by Scott Howard | Oct 14, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights
Continuing this series on 7 Timeless Marketing Rules, today a deeper dive into the concept of frequency that we started talking about yesterday.
First a reminder, Reach is how many different people will see/hear your message and Frequency is how often each person will see/hear your message.
Our brains are set up to filter out of our conscious recall most of the thousands of marketing messages we are exposed to each day. Some studies say we exposed to over 5000 ads each day. Others say we only are paying attention to less than 200 true ads. That last study I linked to says only 12 ads make an impression on us each day.
Let’s play a game for a second. Jot down 10 ads you have seen or heard in the past 24 hours. Do it right now, don’t wait for 10 ads to appear on your screen or elsewhere, we’re talking about recall and retention.
That was hard. And I bet some of those are false memories. You think you saw that ad today, but it was a couple days ago or longer.
This is why we don’t sell one ad on the radio or TV or Internet or nearly anywhere. Our incredible memory machines (our brains) are able to filter out stuff that we don’t care about at the moment.
Our brains are also able to help us recall things we didn’t even know we knew. But here’s how that works in the advertising and marketing world and how you need to plan your marketing to be the most effective. 
About 10 years ago, my wife needed a special piece of glass for a project she was creating. She asked me who to contact and I told her about City Glass, a company that has been advertising on one radio station since I was a teenager. I never bought anything from City Glass, and wasn’t planning on it. But City Glass was top of mind due to their continuous advertising for at least 40 years on one radio station.
This summer when our house heated up to 80 degrees, we called Doc Dancer, a local HVAC company that will be 70 years old next year. It wasn’t their advertising that created Top Of Mind Awareness of Doc Dancer for my wife, it was because the owners go to the same church we do. Interestingly, there are a couple other HVAC companies that are associated with our church, but neither came to my wife’s mind when we needed someone to diagnose and repair our A/C. It must have been the repeated positive exposure to the owners of Doc Dancer that created Top Of Mind Awareness and created action to the point of us calling them and spending out money with them.
There are additional reasons for more than one invitation that I’ll explore in the future, but simply to build Top Of Mind Awareness for future business is an extremely important reason as demonstrated in those two examples.
by Scott Howard | Oct 13, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
This week we are going to continue our deep dive into the Timeless Marketing Rules I shared last week and today we’ll look at Timeless Marketing Rule #4: Reach & Frequency.
Most media salespeople worth the time listening to will use Reach and Frequency as a guideline for success. I’m not talking about salespersons success, I’m referring to the success of your advertising campaign.
First let’s define the two terms:
Reach. This is the total number of different people your campaign could reach.
Frequency. This is the number of times each individual person will see or hear your message.
Here’s an example of how this can work using WOWO Radio:
Reach & Frequency on WOWO example
For this example I told my software program to use certain limits, such as adults age 25 and older who listen between 6 and 9 in the morning to Fort Wayne’s Morning News which airs Monday thru Friday on WOWO. The total number of people who listen who fit that criteria is 68,963. Using the schedule of 10 commercials in one week, 44,694 will hear your commercial. That is the reach for one week. Over the course of a year, that reach increases to 66,261. The Reach of your advertising campaign cannot exceed the total number of people who listen, which is that 68,963 number for this example.
Frequency is also mentioned in this illustration. If this campaign were to run for one week, the average person (all 44,694 of them) would hear your ad an average of 3 times. Over a year, that number also increases. The average person (all 66,261 of them) would hear your ad an average of 106.7 times.
Please don’t confuse Reach and Frequency. Both are important but a balance is needed.
Too often I see businesses try and reach too many people without enough frequency. Last week I was talking with a business owner who told me about this great advertising package that was supposed to reach well over 100,000 people that he bought. When we looked at it together, we were able to see that his ad may have been seen and heard by over 100,000 people, but there was not enough frequency of exposure to have an impact on any of them.
