Too Much of a Good Thing: Brand Fatigue and the Dangers of Over-Marketing Your Messaging

The world is noisy. Daily, we are surrounded by voices vying for our attention from seemingly every direction, no matter where we are – through magazines, television, the internet, email, social media, even the ever-dreaded robocalls. It is important to remember that your customers feel this same pain you do. The marketing phenomenon of being inundated with messages, known as brand fatigue, is a real risk. In fact, as of July 2020, 41% of Americans were using ad-blocking software. 

Sending too many messages water down their content and may cause you to lose existing or potential customers you could have served well with your particular good or service. But what is the optimum number of messages to continually engage but not overload? If you or a loved one (your brand) thinks they may be suffering from messaging misery, call your MD (marketing doctor) right away.

How to Detect Brand Fatigue

There are a few ways you can tell if your target audience is beginning to pull away from your brand’s messages. 

Engagement Rates

One easy way to see if your customers are becoming tired of your messages is to check your engagement rates and see if you can notice perceptible drops in response rates, clicks, and conversions. Low engagement rates are bad for brand loyalty. They can also result in social network and email penalties, including your messages being flagged as spam or your reach being reduced over time. 

Expiration Dates

If your ad or message has been visible to your customers for more than 90 days, the chances are good that most of the people you were hoping to reach have seen it. Checking the duration allows you to know if you have over-saturated and use the opportunity to refresh your content. 

How to Fix it

Thankfully, there are ways to address brand fatigue head-on, and not all of them involve sending fewer messages. That is one strategy, yes, but overall the best resolution is to be more strategic with your messaging. 

Send Fewer Messages on Different Schedules 

The most straightforward fix that requires the least investigation is decreasing the number of marketing messages you send. You may be in a Goldilocks situation and sending too many – or even not enough – messages. 

Additionally, scheduling your brand’s social media posts can make it much easier on you, but it can become predictable and stale for your followers if you repeatedly follow the same format. Try to throw in some variation to change it up and keep things fresh. 

Focus on the Content

Similarly, concentrating on the quality of your posts and messages more than the number of them will help your customers remain engaged with what you have to say. One major factor of brand fatigue occurs because you have sent the same message multiple times or across various channels. 

Diversifying your message and making sure it is uniquely suited to each platform will keep your content fresh for your customers. Give your customers the creative content they need to see. This means refreshing existing content or creating new is essential to marketing message success. There are a few tips to follow to ensure your message is compelling. 

• Remove any filler or unnecessary words. 
• Don’t use industry jargon. 
• Don’t use passive or cold language. 

If we recognize that people have shortened attention spans, we need to create content that maximizes the reader’s time. 

Customized Messaging

Your marketing messages should not just be tailored to the platform you run it on but also specific to the customer you hope to reach. One of the problems with mass marketing messages is that they make the reader feel like a dime a dozen rather than making them feel special – like you are talking directly to them to solve their issue. You can equate it to giving a group of people the same compliment – not only is it annoying, but it also creates distrust in your sincerity. 

Meeting customers where they are means acknowledging where they are in their buyer’s journey. When your customers are at the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey, they need messaging that informs and attracts them to your brand, such as blogs and social media. When a buyer moves on to the consideration stage, email, outreach, and retargeting are effective tools. When the buyer enters the decision phase, live chat, knowledge bases, and loyalty programs serve your brand well. Recognizing these stages and what content works best for each allows you to customize your messaging fully. 

Use AI

Another effective way to re-energize your customer base is to use AI to gain critical insights about your customers. For example, AI can help discern where customers are falling off the buyer’s journey by looking at how they engage with your brand’s platforms and consequently analyze click-through rates. If you have a specific customer in mind, AI can help you pinpoint when and how often to reach out to them and what channel works best. Further, AI can be useful to predict your customers’ behavior based on their digital footprint. You can use these predictions to tailor your messaging to what will be most effective for that particular group. 

PHOS Makes the Most of Your Messaging 

When you find that your customers are overexposed to your brand, it can feel overwhelming to address yourself. Our team of digital marketers is adept at helping you navigate the delicate balance of educating and engaging your customers in strategic ways so you can avoid brand fatigue and instead create brand loyalty. Reach out to us to see how we can help you get your messaging just right in a way that benefits your company and your customers.