I remember the very moment many years ago when this one hit me over the head. An entrepreneur had asked me what I thought of his ad campaign. As a naive college student at the time, I answered directly and in a somewhat idealistic way: I told him I thought it was very basic, to the point where many people would be offended by how overly-simple it was. He said to me, “you have a lot to learn about advertising, son” – he was right – if it’s not simple and it’s not repeated over and over again, not only will it not work, no one will even know you or your product exist. In the many years that have passed since then, I have learned through experience and observation that he was exactly right. There are so many ads and other media inputs to our senses all the time that it takes a focused, basic and frequent “attack” for any message to get through. Your budget must be sufficient to allow you to hit your target audience over the head with your message over an extended period of time, on a very regular basis. Popular wisdom in advertising says that your targets will need to see your ad at least 10 times before it makes any impression on them at all. Bear this in mind as you’re putting together your marketing strategy and budget.
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