We’re so used to ignoring things that it’s difficult to get people to stop and take notice of your offers.

Think about all the things you routinely ignore:

• Sirens on emergency vehicles. Maybe there’s a bit of rubber necking, trying to work out where they’re headed but that’s it
• Alarms on cars and buldings – the reaction is “they’re always going off, probably another false alarm”
• Pop ups on websites – we pay more attention to where the “Close” or “X” button is in the split second these are open than we do to what’s on offer
• Pop unders – those annoying sites like TripAdvisor that open a new window in the vain hope that you won’t instantly close it
• Interstitials – the pages that show up when you click the link in Google but before you get to the page you really wanted to get to. You hunt for the “skip this” link or press refresh (because that often gets rid of them) or click the back button
• Adverts on forums and sites you regularly visit – with the possible exception of sponsored posts in Facebook, but most you just tune out of
• Auto starting videos – again, it’s hunt for the pause button
• The list goes on

The thing is, we’re bombarded with adverts and messages.

Far too many to cope with.

So we quickly develop our own coping mechanisms to filter out as many as possible. And if the occasional baby gets thrown out with the bath water and we miss something “good”, so be it. There’ll be another equally “good” thing along soon and we might spot that.

That’s happening to you.

And it’s happening to your site visitors as well.

There are a very few ways to get round this.

• Some sites make their look and feel ultra busy with flashing banners and all sorts of other eye candy.
• Some sites like Huffington Post and Buzzfeed give you lots of choices so that you can choose where to be distracted
• Weave links in to your content. Sites like Wikipedia train us to click links in context and explore further. That works well if you do it subtly enough and mix in informational links with promotional links and curiosity ones where you just say something like “this book might help”
• Lead up to the link – making your posts a bit like a mini sales page
• Tell a story – that can get people to drop their guard and it’s one of the reasons so many sales letters start with what seems like a person’s life history
• Use a pattern interrupt. An NLP term for doing something that’s not the norm and therefore interrupts the patterns we all run so we don’t have to rediscover common things like how to greet somone or how to open a door (and, obviously, rather more complicated things as well)

Which works best will depend on a mix of you and your target audience.

But the critical thing is that you can’t become part of the background.

And just becoming louder (like all those alarms we all ignore) isn’t the answer to not becoming part of the background.

Subtle is often the order of the day

Brash sales pages, big promises, scarcity (real or imagined) all have their place.

But so do subtler links.

Which are my personal preferred method.

Sometimes they’re a pattern interrupt – I use that verbally face to face on a regular basis. It works fairly well on the written page as well.

The method I use face to face takes advantage of the ambiguity of the English language.

Lots of words can have mutiple meanings depending on context. So all I do is deliberately mis-interpret the context and that provides enough interruption to get the other person’s attention.

Often that then leads to a tangential part of the conversation where we go off somewhere seemingly at random before getting back to the point.

You might have noticed I do it on my blog posts as well at times.

Then there’s the method I really like on web pages:

Links.

We’re so used to clicking on them – links in Wikipedia, links to reviews on Amazon, bigger pictures, videos, anything new.

They can sneak up on people very easily and their guard is down because so many links are benign.

But with the right pre-amble, the conversion on the product or service you’re offering from the link can be really good.

Because you’ve “warmed up” the potential buyer and got them thinking in their own mind that it would be neat to have whatever it is you’ve talked about.

Try it when you next create content for your website.