What is known by all marketers, but not realized by many small business
owners is repetition and measurement are the keys to running a successful
marketing campaign. The primary focus of any marketing program is to get
your target customer to purchase your product. However, many small business
owners do not effectively utilize repetition to brand their product, and
very rarely do they utilize any form of metric to measure the success rate
of a program.
Statistics vary, but it takes the average person at least five exposures
to a brand name or product before he or she will make the commitment to
purchase it. In addition, it usually takes more than thirty exposures to a
marketing piece before the customer can remember it at will. The simple
lesson from these facts are that you must run advertisements multiple times,
and consistently use the same or similar images to market your product. Run
the same advertisement in multiple mediums, with the same logos, images, and
themes as it has been proven to be the best mass media approach to marketing
your product.
Repetition is the key to creating a successful marketing program, but how
exactly do you measure the success? A successful marketing campaign develops
awareness of your product which translate into larger sales volumes, but
what part of the campaign has had the greatest effect on awareness and
increased sales? To answer these questions, you must approach your marketing
program with some pre-defined ideas on how you are going to measure results,
and how you are going to differentiate the results of one marketing medium
from another.
To define exactly how you are going to measure the results of a specific
marketing program, you must evaluate the message of your campaign. You must
determine exactly what is going to close your customer, and if anything in
the message can be echoed back to you in a quantifiable form. Many times,
you can include an offer, coupon, or discount in the advertisement which can
be documented at the time of sale. This provides an easy metric for tracing
the effectiveness of an advertisement. If a traceable coupon or discount is
not available, you may need to rely on measurements of increased sales and
statistical analysis to quantify the results of your program.
The two fundamental themes in marketing are repetition and measurement. A
marketing program will be ineffective if it does not provide sufficient
repetition and exposure. In addition, the program will be useless unless it
can provide a quantifiable response. Both provide the foundation with which
to build an effective marketing campaign.
