The Marketing Secret Weapon: The Rule of Seven.

How I Got on the Skinny Confidential.

Author

Camille Moore
July 03, 2024

In the fast-paced business world, there is often a clash between the demand for immediate results from marketing campaigns and the well-established Rule of Seven, which suggests that a consumer needs to encounter a campaign seven times before it starts to resonate. Understanding and navigating these conflicting metrics is crucial for crafting effective marketing strategies that align with short-term expectations and long-term brand growth. The Rule of Seven emphasizes the need to give campaigns time to take hold, rather than expecting immediate results. It's important to invest the necessary time to build a strong strategy, thoroughly develop the campaign, and allow it to grow by evaluating return on investment metrics six months down the line while paying attention to engagement metrics to refine the campaign as you go.

Our exposure to brands often occurs unconsciously, and we usually only become aware of a brand after encountering it at least seven times. This is why impressions and awareness are different from engagement; they are separate performance indicators, but both are essential for measuring the success of your marketing efforts. From a brand perspective, creating impressions and awareness is crucial for attracting customers to the brand and moving them closer to a sale or engagement. Brands need maximum exposure in the market to lead potential customers toward making a purchase. This difference emphasizes the distinction between marketing and branding.

Marketing focuses on driving immediate action and targets the end of the sales funnel. Where, branding is about building long-term recognition and trust and requires a focus on the long term. Branding starts at the top of the funnel, ultimately converting with marketing campaigns that align with the brand. 

Many business owners need to realize this reality and become shortsighted about sales-focused ROI instead of investing in a brand relationship that converts over time. 

The Rule of Seven is crucial for understanding how to benchmark ROI from marketing campaigns—or rather, for highlighting the importance of not overemphasizing short-term ROI. It's important to recognize that ‘ROI’ lacks a standard definition and return benchmark. By investing in branding, you are essentially investing in future sales. Often, the clear ROI from an individual campaign can be nearly impossible to measure immediately.

Far too many decision-makers incorrectly apply an ROI mindset to marketing campaigns, expecting a direct quid pro quo: they believe that a consumer will see an ad, like the message, and immediately decide to convert. However, this linear process rarely happens in the real world. Instead, it takes multiple repetitions of seeing the brand to build an association and credibility. In summary, customers require repeat exposure to a brand for the brand to:

  • Stand out

  • Form an association, gain mental real estate, and eventually establish a relationship.

  • Become a trusted brand that customers buy from

Understanding this flow, as expressed through the Rule of Seven, makes it clear that seeking short-term ROI from branding campaigns is often impossible. The problem lies in measuring which of the seven (or more) impressions was most effective in resulting in a sale. Focusing too narrowly on specific or immediate ROI for each campaign can prevent you from losing sight of how the process works holistically, potentially wasting previously invested resources by abandoning efforts or ideas prematurely.

My Marketing Story

The first time I went viral, I expected my bookings and sales to skyrocket, but unfortunately, the opposite happened. My first video to hit 1 million views happened over a weekend. I was in NYC with some girlfriends when I woke up to my phone buzzing with notifications. At the time, I wasn’t used to my content performing so well, so I didn’t know what was going on. I checked a bunch of apps and couldn’t figure out what happened until I landed last on my TikTok app. Ironically, the video that went viral was one that I hated—I disliked how I looked and sounded. I was recovering from chronic voice loss and thought I sounded like an old smoker. My hair was tied back because I had accidentally leftover shampoo residue that morning, forcing me to wear a slicked-back bun. If you look closely, there's no gel in my hair; it's just leftover shampoo. I had also woken up a bit puffy, and my video team failed to mention that my fly was undone and my shirt was sitting awkwardly. Overall, I gave an absolute no-go that this video should be published.

My team failed to tell me that Phillip (my partner and co-founder of Third Eye Insights) saw the potential in the content and instructed the team to publish it anyway. You can imagine my stress when my phone started blowing up in NYC to content. I told my team not to post. 

When I realized the video was live, I instantly felt stress, annoyance, and anger. People were not seeing me at my best, and I feared judgment. But as I watched the numbers climb higher with each refresh, my frustration faded.

