How many times do you need to invite someone to do something before they say yes?

If you are inviting me to my grandsons birthday party, the answer was once.  But if you are inviting me to spend money on a new phone, you better keep inviting me over and over again.Calvin and the blocks

What’s the difference?  The birthday party invite was via Facebook. My daughter created a private event and invited family via the Facebook app. I am emotionally hooked already and I looked at my calender and decided to make the road trip.

It was a personal invite to something I wanted to do.  It was also an event so I could plan it.

Now about that new phone.  Sure, I’d like a new phone but my current phone works fine-enough.  Not perfect, but fine-enough. I have other priorities on how to spend my money right now.  And while I’m not as emotionally attached to my phone as my family, if something happened to my phone, I’d have to replace it. And I would spend the money.

So the ads I see and hear inviting me to buy a new phone are not motivating me to take action today, but they are keeping me informed so when the day arrives,  I will have ideas on what phones I want to check out.   I will buy on my time schedule, not the advertisers schedule.

This is the concept behind all the ads we see, hear, read…invite and invite again. Repeat and repeat some more.

Understanding the difference between these two kinds of invites is what separates successful business people from those who are short sighted.

Oh and by the way, I’m going to follow this concept of repeat and repeat again this year with a series I wrote in February on Advertising with WOWO Radio.  Some of you never saw that series and for those of you that did, I’ll be updating it as I present an updated summer version starting in a week or two.