Repetition is king

Depending on which research you listen to, it can take between 7 and 27 exposures to get your message across. How often do we have to hear an advertisement before it begins to sink in, or to sound familiar?

This is hardly surprising when you consider that the average person is exposed to between 3,500 and 5,000 marketing messages a day (J Walker Smith, President of Consumer and Marketing Watcher Yankelovich as quoted in USA Today). Remember, you may be in the widgets game, but you’re competing for your customer’s attention with every other marketing message out there – whether it’s for cars or groceries.

You may have heard that it is important to be in touch with your customers within every three month period, because after three months they forget about you… That particular finding can be traced back to research conducted by Saatchi’s David Miln, whose ‘canal boat process’ relied on a three month contact system (for a better description of this read Wendy Evans book ‘How to get new business in 90 days‘.

Some of the reasons we may need to hear a message repeatedly before we grasp it can be put down to a number of factors, including mood at the time, availability of money, trust, timing…

So if repetition and frequency are so important in getting our messages across, why do we feel the need to change our 60 second presentation every week? Or to invent a new elevator speech every time we’re called on to deliver it? Or to freshen up our brand every couple of years?

Just because we’re bored with a presentation or a brand, doesn’t mean our audience is.

But this is good news.

It means you can prepare a 60 second (instead of inventing it while waiting for your turn and therefore missing out on what your fellow BNI members are saying) and repeat it for seven weeks straight, at least. How’s that for impact?

It also means that those who are busy preparing their 60 second (while you’re talking) will eventually get to hear your message.

But this doesn’t only apply to BNI.

In my experience, most people who change their brand do so for reasons other than its effectiveness. It’s usually because they’re personally tired of hearing it, seeing it or reading it. I would suggest that’s a mistake to avoid.

It is important to find a message, a 60 second or an advertisement that works; but when you do – stick with it.