Besides, he couldn’t handle all of that new business. Ten new customers a week would be tops. We’re going to talk next week about balancing the reach and frequency numbers in his favor. And I’ll have more or this tomorrow.
by Scott Howard | Oct 9, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
The timeless marketing rule that we’re going to look at today is so basic, yet so many business owners miss this.
3. If you want people to show up at something but you don’t invite them, they won’t show up. This is one huge principle I preach about advertising. You have to invite people to become customers.
In conversations with business people I lay out the following scenario:
You’re getting married. You pick a date, get a dress, order flowers, notify the bridesmaids and groomsmen, reserve the church, the minister, plan the reception, order the cake and food and even make a guest list. You do everything right except one thing: You never send out the invitations. How many people do you think will show up?
Now most business people see the problem right away, no one is going to come to your wedding unless you mail those invitations. It doesn’t matter that you planned for 200 or 1000 guests… the answer is still zero.
What a waste. All that planning, all that food, all that money. Sure you can still get married but…
Transfer this line of thinking to starting a new business. You do everything except invite people with an advertising and marketing plan. You open the doors on your first day and there is no one waiting to do business with you because you didn’t invite them.
The invite is critical. Your business will close if you have no customers. You will not have any customers if you don’t invite them.
Marketing and advertising isn’t an extra expense, it’s as crucial as any other part of your business. More on this series next week. In the meantime, if you want help, contact me.
by Scott Howard | Oct 8, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Digging deeper today into Timeless Marketing Rule #2: Don’t Sell, Help Them Buy.
This is the 2nd of the Timeless Marketing Rules I mentioned this week:
2. People don’t like to be SOLD something. But they usually will accept and welcome help BUYING something. Big Difference.
Here’s where Human Relationship Principles come into play. We are annoyed by pushy salespeople. Even when we are ready to buy something, if the salesperson is a jerk we lose trust and may even delay buying.
Sounds Like a Good Deal?
There are some stores I refuse to go to because the salespeople are too annoying. That act as desperate vultures who see me and anyone else as fresh meat and they are ready to pounce on to see how much money they can extract from me.
Or so it seems.
There are other stores that you walk in and are desperate to find someone to help you find what you need. This is the opposite problem. Sometimes I want advice to decide if I should buy this or buy that. But they only have know-nothing clerks or order takers who are clueless about this, that and everything!
Apply this to your marketing and advertising outreach.
If you and your company are truly experts and knowledgeable beyond knowing how to read the label on the stuff you sell, then you can help people buy. That’s what we want.
by Scott Howard | Oct 6, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights
Last week I gave a presentation to about 40 business people and I mentioned the phrase, Timeless Human Relationship Principles. So today I’m going to share with you some of those but rephrase them as Timeless Marketing Rules.
They are based on Human Relationship Principles.
- People like it when you talk to them. Better yet, talk with them, not at them. If your advertising is yelling, shouting, screaming, or simply annoying, stop it and get real with people.
- People don’t like to be SOLD something. But they usually will accept and welcome help BUYING something. Big Difference.
- If you want people to show up at something but you don’t invite them, they won’t show up. This is one huge principle I preach about advertising. You have to invite people to become customers.
- There is truth to the concepts of reach and frequency. Reach is how many different people will see/hear your message. Frequency is how often each individual person will see/hear your message. One day I’ll write about this again, or you can ask me about how to apply reach and frequency to your marketing.
- However, one tip on frequency right now: One invitation is rarely enough. That’s why we don’t sell one commercial and expect results. That’s like going on just one date and expecting them to marry you then and there.
- People want to trust other people. They want to trust you and your business and the stuff you sell. Your marketing and business practices need to consistently build trust.
- You need to communicate with people using the medium they prefer. Some people like texting, some never leave a voicemail. Others use twitter, some rarely read their email. These human relationship principles and timeless marketing rules don’t change with technology. That’s why they are timeless. But you need to be aware of individuals communication preferences.
I’ll dig more in depth into each of these in the days ahead. Your Comments and Questions are always welcome.
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
TuneIn
Deezer
CastBox