Communication Effort: What it Really Means for Brands and Why Many Get it Wrong

Recently, I came across a post and it hit me really hard. It said:

“Marketing is saying one thing 100 times, not saying 100 things once.”

I’m a marketer and this is hardly news but let me tell you why it hit hard.

Behind the scenes on the client side, we often hear things like: “We’ve already done this.” They are usually talking about an event, a campaign and yes, even a social media post! And to this we say, “Great, now do it again and better!”

From an agency point of view, what we often struggle with are clients who believe that once they launch their communication efforts and start promoting content and pushing ads, that they will automatically see a drastic shift in sales. If you’ve got a kick-ass product and not much competition, sure that might happen. But that’s not usually how it works.

Stay with me for a minute.

Brands have the job of appealing not only to one person, but to a community of people; this community shares common interests and behaviors, but it also has its particularities. Individuals, even within a group, remain unique. So, brands must convince this community in its entirety about its brand and carve a special place for their brand in the hearts and minds of the community they are targeting. This takes stamina and consistency. It’s not a one-time thing.

To get to your consumer’s heart & mind, there are steps that lead up to this, you need to create awareness, interest and yes, desire! This means that your brand must appear (in a most appealing way) in the journey of these individuals throughout their day, their week, and their month and in an ongoing and impactful way. This is how brand recognition becomes fruitful and this is how a conversation sparks. Then the brand must keep putting forward its added value, its uniqueness, its innovation, etc. to simply keep the interest and the conversation going. Because let’s face it, it gets really busy out there, online & offline.

One-time efforts will yield one-time results (maybe) and their impact will dissipate as soon as hotter news hits the billboards, the feeds, the malls, and so on. There is so much going on (news wise and media wise) that capturing and more importantly KEEPING consumers attention is key.

Communication expectations should be managed. It’s a constant effort if you want your brand to be top of mind and to occupy a small place in their hearts, this being the ultimate objective. In a nutshell, yes keep repeating what makes you unique and interesting, just add tweaks to how you’re saying, but definitely keep saying! Feel like this discussing how this can be applied to your brand, get in touch with us!