The video, which focused on “Marketing is Storytelling,” emphasized that the best marketing tells a story worth remembering. As the video continued to perform, I gained followers, received positive comments, and saw high engagement. I thought for sure this was my breakthrough. (Note: not one person commented on my appearance.)

Despite knowing about the Sales Funnel and the Rule of Seven, I hoped this video would be so good that it would bypass all conventional wisdom and make me an overnight success. However, days passed with minimal business impact; I received only 4-5 calls that first week. If I had been a business hiring an agency, I might have let my team go. At the time of going viral, we had been posting several times a week for eight months. Finally, one hit, but the initial business had yet to justify the investment to date from that initial viral video.

However, this video started the funnel and illustrates the importance of consistency. Business owners and decision-makers began recognizing me and associating me with branding expertise. Subsequent content performed better, attracting more followers, views, and comments. This is when the Rule of Seven started to take effect with my online community. After seeing one video they aligned with, new followers continued to engage with my other content, forming opinions and associations with my personal brand.

From my content creation journey, I learned the importance of the Rule of Seven. Our bookings and sales picked up four to six months after the viral video, transforming our business. Not only did we see increased demand, but the quality of brands reaching out improved significantly. For the first time, major brands wanted to work with me specifically.

After the vesting period of 4-6 months, every client that came in from online content mentioned finding me online and watching multiple videos before reaching out. Either my content highlighted a branding problem for them, or they had an existing issue and felt I was the best person to help because of my content. They weren’t interested in shopping around; they just wanted to work with me. These relationships, formed through repeated exposure, have been some of the most rewarding.

The critical takeaway is that it took time for initial viewers to convert. This is where an ROI-focused marketing approach can hurt your business. I might never have reaped the rewards if I changed strategies or fired my team 1-3 months after the viral video. Inconsistent strategy impacts brand exposure and association, preventing potential customers from forming a relationship with your brand.

The Rule of Seven is how I landed an episode with the Skinny Confidential podcast. Host Lauryn Bosstick reached out, saying, “You kept popping up on my feed, and we would share your content among our team. Finally, I had to reach out!” If my content had only reached Lauryn four times, she might have liked it but never reached out. It's impossible to measure which post led to this opportunity, highlighting the challenge of measuring specific ROI.

In short, I would never have been on the Skinny Confidential without investing in the Rule of Seven.

All the opportunities I’ve gained come from understanding that ROI in branding is measured over time. People form associations with my brand daily, each at different stages of their journey. My focus must be on creating multiple connections with each user to stay in mind so that they think of me when they need branding assistance.

The critical element rooted in the rule of seven is that you don’t realize you’re connecting with the brand until the connection is forged. Seldom do we register that we have been exposed to a brand once, twice, or even three times. We live in a world of noise, where brands fight for our attention every day; in order to stand out and be memorable, you have to connect with your customers consistently over time. The problem is measuring which connection moved the needle for your customer to act. 

The Rule of Seven is a vital aspect of branding psychology that is often overlooked. Business owners who fail to factor repetition into their efforts often waste their resources by abandoning their efforts, strategy, and resources before they can analyze its effects properly. The problem with changing course or talent is the unfortunate opportunity cost of what could have been. Changing focus or benchmarking incorrectly before a creative has matured fails to account for the potentiality of what could have happened if you had stuck to it. 

Failing to communicate the importance of the Rule of Seven early in my career allowed clients to pressure me into changing strategies too early or losing contracts that could have greatly improved my client's businesses. Many of you reading this are pressured by short-term gains that are often impossible to put on the board meaningfully. You see clients change agencies like outfits or chase efforts focusing on 2-dimensional or end-of-the-funnel spending like PPC ads. PPC ads provide easy-to-read data reports monthly that can allow busy business owners to see spending reports and outcomes clearly. This is where marketing/advertising and branding differ. Marketing/advertising is focused on sales; branding is focused on a long-term relationship with its current and future customers.

This week, I ask you to reflect on how you are benchmarking your success and if you could broaden your horizon to focus on the long game. Your brand will not be built in a day, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t rush the touchpoints your customer needs to reach out. 

Let me know your thoughts.


Camille