Brand building is the aim of marketing. A big component of pharma brand promotion is communications, the purpose of which is to attract customers to our brand and to persuade them to support it. Historically, that has been accomplished primarily through advertising media–print, then radio and TV, and now digital. And while smart, goal oriented creative has been the star; working diligently behind the scenes is smart, goal-oriented media strategy and planning.

Media is a science; part sociology, part statistical analysis, part economics, part behavioral science, and some might say, part intuition. In spite of the advancements in technology, measurements and analysis, a constantly shifting media landscape and media consumption trends, media strategy seems to always come down to the use of two things: Reach and frequency.

Reach is the depth or penetration of your targeted consumer (B2C) or customer purchaser or decision-maker (B2B) base, quantified in numbers and/or percentages via a media vehicle and over a set campaign period. Effective reach delivers the maximum number of targeted individuals for exposure to the brand message. Efficient reach does so economically, often expressed in a cost per thousand (CPM), CPL (cost per lead) and CPS (cost per sale).

THE POWER OF REPETITION

The more people see or hear something, the more they remember it. Some of the most successful brands – regardless of the quality of the goods – have the most recognizable message. From Coke to Nike to McDonalds, brands more frequently seen and heard become the most successful. As a purely psychological function, familiarity breeds trust in a consumer – even if it is just knowing the name of the product. Repetition is also how we learn that a brand is in the marketplace, so to speak, and forms a ‘top of mind awareness’ among consumers. Such familiarity with a brand develops a level of trust – the more familiar people are with a brand, the more likely they are to purchase from that brand. So, don’t be so quick to mix up your marketing message or start a new campaign. Focus on repetition and frequency for results.

A side note here about the scientific behavioral underpinning to frequency. Author and memory expert Carmen Simon points out the benefit to brands as “binding content to the source”: “Ensure that you’re presenting frequently enough to help someone’s brain bind the content and the source.” In other words, repetition is the glue that binds your message to your brand … and not to someone else’s.
In his article “Advertising Frequency Theory: Circa 1885,” Derrick Daye provides the 20 steps or exposures an ad must take to garner purchase intent as seen through the eyes of an 1800’s marketer. One-hundred and thirty-five years later it seems much of the observation holds true.

Obviously, to get people to see or hear your pharma brand promotion message multiple times, you can’t just put it out in the ether for a day or a week. You need to give your marketing time to work. While repetition of your message is important, so too is the length of time it runs for. Combine the two and you might even, like the Got Milk? campaign, have your message remembered twenty years on. Likewise, the phrase “Just Do It” immediately brings to mind the brand Nike – a campaign that is still running strong nearly thirty years after it launched. And even though it was created before some of us were born, American Express: Don’t Leave Home Without It was one of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time (and we still remember the tagline). Why? Frequency and time have played a huge part in the campaign’s success.
These campaigns demonstrate how frequency paired with giving the campaign time has led to an effective marketing strategy.

‘Effective frequency’ and ‘frequency’ are separate terms. The frequency of an advertisement is the number of times a consumer or a market segment is exposed to a pharma brand promotion. An effective frequency is the number of times a consumer or market segment must see an ad in order for the campaign to create the optimal likelihood of the audience completing the desired action.

It establishes both the minimum number of engagements necessary (as too few won’t get your audience’s attention) and the maximum before ad fatigue or negative responses begin to set in. Depending on the amount of insight you have into your target market’s responses to your ad campaigns, your effective frequency might be a specific number of views, or it might be a range.

The concept of an effective rate is based on the idea that repeated interaction — even identical interactions through exposure to the exact same advertisement — nurtures familiarity and trust in your brand.

WHY DOES EFFECTIVE FREQUENCY MATTER?
The downsides of not quite reaching effective frequency are clear: consumers will ignore your ads and you won’t nurture the familiarity (or the sales) you were hoping for. The downsides of surpassing your effective frequency, however, can be even more negative.

When consumers are overexposed to ads, they begin to experience ad fatigue. They become apathetic or hostile to your messaging, and those negative feelings can begin to transfer over to the brand itself, not just the individual advertisements. Overexposure negatively affects relationships for your customers and your audience in a way that can be extremely costly and challenging to fix.

Overreaching on ad frequency can be directly costly, too. Depending on the platform(s) you’re using for your campaigns, each ad that’s fully viewed or clicked on costs your project money. Even when those ads aren’t doing their job, those costs are subtracted from your marketing budget and you’ve actually spent money chasing consumers away.