In the early days of Hollywood, the marketing mavens there discovered a secret for generating the maximum number of customers to see their latest movies, and they've been using it ever since.

They discovered that they had to expose their prospects to a promotion for a movie at least seven times to maximize ticket sales.

Why seven times? Because we all need repetition in order to absorb new information.

FIRST EXPOSURE:
The first time a person sees a promotion for a new movie, they hardly even notice it. "Zzzzzzzzzz."

SECOND EXPOSURE:
The second time, it got a little bit of ATTENTION. "What's this?"

THIRD EXPOSURE:
The third time, it really got their ATTENTION. "Aha! So what is this about?"

FOURTH EXPOSURE:
The fourth time, it got their INTEREST. "Looks kind of interesting."

FIFTH EXPOSURE:
The fifth time, it got even more INTEREST. "Might be fun to see."

SIXTH EXPOSURE:
The sixth time, it built DESIRE. "I'd really like to see that movie."

SEVENTH EXPOSURE:
The seventh time, it got ACTION. "Let's go see it tonight!"

Did you notice the AIDA marketing formula; Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action? In order to apply the AIDA formula, you must use the power of repetition.

Remember when you were in school and you had to memorize a poem, or the multiplication tables? Unless you had a photographic memory, you had to repeat the information again and again until it stuck.

We all must go through the same process with anything new. Can most people remember a new phone number off the top of their head the first time? No, they must review it again and again before they have it.

What does this mean to you? It means that you cannot use one-shot marketing efforts and think you can succeed. You'll just be wasting your time, energy and money if you try.

You need to repeat your offers to your prospects over and over again if you hope to get their Attention, their Interest, their Desire and finally, their Action.

This applies to your marketing efforts to attract prospects to your business so you can build your physical prospect list, and it especially applies to your marketing efforts to convert your list of prospects into customers.

Repetition is Hollywood's secret marketing weapon, and it should be yours too.