Three, to be exact.  

Chapters 44, 58, and 59 in Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads discuss in great detail what it takes to create an effective long-term branding campaign on radio and/or TV.

In essence, sleep is the great eraser of memory – in order for yours to be the business that customers think of first and foremost when needing your product or service, they must come in contact with your ad approximately three times per week.  In the advertising business, it’s called a “Frequency” of 3.

As a Wizard of Ads partner, I work day-in and day-out using this rule with my own clients, to great success.  Yet it was only recently that I became the puppet rather than the puppeteer:

In the last ten years, the population of greater metropolitan Phoenix (AZ) has grown from 1.3 million to 3.8 million.  There are literally thousands of realtors, but only one who has had the smarts to make a valley-wide impact.

As an independent realtor, Russell Shaw started advertising approximately five years ago with what had to have been the most miniscule of budgets.  Instead of pouring his money into newspaper advertising (the traditional media of realtors nationwide), he chose television, which can be expensive.  But Russell was smart.  He figured out that the best use of his budget was to buy one ad per night during the 5 o’clock news hour.  Every single night, that one ad would air at the same time.  And since folks tend to have a favorite local news network, he was repeatedly planting that seed in the same minds.

The message in Russell’s ads is acceptable; Russell himself is annoying.  I’m talking a syrupy delivery with a nasal voice quality that has caused me to dash for the remote more times than I can count.  I can hurry all I want to and switch channels, but guess what?  Over the last five years, Russell has slowly re-invested his profit into buying the same ad on all the other networks.  Apparently I can run, but I can’t hide.  I’ve come to hate the Russell Shaw ads.

So the other day I was talking with a friend who’s thinking of moving to Phoenix.  At one point during the conversation she said, “What I really need is a good realtor.”

My response?  “Well, there’s Russell Shaw…”

Hoisted on my own petard.

Points to remember:

1.  Buy smart advertising that will get you the most Frequency.  Even if all you can afford is a monthly postcard, make the message smart and keep sending the regular postcard out to the same group of people.  Embed your message into their brain then wait for their moment of need.

2.  Re-invest your growing revenue into an expansion of advertising.  If you’ve achieved maximum impact with your current mode of advertising, don’t abandon it – add on to it.  Russell Shaw is the perfect example of giving a small ad budget the power of a jackhammer.

3.  If people think your ads are annoying, that’s not a bad thing.  If you get calls and emails saying that your ad is annoying (ads in poor taste are another matter altogether), it means you’re making an impact.  And that ain’t bad.  Would you rather have an ad that leaves people remembering who you are and what you do, or a middle-of-the-road ad that the brain ignores altogether?  I’ll take annoying any day.

When you have advertising constraints, go for Frequency – done right, it hits the mark every time.

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