Attention Consumers: You Are NOT Worthless!

Imagine a world where we, as brand marketers, could sit our consumers down and speak to them directly—with their full attention—and relate a specific message that’s anything but implicit:



“You—yes YOU, dear Consumer—You are seeking a specific product, a specific service, to satisfy your wants and needs, and we can provide that to you! We work hard to make this product perfect for you. So, buy already!”



If only it was that easy …



In reality, we rarely have the full attention of our consumers. but fortunately for us, consumers nowadays are rarely turned off. People are human radars, constantly picking up blips of ad activity, and with this in mind, we attempt to reach our audiences with frequent, targeted messages in the environments we believe they visit the most.



Ads today can find consumers in unexpected places. obvious channels include the internet, television, radio and print. However, with advanced guerilla marketing tactics, ads are now appearing on bathroom walls, drinking straws, grocer’s eggs, and even people’s heads! Media Matters purports that the average person is exposed to 600 to 625 ads each day. With such a heavy volume of media inundating consumers’ lives, it’s easy to see how even the most compelling ads can miss the mark.



In the end, marketing is a game where creating compelling ads is only part of the formula for success—reaching the right audience with systematic frequency is the other. If you play the game with these principles in mind, the next time you stand up to shout, “hey consumers! We value your opinions and interests! you are Not worthless!”—the consumers will actually listen.



Attention Marketers: Pace Yourselves!



If you’re exposed to “ad-speak” on a recurring basis, then you know that terms like reach and frequency appear ad nauseam, to the point of almost losing their meanings. However, if you don’t study these concepts and put them to practice daily, the words can lose flavor or unreasonably transform expectations of how far your media dollars can go.



Often, clients will ask me about the reach and frequency of their ads without even realizing it: “so, how many women aged 21 and over, with an infant, are on that website? With this budget, how many times could they potentially see my ads?” in most clients’ eyes, the more impressions their ads make, the better. But more often than not, what clients don’t consider is the number of times it takes for ad blindness to kick in.



According to robin good of pubmatic, internet ad effectiveness begins trending downward at six impressions. For this reason, frequency capping—or limiting the number of impressions a user can experience based on their cookies—is critical.



Your message should cover your target consumers, but not so much that it smothers them and turns them away from your brand altogether. By using targeting capabilities, you can avoid this pitfall. You’ll be able to reach a larger portion of your target demographic with the appropriate frequency, and you’ll be able to make sure that every one of those impressions really counts.