Excuse me!

Sometimes we can find an important marketing lesson in the most mundane of things.

For example, take my visit to the gym a few weeks ago....

The gym I go to is in the basement of an old warehouse-style building that, once upon a time, was a printing works for the Bank of England.

Like most multi-tenanted buildings, they've got a small reception desk on the way in where you're supposed to sign in via a touchscreen device that asks you for your name, email, and inside leg measurement.

Now, presumably because I'm a regular there, I usually just get waved through without having to sign in.

But not this time.

This time, the usual security guy was off and someone else was standing in for him.

Anyway, I did my usual thing of walking straight through the open door and descended into the depths of the building.

I was vaguely aware of some shouting somewhere in the distance, but I thought nothing of it.

And then, after I'd already entered the gym and was about to push open the door to the changing room.....

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

Turning round I found myself face-to-face with a rather breathless security guard.

Once he'd recovered enough to be able to speak, he began reprimanding me for not having signed in.

I resisted the temptation to suggest that he might benefit from joining the gym himself, given how out of breath he was from the short run to catch me up, and instead explained that his colleague had previously told me not to bother signing in.

"Didn't you hear me calling out," the security guy asked?

"No," I replied.

"I was calling out 'Excuse me, sir'.... Several times. You must've heard me."

Now, here's the thing....

Technically, I probably had heard him calling out "Excuse me, sir!" But the important point is that I hadn't registered what he was actually saying.

After all, this was in the middle of London.

And if you spent your time in London (or any other busy city) turning round everytime someone raised their voice, then you'd be forever looking over your shoulder (and walking into lamp posts).

So our brains tend to filter out all but the most important sounds.

This is a known thing in the world of psychology, and it has a name.....

It's called the cocktail party effect.

If you've ever been at a cocktail party (or any similar gathering) you'll understand why this name was chosen.

Picture the scene....

You're at a party and you're standing there talking to someone. And you're surrounded by all sorts of background noise.

And, for the most part, you're able to filter it all out and concentrate on what the other guest is saying to you.

But as soon as someone on the other side of the room says your name, it somehow cuts through the background noise....

.... causing you to turn round to see who's calling you.

The cocktail party effect was first identified and described by the British scientist Colin Cherry in the 1950s.

Cherry conducted experiments to understand how people are able to focus their auditory attention on a single source of sound amid a cacophony of background noises – an ability that seemed particularly remarkable in social settings like cocktail parties, where multiple conversations happen simultaneously.

Cherry's experiments involved getting his subject to put on headphones and then they would hear different messages simultaneously in each ear (a technique known as dichotic listening).

Cherry asked the subjects to focus on the message being played in one ear while ignoring the other.

He found that participants could indeed focus on just the one message and effectively filter out the other.

However, when the sound of someone saying the subject's name was played into the ear they were meant to be ignoring, it was still possible to capture their attention, indicating that some level of processing was happening to the ignored sounds as well.

In other words, Cherry's experiment showed that our brains take in everything that our ears pick up, but it filters out the unimportant bits – so that we don't get sensory overload.

The cocktail party effect explains why I wasn't aware of the security guard calling out "Excuse me, sir".

Whereas if he'd called out "Excuse me, David", I'd almost certainly have noticed and would have turned round to see who wanted me.

Now, although the cocktail party effect is mostly talked about in terms of the things we hear, it also applies to other senses – such as sight.

For example, when we are scrolling through posts on social media channels we see everything, but we tend to filter out anything that looks like generic content or advertising.

Social networks are the cocktail parties of the 21st century and our brains have learnt to ignore the background "noise" created by posts that don't seem relevant to us.

So, as business owners, how can we break through the filter and get ourselves heard when we create content or run ads on these platforms?

Well the answer is that we need to call out to people by name.

Of course, we can't literally use people's names in our content, but we can get close to it by personalising our messaging in other ways.

For example, we can target our content at people from specific professions or industries.

I don't know about you, but if I see a LinkedIn post that says it has something special for (in my case) marketing consultants, then I tend to stop and look.

Locations can be used as a visual interrupt too.

At the moment, someone in my local area is advertising a fitness class and they use a video that shows them walking out of the local station and down the high street. That catches my eye because I recognise the locations in the advert.

I even saw one post at the weekend which said it had a special offer for people of a specific age. And guess what? It was my exact age – so I noticed the content.

Being able to "call out" to your audience in your marketing is one of the many reasons why it pays to go niche in your business.

The more specific you are about identifying your ideal client, the easier it is to create content and advertising that will break through that ideal client's filters and get you noticed.

And if choosing a niche and identifying your ideal client so you can create marketing that resonates with them is something you need some help with, then you should check out my book Building an Automated Lead Machine.

It contains detailed guidance that shows you how to do this, plus practical frameworks for creating marketing messages that cut through the noise and connect with your perfect customers.

Click here to find out more about the book.

It's the perfect way to make sure your marketing doesn't get lost in the crowd.

All the best,
David.