‘ve been running a simple little “test” on my marketing that's surprisingly accurate at predicting what's going to work and what's not.

It's not infallible of course. Life (and marketing) just isn't that simple.

But it does give me a pretty reliable guide to what elements of my marketing are going to be effective and which I need to rework.

I think it might work for you too.

But before I tell you what it is, I'd like to explain a bit about why I think it works.

The Battle For Your Attention

I'm sure you've heard this before – but it's true. We get bombarded with more marketing than ever before these days. An order of magnitude more than even just a few years ago.

As a result, we've learned to ignore most marketing.

We either avoid it like when we fast-forward through the ads on Sky+ or Tivo. Or we ignore it like banner ads on websites or the flyers that drop out of magazines.

Out of all the email newsletters you subscribe to, for example, how many do you really read?

Probably not all that many, right?

As a result, the biggest challenge we face in marketing isn't connecting with our customers. There are more ways, more marketing channels, more options than ever before for getting our message to our clients.

Our biggest challenge is getting their attention. Getting them to actually take notice of our marketing and take action.

So What Gets People's Attention?

Why would you willingly give your attention to a piece of marketing?

Well, our attention often gets diverted for a short time by the shocking, or the shiny and new.

But for something to consistently capture our attention, it has to be valuable in some sense.

On my shelf at home, I've got a copy of an advert for a financial magazine that's years old.

Why? Because there are 12 pages of useful articles in that ad (followed by 4 pages describing the additional value you'd get by subscribing).

Which newsletters do I read?

The ones that provide me with valuable information in important areas of my business and life.

Essentially, every time I watch something or read something I make a judgement in the first few seconds: is this going to enhance my life somehow?

If I don't get the feeling it is, I'll switch it off, close it up or contrive to ignore it.

If I think it's got something useful for me, then I'll give it my attention. But by something useful I don't mean it's promoting something useful – it has to have something useful in it itself.

Valuable Marketing (to you) is Marketing that Adds Value (to your clients)

So that's the simple test I now apply.

Every letter I write. Every email I send out. Anything that goes up on my website.

I ask the question: “is this piece of marketing actually valuable in its own right to my potential clients?”

If it is, I know it's got a good chance of getting some attention. If it's not, I know I really ought to redo it somehow to add in the value that'll get it opened, read or watched.

You should try asking the same question for your own marketing.