You might be wondering why you should continue marketing to your patients when you can’t see them. Although COVID-19 has interrupted our lives, it’s not here to stay. You should still continue working with your dental marketing experts because you’re marketing to patients who will be able to see you presumably in a month or so. People will always need dentistry and the more you repeat your message, the more patients will come.

Popular taglines like “Got Milk?”, “Just Do It” and “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There” have been around for years. Most people can recognize these messages and connect them with their brand. This is because these brands understand the importance of frequency when it comes to their messages. The more people become exposed to your message, the more likely they will purchase from you.

This isn’t groundbreaking news in the marketing world. This ideology has been around since 1885, if not earlier. If your message isn’t delivering the leads you would expect, you likely need to increase the frequency. But what is the magic number?

The Rule of 7

In the 1930s, the movie industry developed the Rule of 7 – the number of times a prospect needs to hear your message before making a purchase. They developed this strategy to gain more viewers for movie premieres. Today, marketers use the rule of 7 as a rule of thumb for getting their message across and gaining new buyers. This is why retarget marketing is so effective. Although the rule of 7 is what marketers believe as true today, some believe a higher frequency is more effective. Every business might have their own sweet spot for effective frequency depending on the business and area.

The Rule of 20

In 1885, Thomas Smith released “Successful Advertising,” a book that described the best marketing tactics at the time. He recognized early on that more frequency is equal to more effective advertising. In Smith’s book, he describes what goes through the consumer’s mind through each of the 20 encounters with the ad:

The 1st time people look at ad, they don’t see it.
The 2nd time, they don’t notice it.
The 3rd time, they are aware that it is there.
The 4th time, they have a fleeting sense that they’ve seen it before.
The 5th time, they actually read the ad.
The 6th time, they thumb their nose at it.
The 7th time, they get a little irritated with it.
The 8th time, they think, “Here’s that confounded ad again.”
The 9th time, they wonder if they’re missing out on something.
The 10th time, they ask their friends or neighbors if they’ve tried it.
The 11th time, they wonder how the company is paying for all these ads.
The 12th time, they start to think that it must be a good product.
The 13th time, they start to feel the product has value.
The 14th time, they start to feel like they’ve wanted a product like this for a long time.
The 15th time, they start to yearn for it because they can’t afford to buy it.
The 16th time, they accept the fact that they will buy it sometime in the future.
The 17th time, they make a commitment to buy the product.
The 18th time, they curse their poverty because they can’t buy this terrific product.
The 19th time, they count their money very carefully.
The 20th time prospects see the ad, they buy what it is offering.

At Pro Impressions Marketing, we believe more is better. The more times you get your message across, the more effective your marketing campaign is.

How to Repeat Your Message in Your Marketing

There are many different outlets you can use to get your message across. On the digital front, this includes organic search results through SEO, blogs, social media, pay per click, and email marketing. One of the best ways to get your message across repeatedly is through pay per click (PPC).

With PPC, we can help your website stay at the top of the search results on Google for specific keywords. This means every time someone searches for those particular keywords, your website will pop up. If you do pay per click for lots of different keywords in your industry like dental implants, dentures, cosmetic dentistry, dentist, etc. your website will pop up even more often. In addition to PPC, with organic search results from SEO practices, your website will show up at an even higher frequency than pay per click alone.

Imagine if you searched for a specific set of keywords and saw the same website under the ads at the top of the page and in the organic search results. You keep seeing the same message over and over again until you feel like you should click on it. It’s popping up a million times so it must be good right? At least that’s what your brain tells you.

By sticking to the rule of 20 and increasing the frequency of your message through PPC and SEO, you will gain more and more patients at your dental practice. Advertising platforms may have changed in the past 140 years but consumer behavior hasn’t.

Don’t let COVID-19 stop you from attracting new patients. If you would like to increase the frequency of your message through PPC and SEO, please contact us today to find out if we’re a good fit for you.