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- People don’t read...they scan
TGIF, and welcome back to Marketing Qualified! Here’s what we cooked up for you today.
People don’t read. They scan. Here are 3 ways to make your content more scanable.
Speed is greater than accuracy. Why you should make decisions faster (according to math).
👀 People don’t read
People don’t read. They scan.
When it comes to online content, people go through stages:
1) Scroll the feed.
You have to use a pattern interrupt to stop them. (This could be a hook or visuals)
2) Scan the content
You captured their interest; now they’ll quickly check if you’re going to deliver on your promise.
3) Read the entire thing (this is RARE)
It only happens if you meet the expectations you set with your hook and deliver value as they scan.
A lot of marketers focus a ton of their effort on phase 1. They spend a long time coming up with the perfect hook to stop the scroll.
But today, we want to focus on phase 2: making sure your content is scanable.
Here are 3 tips for making easy to scan content.
1) Bionic reading
Bionic reading was created by Swiss typographic designer Renato Casutt. It works by strategically bolding parts of words to make text easier to read.
Because the human brain does not read every single letter in a word.
It looks for patterns and then fills in the rest.
When you know this, you can highlight the most important words or sentences so people can scan your content more easily.
2) F pattern
Most people scan content in an F-shaped pattern.
Strategically lay out your content to capitalize on this.
3) Diagrams
As the old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Sometimes, a simple diagram can help you get your point across faster and makes your idea easier for the reader to digest.
Here’s a great example from the Seattle Subway.
They could have chosen to write a long article waxing poetic about the advantages of public transit over cars.
OR
They share this simple digram and their audience immediately understands why they spend so much of their lives stuck sitting in traffic.
📰 In the news this week.
🧩 Why games are the NYT’s top of funnel strategy.
✍️ Biden signs TikTok ‘ban’ bill into law.
🔎 7 ways to elevate your responsive search ads.
🍪 Google delays cookie phase out once again.
🤖 Meta brings advanced AI chatbot to all of its apps.
🏃♂️ Speed is greater than accuracy.
Imagine two people working on a marketing team.
Samantha cares more about speed than accuracy. She makes decisions based on minimal information and moves quickly.
With this strategy, she’s right 70% of the time. Meaning 1/3 of the time, she’s wrong. (Which seems like a lot, right?)
But she makes 2 decisions every hour.
On the flip side, Aaron cares about accuracy.
He takes his time and gathers as much information as possible before making decisions because he always wants to be correct.
Aaron is right 90% of the time. (Almost 30% more often than Samantha)
But he only makes 1 decision every hour.
Who’s more productive?
Let’s do the math.
Samantha:
70% accuracy, 2 times per hour
(0.7 x 2) = 1.4 correct decisions per hour
Aaron:
90% accuracy, 1 time per hour
(0.9 x 1) = 0.9 correct decisions per hour
In the end, Samantha is actually right 56% more often than Aaron.
She gets more done.
This illustrates that speed is greater than accuracy.
Now, we’re not saying every single decision should be made with speed in mind. Certain decisions, like ones that have a massive impact on the company or the lives of the people working there, should receive careful scrutiny.
But let’s be honest: As marketers, most of our decisions are not make-or-break. We’re not saving lives performing brain surgery.
Instead, we’re worried about things like increasing our conversion rate by a few percentage points or reducing the number of unsubscribes on our emails.
Most marketing decisions are reversible. You can rework the ads. You can edit the post. You can tweak the landing page.
Plus, failure might even provide valuable insights that help you learn.
Yet, many B2B marketers get stuck in analysis paralysis mode. They’re scared to make decisions. Especially ones that push the envelope or are outside their comfort zone.
So, if you catch yourself constantly seeking more data or information before making any decisions, remember the math.
When it comes to marketing, speed is greater than accuracy.
😂 Marketing meme of the week.
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