How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? How many advertising messages does someone need to be exposed to before they take action? I think I can safely say this is an age old question. Why? Because way back in 1885, Thomas Smith, a London businessman, wrote a guide called Successful Advertising where he shared his insight about how often someone needs to see a message before they make a purchase.
Smith’s Effective Frequency Theory can still be applied to today’s marketing tactics:
The first time people look at any given ad, they don’t even see it.
The second time, they don’t notice it.
The third time, they are aware that it is there.
The fourth time, they have a fleeting sense that they’ve seen it somewhere before.
The fifth time, they actually read the ad.
The sixth time they thumb their nose at it.
The seventh time, they start to get a little irritated with it.
The eighth time, they start to think, “Here’s that confounded ad again.”
The ninth time, they start to wonder if they’re missing out on something.
The tenth time, they ask their friends and neighbors if they’ve tried it.
The eleventh time, they wonder how the company is paying for all these ads.
The twelfth time, they start to think that it must be a good product.
The thirteenth time, they start to feel the product has value.
The fourteenth time, they start to remember wanting a product exactly like this for a long time.
The fifteenth time, they start to yearn for it because they can’t afford to buy it.
The sixteenth time, they accept the fact that they will buy it sometime in the future.
The seventeenth time, they make a note to buy the product.
The eighteenth time, they curse their poverty for not allowing them to buy this terrific product.
The nineteenth time, they count their money very carefully.
The twentieth time prospects see the ad, they buy what is offering.
And today’s latest research shows, it takes 20+ touches just to generate sales-ready, qualified leads. As the number of marketing channels and tactics increases, so does the number of touches it takes to get someone’s attention. Consumers encounter almost 30,000 marketing messages per day. The number of channels marketers can use to reach consumers has exploded in the past decade. The ways in which we consume marketing is also evolving. Consumers are approached (sometimes bombarded) by dozens of channels…emails, texts, radio, blog posts, social media, TV, digital ads, direct mail and even package design (#ShareaCoke).
As both a marketer and a consumer, I’m truly thankful for multi-channel marketing! The idea of sending or receiving a marketing message via the same vehicle 20+ times would drive me crazy. The other day I received an email from Old Navy, touting their new summer favorites. Naturally I’m a sucker for a cute sundress, so I took the bait and clicked the link.
That sundress has since managed to show up on my Facebook page and again when I was reading Yahoo news. A day later, when browsing another news site, I once again got a glimpse of that cute little sundress
I lost count of the number of times Old Navy’s multi-channel marketing tactics infiltrated my space. I’m not even sure that their post card for $20 Super Cash was my tipping point, but I will admit that I now own that sundress.
Multi-channel marketing represents a distinct shift in the way consumers interact with a company. Marketers today are pacing themselves with how consumers operate – in lots of places, and often times, all at once. Campaigns are becoming strategies rather than merely tactics, so marketers need to continually make sure their brand has an ongoing presence on multiple channels.
Businesses can either put all their eggs into one marketing basket and hope for the best, or embrace the explosion and adopt multi-channel marketing. Marketing will continue to evolve and become more complicated, making channel management even more important with each new development. Are you satisfied with your current multi-channel marketing campaigns? And even more importantly, are the tactics and channels you’re using producing the results you want?
Contact the AccuData team of experts to learn more about how they’ve helped businesses like yours adopt multi-channel marketing for optimized campaigns and maximum ROI.