A year or so ago, the research showed that the number of impressions (or hits) needed for a brand or product/service to be burned into a person’s long-term memory was 7. As we head into 2007, that number has grown to 13. In reality there are very few businesses that can afford to achieve a frequency of 13 hits with their target audience, so how can you approach achieving this benchmark?

In the first place, you typically cannot do it with media buys alone. This is what makes the power of public relations so appealing. With a public relations program in place you can begin with a multiplier of 3 to 5 hits, because earned media, which adds the value of being more believable than advertising, has provided a strong foundation on which to build your media strategy through more traditional outlets.

Secondly, you need to work toward maximizing your media buy. In creating effective media buys for its clients, it has been MillerWhite’s experience that a majority of marketers focus too much of their attention on the process of negotiating rates. Although this is an important factor in media planning and buying, it represents only about a third of the process. The other two-thirds deal with who is seeing or hearing your message and how often.

Media mix increases effectiveness
Research supports that the stronger the media outlet mix the greater the return on your investment. For that reason, an integrated media buy is recommended when the budget allows it. With a strong media mix as your number one objective, the second and third objectives for placing effective media are maximizing the cost-per-point by determining the diminishing point of return, and driving reach, frequency and cume as high as possible.

The importance of cume
Most marketers understand reach (the number of people exposed to your message) and frequency (the number of times they are exposed to it), but cume is many times ignored. Cume represents the number of different individuals who see and/or hear a message. The goal is to strike an equal balance of the three without cannibalizing any of them.

Simply throwing money into a media buy without first analyzing reach, frequency and cume could be wasting your valuable resources. An experienced integrated marketing firm, equipped with Arbitron and Nielsen ratings and SmartPlus media software, can not only create your most cost-effective media strategy, but can also maximize that strategy by making it part of an overall integrated marketing plan.

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