Maintaining Top of Mind Awareness
I have been saying to clients for more than ten years, “Out of sight is out of mind when it comes to referrals and repeat transactions.” Your competition and the world in general makes a lot of noise that your clients, prospects, and referral partners have to filter. Buy this! Check this out! This is new! This is improved! We’re the best! No, WE are the best! You get my point.
Now factor the huge marketing budgets that Fortune 500 companies have. Take a local mortgage company, how can they possibly think that they can compete with the likes of Wells Fargo or Bank of America who marketing budgets are on the many millions of dollars? These companies mail millions of direct mail pieces (monthly) and have huge marketing budgets.
A friend in the public relations industry told me once that Coke’s goal was to have 24 impressions from every American daily. (Ever wondered why they have their brand on their packages so many places.) Now that is top of mind awareness!
Clearly the purpose of top of mind awareness is so your company/brand/product is going to be considered when a purchasing/consumption decision needs to be made. The more random or unpredictable the buying pattern is for your product, then (ideally) the greater frequency of top of mind awareness marketing you should have. Of course there needs to be an economic reality to your marketing decision as well.
Catch Fire Marketing sells business cards. In fact, we do a really nice thick stock in full color for about $59 for 1,000 cards (okay, that was a shameless plug). The point that I want to make is that your reorder time frame for more business cards is unpredictable. Some of our clients go through 1,000 cards in a few months and others that amount of cards will last for a year or two. So we have no idea when you are going to run out of business cards and need more. So top of mind awareness would be important right? But with business cards costing only $59, you can see why you would need to be careful on how much you spend in marketing. Since I don’t know whether I need to be in touch for a few months or for over a year, I could easily over invest in marketing to be top of mind because the average sale is relatively low. On the other hand, if you are say, selling cars, mortgages, real estate, investment services, equipment–where size of the sale is larger and the profits are higher–then you can see how and why this type of marketing is a good investment. When is the copier going to break? When might I get transferred, necessitating a move and a new mortgage? When will my frustrations get to the breaking point that would result in my wanting to switch investment advisors. None of these things are predictable. Which is why I need to have top of mind marketing presence.
As I mentioned earlier, the big players spend millions on this. So are you thinking what is the point, I can’t compete? Well that is the point, you have to keep your name out there too. The good news is that your goal is different than the mega companies who are spending tons of their money on marketing to strangers. You just need to stay connected with your customers and prospects–which is much more manageable and much less costly.
