Lucky 7: How to make your brand cut through the noise 

Why do people remember some brands, but forget others?

It’s not just because some are inherently more memorable, bold, and different than others. It’s also because those brands get themselves seen over and over again.

It’s a well-established rule of thumb in communications that it takes about seven repetitions for a piece of information to stick.

Different pieces of research put different numbers on it. For example, some say three encounters is enough of an ‘effective frequency’, but the precise figure is less important than the principle — you have to get your brand in front of person repeatedly, or it will get lost in the noise.

The more digital output and distractions that arise, the truer and more important that principle becomes.

Here is how to engineer the seven encounters as efficiently as possible and grow your brand by earning a place in people’s memories:

• Go where your targets are
• Offer what your targets like
• Be consistent…
• …but with variety

Put your content where your targets are likely to see it

Written down, the rule looks painfully obvious. Yet it’s surprisingly easy to forget. There are new trends, new platforms, and new cycles of hype that make big promises and seem to be ‘must haves’, and in the excitement and urgency of growing your brand, it’s not hard to get swept along.

So to make another obvious statement that still bears repeating, there is no point marketing your business where you are unlikely to find buyers. You might as well sell beef at a vegan food festival.

So if the question is ‘should we be on YouTube?’ or TikTok, or whatever platform or medium it may be, the answer is ‘only if your prospects go there’.

Offer content that your targets like

Once again, this is about as intuitive a rule as you can get, but it’s one that’s frequently ignored.

Marketing teams and business leaders like to create content that they would consume, but don’t always apply the empathy to ask if that is what their audience likes. If you love videos and like to research topics on YouTube, it’s easy to assume that others do, so the most appealing type of content for your own marketing and thought leadership becomes video.

But what if your market is saturated with video and your prospects are boredof them. What if your typical buyer actually prefers to read in-depth reports with academic style research behind them? Then they won’t engage with what you’re doing, and you’ll be lucky if they see your brand once, let alone seven times.

Take the time to research what your market consumes, and how your typical customer likes to receive information, and cater to that.

Why being remembered requires consistency in branding and messaging

If people see a different brand every time they see your brand, or hear a different message every time they hear your message, then you are back to square one each time. You’re not building momentum or building up to your magic seven encounters if every impression is the first impression.

So, visually, are your assets presenting a consistent character? If someone saw a video, a guide, a social media carousel, a blog post image, a whitepaper, a banner advert, and an infographic of yours, would they eventually have a sense that they had come across your before?

To many, the rules of brand guidelines can seem too extensive and pedantic, but they’re there to make sure that through consistency, the impact of the brand is as great as it can be, as soon as possible.

Why being remembered requires some variety

You don’t want to be so repetitive as to be boring, and you don’t want everything to look so similar that people stop noticing you.

So, within overall message-discipline and visual consistency, you also need to vary the type of content that you produce, the visuals that people see, and the topics that you cover. You will avoid fading into the background, and instead communicate that you have extensive expertise in your field.

For a deep and practical guide to marketing, messaging, branding, and design that gets your noticed, keep your prospects’ attention, and converts that attention to leads and deals, download your copy of ‘Claiming the Spotlight’.

GUIDE | Claiming the Spotlight: Your comprehensive guide to gaining market share

If you have questions about how to create the brand, strategy, and content that you need, or if you simply want to understand how your marketing could get more and better results, please get in touch at jenny.knighting@nutcrackeragency.com.