Reach vs. Frequency
Is it more effective to touch 100 potential customers
once or 25 potential customers 4 times?
by
Julie Chance
Reach and frequency are terms generally used when planning
advertising campaigns. However, the concept of reach and frequency
applies to any promotional activity you undertake: direct mail,
direct selling, and even networking.
Reach is the number of people you touch with your marketing
message or the number of people that are exposed to your message.
Frequency is the number of times you touch each person with your
message. In a world of unlimited resources you would obviously
maximize both reach and frequency. However, since most of us live in
the world of limited resources we must often make decisions to
sacrifice reach for frequency or vice versa.
For example, an air conditioning repair service who has decided
to do a direct mail piece has to decide whether to mail the entire
Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex once or to mail a quarter of the
Metroplex four times. An attorney who receives many of her clients
through networking may have to decide whether to attend one weekly
networking meeting or four different monthly meetings.
When faced with decisions of reach vs. frequency remember this
rule of thumb:
Reach without Frequency = Wasted Money
Marketing is the process of building a business relationship with
potential customers. Have you ever established a lifelong friendship
with someone you had contact with only once? Probably not. Generally
friendships (and all relationships for that matter) grow as a result
of frequent contact over time. Even when the potential to form a
great friendship is there at the first encounter, it is unlikely it
will grow without nurturing.
Seth Godin in his book Permission Marketing uses an
analogy of seeds and water to demonstrate the importance of assuring
adequate frequency in your promotional campaigns. If you were given
100 seeds with enough water to water each seed once would you plant
all 100 seeds and water each one once or would you be more
successful if you planted 25 seeds and used all of the water on
those 25 seeds?
While intuitively and even conceptually we understand the
importance of frequency to successful promotional and sales
campaigns, somehow when it comes to actually implementing the
campaign, we opt to sacrifice frequency for reach. And then we
complain about the ineffectiveness of our promotional efforts.
Undoubtedly one of the biggest wastes of marketing dollars is
promotional activities that are implemented without adequate
frequency.
When faced with the decision of mailing one direct mail piece to
10,000 people or mailing to 2,500 people four times think about the
fate of those 100 seeds you can water only once. Unless you have
water rights and can obtain additional water, opt for less reach and
more frequency.
Julie Chance is the President of
Strategies-by-Design. She has over 18 years of professional
experience in training, marketing, management and operations. Visit
her web site at
www.strategies-by-design.com or email her at
jchance@strategies-by-design.com.
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