Ten Seconds
All of your marketing matters for about ten seconds. They’re incredibly important seconds.
Today, out there in the universe somewhere, someone is going to have a problem.
You don’t know who. You don’t know why, or exactly when. But at some point today, someone is going to look up from a computer screen, or stare off into space while on the subway, or suddenly stop during a conversation and realize that they have a problem.
That’s when the ten second period begins. It ends when they form their first vague plan of what, in the most general sense, they should do about it.
For instance, let’s say that the person in question is part of the team at a venture-backed startup that’s developing a product that utilizes the Internet of Things. In this case, it’s an oven you can monitor and control remotely, from your phone. They’ve received a couple of million dollars in venture funding, built their first prototype, filled out their team, and everything seems to be going great. But then the CEO just happens to read an article somewhere about how vulnerable devices like this can be to hacking, and about the legal liability this creates.
He then thinks the following things, in the following sequence:
- Wow — that’s really bad
- Wait a minute — the could happen to our product, and us
- I really should talk to someone about this, and figure out what to do.Who?
Step 3 takes about ten seconds. And it is what all your marketing has been aimed at. it’s an incredibly brief little period when your firm absolutely has to be right there in the mind of this person, for the right reasons and in the right way. What happens during those ten seconds are the entire point of all the marketing you do.
There’s a great little speech in the movie Armageddon, in which the President is telling the entire world that NASA is going to try to send a shuttle into space to blow up the giant asteroid that will otherwise, you know, end the human race. Here’s part of what he says:
All of you praying with us need to know that everything that can be done to prevent this disaster is being called into service. The human thirst for excellence, knowledge, every step up the ladder of science, every adventurous reach into space, all of our combined modern technologies and imaginations, even the wars that we’ve fought have provided us the tools to wage this terrible battle.
Marketing works the same way. All the website work, all the events, advertising, branding, positioning, email alerts, blog posts, articles, white papers, networking, everything — is all aimed at this unbelievably important ten-second period when someone somewhere is trying to figure out who can help him with a problem.
If he thinks of your firm, and thinks something along the lines of “Those guys are really good — I should call them” then what follows could be millions of dollars in billings, growth, expansion, success, and long, prosperous careers. If he doesn’t? Well, maybe you could go in-house. Or teach.
Or find a startup somewhere …