By Deborah Henken
Many companies are willing to spend huge amounts on developing a product and then want to squeeze the marketing budget. Do one email and expect results, advertise one time, do a newsletter once and wait…these do not work. You must continually touch your audience. Getting your message out is not the place to cut costs.
Why? We, as customers, are bombarded with marketing messages all the time, in all kinds of places, and the types of marketing just keep expanding. In the old days of the 80’s, when media choices focused on radio, TV, newspaper, magazine and billboards, it used to be that the advertising world used the metric of 3—an communication must run at least three times in each media choice to break through the clutter.
Now, with increasing kinds of media—email, banner ads, websites, cell phone and PDA messages, ads on buildings, ads on taxi cabs, ads on grocery carts and on and on—the new metric is 7 impressions. A customer must see your message an average of 7 times for it to stand out from all the other messages they see each day. That’s right, 7 times. The first time or two, it may not be noticed. By the 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th time, the human brain starts realizing they’ve been seeing a lot about this product or company!
When companies decide they can get by with only one direct mailing with no follow-up or a one-time ad, they are not getting the most bang for the buck They are not ensuring they will rise above the noise and get their unique benefits noticed. People must see your message again and again, until it penetrates and makes your targets take the action you want—generating leads and sales.
What’s a businessperson to do? The good news is that you don’t have to just do one marketing activity 7 times. The way to break through the clutter and stand out in a customer’s mind is through integrated marketing—using a variety of methods to gain awareness, move the prospect to interest and demand and then to a sale. Right now, you should be auditing what you are doing, making sure you are not doing one-shot marketing, which just does not make effective use of your marketing resources.
Get your message out utilizing a number of different vehicles, all with the same messaging and break out of the clutter.
Action Steps To Take Now:
1) Audit your current marketing efforts-identify what activities you are doing
2) Review what you are doing—are you doing one-shot activities or consistently touching your target audience with your messages and benefits in a number of ways-fliers, speaking, PR, ads, writing articles, radio, newsletters are all possibilities
3) If you are doing one-shot activities, determine what you can do to expand. If you did a one-time ad, identify places to run it again or turn it into a brochure, an email campaign or a sign. If you did a direct mail, mail to the audience again with a new offer. Just because they don’t answer the first time, does not mean they are not interested. Remember, you may have to touch them 7 times to make an impact.
About the Author: Deborah Henken served as VP of Marketing at several Silicon Valley start-ups, quadrupling revenues in 18 months, and in senior marketing & channel positions at Hewlett Packard, Informix & BEA Systems. She and her team bring strategic marketing thinking and rapid implementation to assure increased sales revenue. Contact her at http://www.highlandteam.com
Source: www.isnare.com
