Category Archives for "Soft Sell"

The Hidden Lie about Seven Impressions in Advertising

By John Aberle | advertising , Internet Marketing , Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

For some 30 years of my career in sales and marketing, we’ve used a rule of thumb that it takes seven impressions for the average person to buy — assuming he or she actually has a need for what you are selling. And as rules of thumb go, it’s a good one — if you understand what it means. Otherwise, it’s a lie to the extent that it can be very misleading. It’s a lie of omission.

When running ads, in magazines and newspapers, you would normally expect to run for seven days or seven monthly issues and get seven impressions. Wrong. Perhaps because my first sales job when I left the Air Force was in radio advertising, I immediately got a different slant on the seven impressions. Someone has to hear your spot or see — and actually notice — your ad for it to count as an impression. So immediately one has a challenge getting seven impressions.

How many people do you know who actually read every article and every ad in every issue for seven issues. That means that they might notice your ad every third or fourth one.

The other issue is that it needs to be frequent enough that the last impression hasn’t faded from memory. This is why in Internet marketing, Continue reading