Getting your message heard: why repetition is your friend

There’s an old advertising adage that for someone to buy something or take action they need to see the prompting message seven times. It’s a ‘rule’ that supposedly has its origins in marketing for the classic Hollywood era 1930s movie industry.

But does it hold up? It might be a convenient number to hang the concept on, even if the truth is a little more complex. Nevertheless, though the numbers vary, it has been studied and it has a name. Effective Frequency.

In the 1880s, Thomas Smith literally wrote the guide to “Successful Advertising”. He reckoned it took around twenty times of seeing an advert before someone would buy what is being offered.  

At the other end of the scale, Herbert Krugman, writing in 1965, thought it took just three hits. He preferred to look at exposure to messages in terms of psychology, and believed that four or more exposures just repeated the psychological response to the third one.

More recently, a study published in the Journal of Advertising Research suggests that people need to be exposed to a message more than ten times to form an intention to purchase the item being advertised. 

Emotional vs rational responses 

Fascinatingly, the researchers found that the motivations behind making the purchase vary depending on how many times people in the study saw the ad. An emotional connection was the strongest after one or two views, or more than ten views. In the middle, between two to ten times, the study found cognitive factors came into play more. People were putting more thought than emotion into their intention to buy. 

What does that mean in terms of storytelling? Well, someone who already identifies with what you are trying to say or do is more likely to have an immediate emotional reaction to your message. Similarly, seeing it more than ten times may mean that the story has time to take on power over multiple readings and elicit a similar emotional response. Somewhere in the middle, people are engaging with it thoughtfully. 

All of these are the kind of responses you want, but only by putting your message out there multiple times will you give room for the full range. 

There is a caveat though, beware of overdoing it and bombarding your audience or customers as that can lose their trust.

Working with volume

It’s important to note that there is no panacea here, no magic number of posts. As with anything else your mileage may vary. Test and see what works for you.

So, how do you go about this? You need to know your story and core messages inside out so that you can make the content different each time. Subtle changes that keep the core story or the message the same. 

Don’t be afraid of retweeting or reposting the same content, just don’t do it ad-infinitum. Experiment with different formats and vary the message depending on the platform. Holcim have done this very effectively to talk about how 3D printing is one of their strategies to build better with less material. The latest video has seen high engagement, particularly on LinkedIn, but they’ve been talking about this topic for a while in different ways.

That’s what we do here at The Content Engine, we grow your audience by getting to know your story, what you want to say and providing your audience with good quality content, often. It says it right there on our homepage.