Reach vs. Frequency
Is it more effective to touch 100 potential customers
once or 25 potential customers four 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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