Are You Following The Three Second Rule?

By Perry Rearick, Chief Editor, Follow Your Buyer

Are you following the three second rule? Not the three second rule that you may be thinking about.

There is a strong consensus among digital marketers that we have three seconds to capture the attention of a prospect with our messaging. If we don’t, they move on.

Our hyper-sensitivity to this narrow window has us do things like…

• place our brand name in the first line of everything we do.
• cram the entire sales process into a single piece of content.
• try to fast forward the prospect to the end of their buyer’s journey.
• speak only about ourselves in the copy we create.
• include a “buy now” call to action in every message.

None of these tactics work!

The objective for the first three seconds we receive from a prospect, is to have them give us more time.

What works, is projecting an understanding of our prospects by…

• demonstrating empathy.
• stating a problem they have that we can solve.
• telling them something they don’t know.
• showing that we care, not just saying we do.
• describing a set of conditions they are facing.

It’s not the tube of toothpaste, it’s the image of someone’s bright smile.
It’s not a bucket of fertilizer, it’s the photo of a beautiful, green lawn.
It’s not a vial of medicine, it’s the recovering cancer patient.

We only have three seconds! Help your prospect envision something better than what they have, and they’ll gift you with more time and attention.

Oh, as for that other three second rule, this is a judgement-free zone!