When you think of BMW, what do you think of as their slogan? While we have only owned one BMW about 10 years ago (and my wife mostly drove it), I immediately think of “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” They used that slogan for 34 years.
In 2013, they changed it. Do you know what it is? Me either... until I looked it up. It is “Designed for Driving Pleasure.” So, why did they change it? Their stated reason was that they wanted to reinforce that BMWs are performance vehicles that are thrilling to drive. However, I am not buying that explanation. I think it was because too many people within BMW were bored with their old slogan.
This is a common problem when we are working in our businesses and communicating with the world around us. We think about our business all the time, and sometimes, we feel like a broken record explaining the business to others. What we can fail to realize is that this information is new to other people, even if they have heard it before.
For example, I wrote a newsletter and blog for one client for six years. As it was weekly, we had to come up with 52 topics per year. Over 6 years, that was over 300 topics. Many people wonder how you can keep coming up with new topics. The short answer is that we did not.
After the first year of topics, we started recycling them. Yes, I would re-write them to focus on a different aspect of the topic or add a new topic that was timely. However, most of the messages were essentially the same each year. And do you know how many of the 3000+ people on the list ever complained about repetition? None.
They were not thinking about these topics until we brought them up, since it was outside of their core business focus. And unless it motivated them to take action, they went back to thinking about their businesses shortly after reading the newsletter.
A regular newsletter helps keep you top of mind with prospects and referral partners. Just remember that you do not need to come up with an endless supply of topics to keep it fresh. You just need a few core concepts that you want to get across and you can repeat the topic from different angles.
(As an example, this is probably the fifth newsletter talking about repetition in your marketing message in the last 50 newsletters I have sent.)
So, don’t be afraid to repeat yourself. You actually want to make sure you are repeating a similar message to prospects and referral partners frequently, because it is easy for them to forget what you do and how you can help.