WHAT DOES CHRISTMAS AND THE MARKETING RULE OF 7 HAVE TO DO WITH EACH OTHER

Do you know what the Marketing Rule of 7 is? It’s in fact a really important rule for EVERYTHING YOU DO, not just Christmas, BUT ESPECIALLY Christmas.

The Marketing Rule of 7 states that a prospect must see a message at least 7 times before they’ll be provoked to take an action.  The principle came about in the 1930s through research conducted by the movie industry. They found that a potential moviegoer had to see a movie poster at least 7 times before they would consider buying a ticket.

From that moment on, this principle was widely used and proven time and time again in all aspects of marketing.

Now think about this. If the marketing rule of 7 was relevant in the 1930s, when television, radio and press advertising were so limited and competition so much less, can you imagine what the multiplying factor would need to be TODAY, in our noisy technology-filled, internet-filled and social-media-filled world?

I haven’t seen any research on this but it would have to be a helluva lot more than 7!

So What Does This Mean for You and Christmas?

It means that every marketing message needs to be EVERYWHERE and OFTEN.

By the end of November, you should have finalised all your Christmas offerings:

• Gift Vouchers. Most important and to introduce new people to your business. Gift vouchers are paid referrals. Remember that
• Treatment offers. For existing clients to make themselves party-ready and skin packages as gifts
• Retail offers. For personal use and to give away as gifts
• Kris Kringle offers. Most of what you do is high priced. Kris Kringle makes you sure don’t leave a single dollar on the table by catering to every budget level

From the beginning of December, you need to promote DAILY, EVERYWHERE. If you want your clients to pay attention and take action, your offers need to be on your socials every day, on your website home page and promotions page, posters in the salon/clinic and email marketing. During this time, you should be sending emails at least every second day, featuring one to a few offers. The week before Christmas, every day. 

As an example, you can have a whole email dedicated to your Kris Kringle offer and then from every email you send after that until Christmas, your PS can be about your Kris Kringle offer.

Your prospects need to be receiving marketing messages from you every day until C-day because if they don’t, they’ll be paying attention to all the other marketing messages put in front of them from other vendors and your little social post a couple of days, will just be a distant, vague memory.

The Days of Worrying About ‘Spamming’ People are Gone

You need to be front and centre, every day so that after a prospect has seen every message 7 or 25 times, they’ll be motivated to buy. The days of worrying about ‘spamming’ people and afraid that they’ll unsubscribe you (or unfollow you) are gone. The few that do (and probably would never have bought from you anyway) won’t hold a candle to the increase in sales received from those who don’t.

For this time of year, it’s acceptable that most of your marketing is highlighting an offer. The rest of the year? Well... I say it’s ok too in terms of frequency but you’ll sprinkle content around educational, useful and even entertaining content. Say for every promo post or email, you’ll have 5 non promotional posts/email.