Way back in 8th grade, I’m not sure my social studies teacher Karen Leshin knew that she was a marketing guru.

When one of her students asked how long a particular essay had to be, she would tell them: “well, it’s like a girl’s skirt – it should be long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to make it interesting.”

Creating a successful marketing message is that simple – and that hard.

It’s been over 20 years since I read it, but I seem to remember David Ogilvy, a founding father of the ad business detailing something he called the “three hit theory” in his landmark book Ogilvy on Advertising.  His theory basically went something like this –

All marketing messages must be received at least 3 times by a target audience member.  The first so that he senses that you are communicating.  The second so that he understands your message.  The 3rd so that he decides what to do.

In my experience, particularly when your marketing message requests action from your target audience – like in lead generation (or any good marketing message for that matter) – the 3 hit theory actually behaves more like a 3 x 3 x 3 hit theory.  It takes 3 exposures for your audience to realize you are communicating to him, 3 x 3 or 9 exposures for them to grasp what you’re asking them to do, and 3 x 3 x nearly 3 or 24 exposures for them to decide whether to accept your request for action or not.

I should clarify that a bit.  The 24 exposures are needed to be absolutely certain that your marketing campaign has exhausted any hope of having a citizen (Seth Godin’s word for a member of the universe) make a final decision to accept or reject your request for action.

Hurry it up will ya!

So what if you don’t have the patience to persevere until your targets have been exposed to your marketing message up to 24 times?  Can’t you just add more reasons to call you in each message to speed up the process?

In a fitful quest to hurry things along, too many amateur marketers (and too many professional ones as well) stuff as much information into each message as they can.  Big mistake.

More information in each message is not a substitute for the number of times a target is exposed to it (frequency). In fact, all this does is drive them away. In a targeted marketing campaign there simply is no substitute for having a simple, clear message and delivering it frequently, and in several different ways to a targeted audience.

Don’t fall into the trap and fill your marketing messages – online and off – with information on as many of your products and services as you can in the hopes you’ll touch a button that’ll generate a call.

And while we’re at it, Web designers can also be guilty of overstuffing the bird. Do you really need those wiz bang graphics and flash animation for your website to do its job or do you just really really want them?

Designers and printers do it too when suggesting that you spend the big bucks on 6 color sell sheets, brochures, or other marketing materials when 2 color may prove just as effective at half the cost. Or better yet, maybe you don’t even need printed marketing materials at all. It just depends on what you really need. Take a quick look at this page – it talks about setting priorities and sticking to them.

On the surface, more sounds better doesn’t it? But sometimes, more is just more. More confusing, more expensive.

An excellent marketing adviser knows it’s just as important to tell you what you DON’T need as much as what you do. They protect you from yourself. Wouldn’t you rather let your competitor’s marketing budget loaf around while your bucks are hard at work growing your business?