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By Tom Behan
5. Reach Or Frequency.
In advertising there is an age old quandary; reach or frequency, i.e., for a given amount of money you can either reach more people less often or fewer people more often. Can't have both. Well, some advertisers are coming pretty close. You have probably seen TV ads during a program break that you JUST SAW only 60 seconds earlier. It used to be a mistake; somebody at the TV station accidentally ran the same ad twice within an extremely short time period. Some ad guy screamed about the mistake. Another ad guy wondered, "hmmmm, if I have the same audience during those two times, I just inadvertently increased my frequency against them." But of course, when these near back-to-back ads are run, they cost twice as much. Sooooo, what advertisers are doing is one of two things: either running two 10- or 20-second SHORT ads, or running a longer 30- or 60-second ad, plus one shorter 10-second ad. Either of these does save some money. Additionally, many people believe a person seeing the 10-second ad shortly after a longer one actually recalls details from both! So you are in fact getting more than you actually paid for, which is perhaps finding a new way to address the reach/frequency issue.
6. Ride Somebody Else's Coat Tails.
This is a way to position your product without all the work of paying for all the necessary marketing. Hitch on to someone else's wagon who already has a firmly established position. Example: "7-Up, the Uncola" positioned themselves 'against' everything both Pepsi and Coke had been saying for years. And 7-Up enjoyed remarkable success from this. The step is a little bold and perhaps risky if not taken carefully, but it is a way for a product or brand with little exposure to gain some public perception. Incidentally, I heard one "positioning" statement I thought was as good as it can get: "XYZ Motors, the Mercedes of Mercedes Dealers." In one fell swoop, they had positioned themselves on top of themselves.
7. Customer Research.
Do it all the time. It doesn't have to be an expensive, extensive, professional survey (though I'd recommend those, too, from time to time), but something as simple as informally asking customers, "do you have any suggestions on how we could improve what we are doing?" And here is something I heard at a restaurant that is EXCEPTIONAL. You have, of course, been served by a waiter or waitress who returned to your table and asked "Is everything OK?" That's called a Call Back and it's actually a form of customer research. But listen to this! Once a waitress on a Call Back asked me, "Is everything exceptional?" Wow. What a difference. If it weren't exceptional, then I had a chance to tell her why it wasn't. She would fix it, and viola, I was having an exceptionally fine dining experience....by my own definition!
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