Not all advertising campaigns are equal. Some fly and kick goals like no tomorrow, while others find it difficult to cut through. With numerous variables affecting performance, it can be challenging to pinpoint where any shortcomings lie.
One variable that advertisers struggle with or sometimes overlook is frequency. You see, you can have an amazing ad, or you can have the right media selection, but if your frequency is off, then your campaign is going to face issues.
Before we dive into it, let’s revisit a few definitions.
Reach versus frequency
When selecting media one of key selling points that most advertising channels will showcase is their reach. Specifically, how many unique people will see or hear your ad. If it’s a traditional format, this is often reported as listeners, readers, or viewers, with no guarantee that 100% of those will actually engage with your ad. Digital formats are more granular, reporting on your campaign’s reach specifically.
But just because someone saw your ad once, it doesn’t necessarily mean they absorbed it or acted on it. Which is why frequency is critical.
Frequency measures how many times the same person sees your ad. And, when all other variables are equal, repetition builds recognition, trust and recall.
There’s a general notion within marketing that it takes between seven and twelve touch-points for a brand to encourage an action from a customer. It is not guaranteed that running a TV, Radio, or Social Media Ad campaign will yield the right frequency. To accrue these touchpoints, careful budget allocation, media selection, programming, and scheduling are required.
For marketing managers and business owners, frequency isn’t a vanity metric, it’s directly tied to sales efficiency and media ROI. Get it wrong, and you’re not just wasting impressions, you’re wasting budget.
The cost of getting frequency wrong
Our role as agency partners is to provide strategic guidance across the full marketing mix. As part of that is understanding and recommending budgets that get you the results you need.
A campaign with a reach of 50,000 people sounds impressive, but if each person only sees your ad once, your campaign is barely a whisper in a crowd.
A good agency will be able to forecast exposure so you can see the difference an adequate and an inadequate budget can make. Without this, your budget is being spent, with little confidence that results will be earned.
Engineering frequency without overspending
Many marketers and business owners are compelled to tick the shopping list of being on every social network, hitting traditional media channels, being found on search and AI and the list goes on.
Or some businesses face the opposite problem, they oversaturate one channel and are unsure what else they can do.
Unless your budget is infinite, you need help in engineering the frequency you need without overspending.
To save you the headache of feeling like you need to 100 things (potentially, badly), we add value in helping you select the right channels in a balanced, cost-effective way.
Just as under-exposure will kill awareness, overexposure can quietly erode your ROI. Once an ad has reached its peak frequency threshold, each additional impression adds costs, not value. Knowing how to pinpoint that sweet spot helps you run efficient campaigns and avoid diminishing returns.
A great agency will guide you through blending social, search and traditional media to reinforce the message without duplication, oversaturation or overspending.
Strategic campaign planning
Unfortunately, there’s no one-size fits all approach when it comes to frequency, it depends on your audience, industry, creative type, channel and purchase cycle. A FMCG might need higher frequency to cut through, while a high-involvement service such as financial planning, relies more on sequencing on different touch points.
Rather than relying on gut feel to set ad spend and then hoping for traction, we instead use data modelling, audience behaviour and experience across a wide range of other campaigns, to predict how frequency will influence outcomes.
Whether you’re seeking to build awareness, consideration or conversions, you shouldn’t be flying blind. Our role is to transparently advise the optimal spend, or at least give you a clear benchmark of what your budget can achieve.
After you’ve invested time and money in getting your message right and developing compelling creative, the last thing you want is your campaign to fall over because you didn’t get noticed.
