Small Business Blog

When big business marketing executives describe the success of their efforts, they often speak of “reach” and “frequency”. These two terms represent the dimensions by which marketers evaluate their impact. Generating small business sales leads requires an emphasis on the depth of your marketing efforts.

Throughout the twentieth century, “frequency” and “reach” were viewed as the two primary ways to disseminate the value of your brand.

An often overlooked aspect to marketing is “depth”. Yet, a paradigm shift, one that’s been catalyzed by new media and technology, is quickly making “depth” the most important way to interact with potential customers.

Reach
Reach is the number of people that are exposed to your marketing message. The zenith for reach would be large national/international events such as the super bowl, the Oscars, or even high a ranking on Google could be a form of incredible reach.
Massive reach has never been a strong suit of the small business owner. Reach is expensive which often means it’s less about interacting with customers and more about simply reminding everyone, “Hey, we’re still here, don’t forget about Pepsi.”

Frequency
Frequency is the number of times you expose each person to your message. An example of high frequency would be when Apple monopolizes every subway car in a city, with iPod advertisements.

Frequency through traditional media is extremely expensive and usually out of the question for small business owners. While it is possible to generate high frequency online, it is often in vein and can even be counter productive. For example, a web designer posting five ads, in fifty cities, on Craigslist, may have relatively high frequency and reach, but the odds of landing quality sales leads are still extremely low. In addition to compromising the quality of your clients and your brand, if your ratio of “sales to frequency” becomes too imbalanced, you’ve essentially, become a Spammer.

Depth
Depth is how intimately you connect with each individual. An example of incredible depth would be calling a client to say “hi” without the auspices of making a sale.

Depth has always been the small business professional’s domain. Whether it’s chatting with the pizzeria owner on a first name basis or wishing your accountant a happy holiday, depth is an advantage that a company, even with a trillion dollar budget, can’t duplicate; only hope to emulate.

New online technologies allow small business owner’s to efficiently create genuine depth with a larger number of people than solely face-to-face encounters. (Of course face-to-face is still extremely important)  

This shift in priority is actually why many big businesses are having so much trouble with what they perceive to be an ever fickle customer base. People are overloaded with ads and they expect you to do more.

What are you doing to create depth?