Copyright 2006 Derek Naylor

Have you ever been in an airport or another crowded place with hundreds of conversations, announcements and other noises occurring, and from out of nowhere heard your name called?

If you have a common name, this probably happens to you on many occasions

What do you do when this happens? You instantly stop what youre doing and look for the source, right? In a crowded place like that, you quickly scan the environment to see if you were the intended target. If you dont see anybody you know or have no reason to be called over the intercom, you quickly go back to whatever you were previously doing.

Or, if youre a parent, what about the child crying in the middle of the night when youre in a deep sleep? That sound instantly snaps you out of your sleep into awareness ready to take action, doesnt it?

How about this one? Youve just purchased a new car. It doesnt matter what make, model or color it is, after your purchase you suddenly notice the exact same car all over town.

I could go on for pages about similar occurrences, but I wontyou get the point.

Understanding whats happening in that type of situation is critical to marketing success.

In our last message we discussed the first step of marketing success called, Interrupt or Attention.

Although it sounds easy enough to do, doing it CORRECTLY is not so easy

To understand the art of interrupting or getting attention, lets go back to the gooey grey matter that lies between our ears.

Do you remember Alpha and Beta from the last message? In order to snap a person from Alpha to Beta, you must understand a section of the brain called the Reticular Activation System (RAS).

The Reticular Activator is like your own super-powered search engine. More powerful than anything youll find on the internet for sure. The RAS is a network like group of cells in our sub-conscious brain that functions up to 800x faster than our conscious cells can. In fact, brain scientists believe that these signals are sent at over 100,000 MPH! No, I didnt type an extra zero or two there ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND MILES PER HOUR! The formula one race cars average around 220 MPH to put that in perspective for you.

The RAS is constantly looking for things that you desire, are familiar, dangerous or problematic. It is scanning input from your 5 senses and immediately sorting it by order of importance. This is why you can clearly hear your name in the presence of thousands of other words coming into your ears. This is why you can be in a deep sleep and suddenly be awakened with the soft cry of your child yet stay deep asleep with traffic, sirens, television and other common noises coming in from your environment. Pretty interesting stuff right?

So, why on earth is this relevant to you marketing your self-storage facility?

Ill get to the point

Right now, your prospects have told their RAS (whether they know it or not) that clutter is a problem. They have told their RAS that they wish they could park their new car in the garage. They have told their RAS that they wish they had a place to store their business supplies. And so on.

By interrupting them with familiar, problematic or desired situations, their RAS automatically, without fail, makes them pay immediate attention to your message.

Congratulations, youve successfully gained your prospects attention

But, thats only the first step. The next part of this equation is to ENGAGE them or gain their INTEREST into your advertisement. This is a critical step that I believe is a major cause for advertising failure today.

In our next message well discuss proven methods for ENGAGING or gaining INTEREST into your advertisement.