What is marketing reach? And why your business should measure it.
Imagine investing time and money in creating a mind-blowing photography exhibition, but without considering how many people can actually fit in that tiny room
Pretty counterproductive, right?
It’s the same with your advertising efforts and marketing in general: to set yourself up for success and ensure a good ROI, you must first consider the reach of your campaign.
So, what is marketing reach?
Not only are we going to explain it to you in a jargon-free way, but we’ll also show you how you can calculate it and… why sometimes you just can’t.
First things first: what does market reach mean?
Marketing reach refers to the estimated number of potential customers that you can reach with your message or an entire campaign. Basically, how many people are likely to see it, whether it’s an online ad, a physical leaflet or any type of promotional medium.
You should always consider a campaign’s reach in order to make more informed decisions, know where it makes sense to concentrate your marketing efforts, and figure out how to use your resources effectively to strive for the best possible ROI.
For example, taking the time to calculate a campaign’s reach before launching it could show you that the medium that you were considering wouldn’t give you a high enough reach to justify its cost, whereas another platform would be better-suited to help you amplify that particular message in an effective way.
This would save you time and, needless to say, a precious slice of your advertising budget.
Knowing a campaign’s market reach can therefore help you minimise risks, but also allow you to plan ahead in a more conscious way: by having a good idea as to how many potential customers you’re likely to reach, you can then ensure that you’ll be able to cater for their demand by having enough products available for them to purchase, enough staff to deal with their requests, or the right services for them.
The importance of frequency in marketing reach
Now, imagine you've created the perfect campaign for your target audience (well done, you!), and are about to launch it as a sponsored post on Instagram.
That’s great.
But have you thought of how many other ads that audience is going to see today?
Hint: Users see one paid advert for every four organic posts… and that’s on Instagram only! They’ll see more when scrolling on other social media, when they turn on the TV, or even when they go for a walk.
Your target audience is already bombarded with all sorts of ads and cold promotions, including from your competitors! Inevitably, the majority of ads merge into an advertising white noise, which is why it’s important to consider your campaign’s frequency when calculating your market reach.
Frequency in marketing and advertising is the average number of times that a potential customer has the opportunity to see your message during the length of your campaign.
This could be on the same medium (for instance, by running separate Facebook ads a few days apart from each other) or across different ones, perhaps by combining traditional and digital marketing or by using several online channels.
Using mixed media in this way is usually the most effective method of delivering a campaign without coming across as redundant or repetitive. For example, you could use an email, social media and a physical leaflet to promote the same campaign.
It’s unlikely that your leads will want to invest in your products or services after seeing just one ad.
Not to sound mean, but most people seeing your ad will forget about it once they’ve scrolled past it. That’s why you need to remind again and again to move it from the back of their mind to the front.
The best method of achieving this is to use retargeting ads. Focus on their effective frequency, which is the minimum number of times that your target audience must see your campaign for it to impact their buying behaviour.
While it can change depending on the individual campaign, call-to-action and demographics, studies have shown that the effective frequency in marketing and online advertising is usually three times:
- The first time to grab your potential customer’s attention
- The second for them to recognise your message
- The third to trigger a positive sense of familiarity and acceptance, often resulting in a purchase.
How do you calculate market reach?
Here’s the tricky part. There’s a reason why we’ve used the words ‘potential’ and ‘estimated’ when we told you what marketing reach was: because in traditional marketing, it’s almost impossible to quantify it correctly.
Bummer.
Market reach depends on many factors, but it’s mostly tied to its medium. For example, the marketing reach of a TV advertisement is the number of people who usually watch that programme, whereas that of a billboard will consist of the average number of eyes that pass it.
However, not all those people will actually see your TV ad, as they might use that break to go to the toilet, make a cup of tea, or be busy arguing with their partner about what just happened during the first part of the program.
As for the billboard? Some drivers might be too focused on the road to notice it, and some passers-by will be distracted by kids or phones.
With digital methods, on the other hand, market reach has become easier to quantify. Phew.
Before throwing your money at a social media channel or Google Ads, you’ll be able to check how many people are expected to see your campaign: these platforms will automatically give you an estimated ‘reach’ or ‘potential audience size’. While these are also approximations, they’re much, much closer to the real thing.
Of course, as we’ve already established, you’ll want to know your marketing reach before launching the campaign, but don’t forget that it’s incredibly useful to run some analytics after you’ve completed it too.
That way, you can measure the campaign to see what went well and what turned out to be a bit of a facepalm situation. This will help you make better-informed decisions during your next campaigns.
The good news is that you can actually calculate the exact market reach, without approximations, of a live campaign.
Most digital marketing channels and social media analytics will automatically give you the numbers themselves, but the generic formula to calculate your market reach is impressions divided by frequency.
To know your frequency, you must simply divide impressions by unique users. Easy peasy, right?
Why a higher market reach doesn’t necessarily ensure a good ROI
When calculating the marketing reach of a specific campaign, it’s easy to fall for the medium or scenario that seems to result in a higher reach. However, that’s not always the best solution.
As we’ve mentioned before, people are now bombarded with non-stop marketing messages, so it’s better to whisper in the right ears than shout to a random crowd hoping to be heard.
Let’s say that you’re a new, small start-up business and are planning on advertising a vegan sausage roll.
A TV ad that is broadcast on prime time will have a super-duper high market reach, but the number of people who actually see it will be much lower… and only a small percentage of them will be vegan or interested in meat-free products.
The moral of the story? It’s highly unlikely, given the ludicrous cost of TV advertising, that its high marketing reach will translate into a good ROI.
Running the same campaign as a print ad in a vegan magazine or a digital ad in a social media vegan group will certainly give you a lower market reach, but it will be seen by people who’re already interested in the type of products you sell.
You’ll be much more likely to grab yourself lots of new customers and generate a fantastic ROI.
To finish with a digital marketing example, a Facebook ad that targets everyone within a 25-mile radius of your business will have a higher reach than one that was meticulously created to only reach the demographics who live in the same area but match your target audience… and yet it’s probably the second one that will give you a higher ROI.
That’s why it’s vital to consider who is included in your market reach, as well as how many people: for the best results, you want to make sure that most (or, even better, the entirety) of the people included in your market reach are also in your target group.
Making sure that your campaign is relevant to them with a finely-tuned message will stop you wasting money trying to please everyone.
Now that you know exactly what marketing reach is and why it’s important, we’re confident that your next campaign will be much more informed and, consequently, incredibly effective.
Still need a hand? We’d love to help you maximise your marketing reach and generate a higher ROI!