If there’s one tried and true sales and marketing strategy that we know works every time – it’s that regular contact with your customers and leads helps keep them coming back!

Your woman-owned business depends on successful marketing, and this encourages happy customers come back to buy more. ‘Frequency Marketing,’ a term you might not be familiar with, is the key to reach those customers. Every dollar spent in advertising must yield results, and here are the secrets to tap into frequency marketing to help you grow your business. 

Reach vs. frequency marketing

Your advertising reach is quite simply how many people receive your marketing message.  Advertising frequency is how often your market hears your message. 

Here’s the secret of reach vs frequency marketing: if you have a broad reach and don’t use frequency marketing, you’re wasting your money. Frequency is the smart way to build a customer base.

Why is frequency marketing important?

​​At the end of the day, people buy from familiar brands. Old-school marketing wisdom suggests consumers don’t buy anything until they’ve seen a marketing message an average of seven times. Sticking to the Fundamentals of Marketing and relaying that message continually will help build the brand recognition you are looking for. 

Is the marketing rule of seven true today? Using the same sales pitch seven times is NOT enough! You need to be engaging with your customers with a variety of messages to continue to build familiarity and trust; and of course, social media is a gold mine to utilize in your frequency marketing campaigns because there is so much opportunity to interact with your customers daily. 

If you’re on a tight budget, consistency is more important than reach. What if you had a handful of seeds and threw them up in the air? Even if some are carried away by the wind to distant sales grounds, they’re not going to grow without water. Consistent marketing is like providing water to grow those seeds of interest in your clients. Focusing on frequency, prepares seeds to grow into sales.

How do you plan your advertising frequency?

Knowing you need to reach your audience seven or more times for effective frequency marketing is a great start. 

Avoid a spammy sales pitch and instead share meaningful content that benefits your customers. 

Here are 6 tips for meaningful and useful content 

• Ask yourself this question: what is unique about you and your company?

Is there an advantage to using your product or service? How will your company benefit your customers’ lives? Potential customers want to know the inside story about you and why you do what you do. 

• Why do people go to the internet? To be entertained!

If you can post amusing content, you’ve already got engaging and useful content. 

• Emotion is a driving factor in most purchasing decisions.

Do you have an interesting story to tell? Stories draw in customers with emotion. And also this avoids serving up spam.

• Interact with your customers. 

Some of your best members on your frequency marketing team are your existing customers. Their stories draw in business between testimonials, videos of them using your products, interviews of them showcasing how your solution helped them. The opportunities to use your current customers as your sales force are endless!   

Here’s another key: potential customers are far more likely to buy from you if they’ve been referred or experience 3rd party validation rather than you trying to convince them of your value.

And what about your employees? Are they part of your customer base? Here’s another opportunity to focus on their stories to help you sell.

• Target ads to your specific demographic with frequency marketing. 

Focus your time and money on your greatest potential market.  

Now that you’re consistently showing your customers why they want to do business with you and how they would benefit, they feel confident you’re offering valuable content, and they know you have their best interests at heart, they’re more likely to make a purchase. 

Without regular touch, customers forget about how awesome your products and services are and how they’ll benefit their lives. By being consistent, you’re giving your customers the opportunity to make purchases when they’re ready.

•  Is there a cost-effective way to implement frequency marketing? 

Social media and email marketing are your answers to finding great cost-efficient ways to reach your market. 

We are big fans of email marketing automation tools like Flodesk,  Mailchimp, and ConvertKit that collect leads and manage other contacts like mailing lists and newsletters.

Fun fact: Email marketing has the highest ROI than all other social channels combined. It is a must for small businesses. Grab our free training on Email Marketing 101 right here.

Social media automation tools like Planoly, Tailwind and Hootsuite offer platforms to help you create content and schedule posts. These services also track your ROI and manage your team. Here’s more information about Hiring the Right Small Business Management Services. 

What are the pros of implementing a frequency marketing strategy? 

• Consistent messaging creates trust, awareness, and keeps your brand top of mind when your customers are ready to buy (the rule of 7)
• Automation tools make it easy and cost-effective to create consistent value through your content delivery
• Helps you bring previous customers back for more with promotions and consistent touch (increasing that customer lifetime value)

What are the cons of implementing a frequency marketing strategy? 

• Repetitive communications can get marked as spam
• Obvious tag of automation tool on platforms like Facebook and Twitter
• Less creative than a personalized option
• Frequent communications can mean additional effort to come up with fresh content continually 

If you loved this blog, check out everything else we’ve got going on from masterclasses and fireside chats, to our marketing mastermind, to our formal marketing accelerator for women owned businesses. Now that you’ve learned some of the secrets of frequency marketing, come check us out and see how we can help you improve your business!