competitors.
Few marketers actually do that. But all marketers should be doing it.
Al Shultz
http://www.alshultz.com
Both are important to survive in this world irrespective of personal/professional environments. Only if you have the ability to buy (CAN) then I believe you SHOULD attempt to buy attention.
Get attention from your KID or from your CLIENT is as challenging as aware with the short-attention span everyone has these days.
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