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Marketing Is Not a Last-Minute Gig

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Calendars are Vital for Marketing Planning

Not getting the return on your marketing campaigns? Maybe it’s your timing.

Picture it: Big band swing music plays on the radio. The ladies are wearing tilt hats, faux furs, and plenty of bling. It’s the 1930’s and America is rebounding from The Great Depression. Hollywood is in its golden age and movie industry executives are frantic to grab more and more viewers’ attention. The studio bosses demand research to determine what they can do to influence the public to see their newest movies. Turns out, exposure and repetition are the magic formula.

Marketing Rule of Seven

The Marketing Rule of Seven is the maxim they uncovered, which explains that your customer generally needs to “hear” the advertiser’s message about seven times before they will take action to buy that product or service. Ideally, the seven iterations of the marketing message will be at different times and in different locations, but with a similar message. The repetition of seeing the message multiple times reinforces the importance of the action they need to take. If it is only seen once, it probably is not that important—or so the brain assumes. But seeing it over and over again? Well, this is different and must be important!

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Alan Lakein

In our business of managing communities, we have various reasons to share certain messages to our residents. We have it all– from the fun stuff, like resident events, to the not-so-fun stuff, like policy education and awareness (e.g. parking guidelines or picking up after your pet notices), and even the profitable stuff, such as resident referrals. All this messaging takes time (and repetition) for the resident’s brain to signal its importance.

Plan Now or Fail Later

Regardless of the content of your message, our biggest mistake comes from waiting too long to begin marketing. Plan now to get your message out there with enough time to repeat. Plan early to provide enough space between your messages so they aren’t seen as repetitive or overwhelming. Imagine getting the same party invitation seven times in one week! Yikes! Instead, plan ahead to get your message out to your residents on various platforms or kinds of media with enough repetitions to make them want to commit to your message.

This article is also published on LinkedIn and Medium. Check out my other thoughts or connect with me for more interesting finds and ideas!