The Secret of Frequency Illusion: How to Be Everywhere and Influence Your Potential Customers

Hey marketers,

Have you ever noticed that once you learn something new, you start seeing it everywhere? For example, you might hear a new word and then encounter it several times in different contexts. Or you might buy a new car and then spot the same model on every street. This is not a coincidence, but a psychological phenomenon called frequency illusion or Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

What is The Frequency Illusion?

Frequency illusion is a cognitive bias that makes us perceive that something is more common or popular than it actually is, simply because we have recently become aware of it or we see it everywhere

Frequency illusion can have a powerful impact on our decision-making and behaviour, especially when it comes to marketing and consumer choices. In this article, we will explore how you can use frequency illusion to your advantage and create a more effective marketing strategy for your brand or business.

How YOU can use frequency illusion to your advantage

The basic idea is extremely simple. BE EVERYWHERE

1. Use Testimonials and User Reviews

As you probably know, testimonials are great to build social proof. But you can also use them to increase your exposure.

Ask your customers/users to share their testimonials on their socials. This exposes you to their audience and since their audience already trusts them they are likely to trust you as well.

This may seem like a very small thing but on a larger scale when a majority of your audience starts to speak about you, your brand is exposed to thousands (potentially millions) of people.

Now most people won’t do it just because you asked them to. Many brands ask their users to share their reviews publicly. But mostly people don’t. So you gotta give them an offer they can’t refuse!

Example: Let’s say you have a good running service business. You do facebook ads for ecommerce. Offer your client a month of free service in return of them sharing a positive testimonial on their (preferably personal) social media.

Now ofc this doesn’t make a lot of sense. An entire month of free service just for a testimonial even though you are already established? And their personal account doesn’t even have a big audience?

Well you don’t need a big audience. Since they are an entrepreneur running ecom they are also likely to have a network full of ecom people who follow them. Your prospect praising you on their social media develops a lot of trust in that targeted audience. So whenever this audience needs Fb ads as a service you would be the first in their mind. And it is upto you to check how good of a network your client has

2. Expose yourself to your Target audience

Although the basic idea is to be “everywhere”, this “everywhere” should be in front of you ideal audience

An example to explain this better would be The Red Bull's marketing campaign from 1980’s

Red Bull knew that people outside night clubs are more likely to love their drink. So they started to strategically place empty redbull cans outside night clubs near the trash all over the city!

Why? To make it seem like Red Bull was everywhere and that everyone was drinking it. This strategy hits a lot of psychological bias to increase sales but for this article let's stick to the frequency illusion.

Everyone started to think that the entire world is drinking redbull and it is the norm.

If you like this, this is an example from our free ebook. You can get it here “3 Marketing Strategies YOU Can Steal From Big Brands”

How you can use this: The point is to get in front of an audience that is more likely to like your product.

So think about where do your prospects hang out? Whom do they follow? Start showing your content over there.

Find the big creators/big brands in your niche and start interacting with them and their followers. Since they follow them they are likely to like your content as well.

When you are interacting with so many big accounts, people start to see your face everywhere and you can leverage frequency illusion

3. Use Influencer campaigns effectively

Influencer marketing is a gem! If you wish to learn more about it you can check out previous article on “The Science of Influencer Marketing Success”

But the overall idea here is to use micro influencers or mid level influencers in your niche to get the maximum exposure. Micro and mid level influencers charge comparatively low.

Instead of getting one big influencer try to aim to get promotions from multiple smaller creators in your niche

What this does is, it shows your brand repeatedly to the audience that is mutual in these creators. That is, the audience that follows multiple of the creators that you sponsored see your brand again and again and again. This makes them think like you are the big thing in this niche. That you are the main deal. So you don’t develop just awareness level prospects but instead potential brand fans

Monthly Marketing Update

In September 2023, Instagram experimented with a hidden like activity option. X introduced ID verification for premium users. Instagram expanded Reels gifts to more regions for creators.

Google simplified the business profile reinstatement process. YouTube unveiled enhanced ad placement controls and tested fresh ad formats for CTV.

OpenAI integrated ChatGPT into Canva.

Also, judgment-free confession booths, co-branded cat podcasts, and no-code automated marketing services emerged as new trends.

Love & Peace

Kranstar Media