In advertising parlance we talk about depth and frequency. Depth being how many people we reach on each occasion. Frequency being how often we reach them.
It’s great to let zillions of people know about our start up as quickly as we can. We may even be lucky enough to get some kind of viral campaign working for our startup, we may be featured in the newspaper, on techcrunch or we might even be lucky enough get a TV spot.
After the event here’s what happens: People cook dinner, pick up the kids from school, pay the bills, kick the dog and get on with life. They have a life to live and they get on with it. Our start up doesn’t really matter to them… straight away.
Consumer awareness goes something like this:
Exposure 1: “That’s a cool idea / product / concept”
Exposure 2: “Oh, yeh, I must remember to check that out”
Exposure 3: “There it is again, might be worth having a look”
Exposure 4: “hmm, Ok – I’ll look when I’m shopping next / on line next”
Exposure 5: ….They finally act, and go look at, investigate, touch, feel, try….”
After many exposures we have “a chance’ of selling to them.
Sure some people check it out first time, some buy straight away, but the large majority need reminded, over and over again. It doesn’t mean – go out and spam them or do terrible interruption marketing. It means this; “have frequent and relevant marketing communications to the people who might care”.
It’s a lot like never noticing a car advertisement until we are in the market to buy one. They’re always there, we just have selective perception.
This is why Advertising frequency is king. No point having a big launch campaign if our prospective new customers aren’t looking on that occasion. For entrepreneurs, the big launch concept is a hoax – It’s unsustainable. Like an exercise regime- it’s far better to do an hour workout everyday, than to do a 5 hour gym session on a Saturday.
The good news is we don’t need the superbowl budget of a large conglomerate to have the frequency we need. We just need to start a conversation which continues indefinitely.
