THE POWER OF REPETITION

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THE POWER OF REPETITION
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You can't succeed at most things if you try them just 'once.' It would be silly to say, 'I tried playing the piano once. I wasn't very good at it, so I gave up.' The same thing applies to marketing your business.

It's pretty obvious that you can't just sit next to your phone and wait for it to ring. You have to 'do something' if you want it to ring, or get people to place an order. You need to contact your prospects and customers with an appealing offer that asks them to take action. That's pretty basic, and I'm sure you are doing that from time to time.

But did you know that most people don't respond to marketing offers until they have received them at least 5 - 8 times?

It's true. Most sales are made after the 5th contact. Repetition is everything. But most small business owners and salespeople 'stop' and give up after the first contact. As an example, Mary, the owner of a 3-year-old small residential cleaning business revealed that she had very good success by delivering her marketing offer to some of her local residential neighborhoods.

With our help, she had created a simple, one page sales/newsletter, and had placed copies in the homeowners' newspaper boxes. (Just in case you don't know, it's illegal to put flyers in US Mail Boxes, but you can put them in the newspaper boxes or rubber band them to the homeowners' doorknobs). By the way, for residential cleaning businesses, this method of delivery works very well.

Mary mentioned that on average she got two new clients for every 100 of the sales/newsletters she distributed in this manner. She didn't realize it, but she was getting an exceptional response. Mary was looking for some new ideas for getting even more sales. She was asked how many times she had delivered her sales/newsletter to the local neighborhoods she had targeted. She responded --'Just once,' 'Why do you ask?'

We suggested, if she was getting such great results from a marketing process, doesn't it make sense to maximize the results from that effort?'  'I guess so,' she replied.

She agreed that at least every 3 months, she would go right back to the same neighborhoods where she was so successful and distribute the same sales/newsletters again, though she was a little skeptical as indicated by her next comment . . .

'But I already gave everyone in those neighborhoods my flyer. If they were going to buy, wouldn't they have already responded?' Mary asked, reflecting a common and costly misconception held by many small business owners.

The fact is, most of the people who have an interest in what you are offering 'do not' usually respond the first time they receive an offer. They may have every intention of doing so, but for one reason or another, they don't respond.

They procrastinate. They get side-tracked by something else. They need to think about it--and then forget it.
They don't have the money right now. They have a million other things that they have to do first before they seriously consider your offer. Their circumstances won't allow them to respond now, but those circumstances often change completely in a few months. And on and on.

As consumers, we always have flyers, letters, post cards, etc. of offers that we are genuinely interested in. But we put them aside with every intention that later we will study them more closely and make a decision then. More often than not, those letters, flyers, etc. eventually get misplaced or tossed.

However, those marketers that are smart enough to send the same offer multiple times, keep bringing their offer to the top of your mind. They don't let you forget it. Those are the offers that eventually are responded to.

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REPETITION IS POWERFUL.
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Sending your marketing message once rarely does the trick. You need to keep reminding your prospects and customers again and again about your business, your services and your offers. If you don't, there's a good chance your competition will.

SPECIAL NOTE:
Now that you know about the power of repetition, you have a powerful tool to help you grow your sales. It works. But it only works if your message and your offer are designed to get immediate action. Send a weak or ineffective offer and it doesn't matter how many times you send it--you're not going to get any response.