There are three basics to making your advertising work. They are: consistency; frequency; and anchoring. If you remember your psychology 101 you know about Pavlov and his dogs. Pavlov put dogs into a cage and rang a bell. When he rang the bell, he gave the dogs a piece of meat. After consistently doing ringing the bell over a period of time with a great amount of frequency, whenever Pavlov rang the bell, the dog immediately began to salivate, even before seeing the meat to which the action was anchored. Pavlov anchored this experiment with something the dogs enjoyed and even wanted; the meat.
Many advertisers understand consistency and frequency. Sending the same message over and over with frequency instills the singular message you want your target to receive. But often anchoring is mishandled. Far, far too often advertisers believe “saving money” (low prices) is the correct anchor. It is almost universally not the correct anchor! Remember “not buying your product,” is so much more inexpensive than any low price you can offer. Never pose that price is any form of barrier to owning your product or you are countering your own sales potential.
If he was inconsistent in his approach, Pavlov would have just frustrated the dog and confused it as to what the bell meant. Lacking frequency by only offering the bell every once in a great while would have allowed the dog the luxury of forgetting the meaning and made the learning cycle incredibly long and nearly impossible.
But giving adequate frequency, a single message (consistency) and a perfect anchor, something for which the dog already had a strong desire, Pavlov created a perfect advertising message, made strong enough in a short time to elicit a physical response to just the sound of a bell.
Earlier I mentioned that advertisers understand consistency and frequency. Yet far too many advertisers have the courage to correctly practice those in their advertising. Instead they feel compelled to go for short-term results (as in very little frequency), or far worse they change tactics over and over trying to find the right formula and in doing so establish no consistency at all. Knowing how to do something does not insure we will do it. After all we know that the only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than we take in each day, yet as a nation over 70% of us (including me) are overweight.
Good advertising practices take some discipline to get started and to maintain. It is not really hard, we just need to determine a strategy and stick with it. But the strategy must employ the three basics.
