Page 166 - Duct Tape Marketing

150 Part III: Creating and Placing Ads

Balancing reach and frequency

Reach is the number of individuals or homes exposed to your ad. In print
media, reach is measured by circulation counts. In broadcast media, reach is
measured by gross rating points (see Chapter 12 for information on broad-
cast ad terminology).

Frequency is the number of times that an average person is exposed to your
message.

Your schedule needs to achieve enough reach (that is, your message needs
to get into the heads of enough readers or viewers) to generate a sufficient
number of prospects to meet your sales objective. It also needs to achieve
enough frequency to adequately impress your message into those minds —
and that rarely happens with a single ad exposure.

If you have to choose between reach and frequency — and nearly every small
business works with a budget that forces that choice — opt to limit your reach
to carefully selected target markets and then spend as much as you can on
achieving frequency within that area.

The case for frequency

Ad recall studies prove that people remember ads in direct proportion to the
number of times they are seen. Here are some facts about frequency:

ߜ One-shot ads don’t work — unless you opt to spend a few million dollars
to air an ad on the Super Bowl. Even then, part of the audience will be
away from the tube, replenishing the guacamole dish or grabbing beer
from the refrigerator.

ߜ You need to place an ad as many as nine times to reach a prospect even
once. That means you need to place it as many as 27 times in order to
make contact three times — the number of exposures it takes before
most ad messages sink in. If your ad runs in a publication with a devoted
readership, or on a program that viewers tune into with regular convic-
tion, the placement requirement goes down, but especially in the case of
radio ads, the 27-time schedule generally holds true.

Why? Because each time your ad airs, a predictably large percentage of
prospects aren’t present. Either they’re tuned out or distracted, or maybe
your creative approach or offer failed to grab their attention.

ߜ Frequency increases an individual’s responsiveness to your ad message.

ߜ Frequency increases the number of people who notice your ad.