It is highly important to realize that marketing takes time. Nothing happens overnight. It’s not just a question of one big ad here or there or one promoted Facebook post. People need to go through a certain process and you have to reach them a number of times before they’re going to be ready to buy from you. If you want to know more about that marketing process, check out this blog post here.
According to sales guru Brian Tracy it takes five sales calls before the customer is ready to buy. Those are sales calls and a very expensive way to sell. You have an expensive employee going there and they’re spending time with the customer at their office. They’re in the same room, they’re speaking to them face to face for at least a few minutes.
So if it takes five of those sales call for the customer to buy, you can imagine how much more often you reach your prospects through marketing methods before they’re ready to buy. (You may think that makes marketing less effective, but trust me, it doesn’t. Marketing can be scaled much more affordably than sales calls ;)
I’m going share one of my favourite marketing quotes with you to illustrate this point.
This one is from Thomas Smith:
- The first time a man looks at an advertisement, he does not see it.
- The second time, he does not notice it.
- The third time, he is conscious of its existence.
- The fourth time, he faintly remembers having seen it before.
- The fifth time, he reads it.
- The sixth time, he turns up his nose at it.
- The seventh time, he reads it through and says “Oh brother!”
- The eight time, he says “Here’s that confounded thing again!”
- The ninth time, he wonders if it amounts to anything.
- The tenth time, he asks his neighbor if he has tried it.
- The eleventh time, he wonders how the advertiser makes it pay.
- The twelfth time, he thinks it must be a good thing.
- The thirteenth time, he thinks perhaps it might be worth something.
- The fourteenth time, he remembers wanting such thing a long time.
- The fifteenth time, he is tantalized because he cannot afford to buy it.
- The sixteenth time, he thinks he will buy it someday.
- The seventeenth time, he makes a memorandum to buy it.
- The eighteenth time, he swears at his poverty.
- The nineteenth time, he counts his money carefully.
- The twentieth time he sees the ad, he buys what it is offering.
This underpins what I have been saying about “repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat”. People have to see you a number of times before they’re ready to buy. What is even more interesting is that Thomas Smith wrote this in 1885!!! So this is not new.
Marketing really does take time. Thomas Smith realised this ages and ages ago!
You need to repeat yourself, you need to be consistent and you need to be talking about the same things to start filtering through and owning that place in the prospects mind.
Are you repeating yourself enough – or have you perhaps given up too early? ;)