Have you ever changed a TV channel because you’ve watched an ad more times than you can remember? Or switched off your radio because you’re tired of hearing a certain commercial?
That’s marketing fatigue! And it doesn't help conversion rates.
This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as brand fatigue, causes demanding challenges to marketers and often lead to poor campaign performance and reduced ROI.
Worst of all, marketing fatigue can lead to poor conversions and retention. Deloitte found that the churn rate can be as high as 30% in certain global markets. According to a new report by Sendoso, over 80% of the respondents said they are fatigued by digital engagement efforts.
Unfortunately, many companies are still bombarding their audiences with the same boring ads repeatedly, unknowingly to them that this can negatively impact customer engagement, conversions, and retention.
So, what can organizations do to combat marketing conversion fatigue?
In this article, we’ll answer what is “marketing fatigue” and provide ways marketers can overcome it across channels. Let’s dive in!
What Is Marketing Fatigue?
By definition—marketing fatigue is excessive advertising, and if your customers repeatedly see the same message in the same format, they’ll likely lose interest in your brand.
Marketing fatigue occurs when your audience sees your promotions so often that they become sick of them and stop paying attention. This reduces the impact customers have on your brand, leading to lower engagement and conversions.
Customers are beginning to feel the effects of too much advertising. To mitigate the impact of marketing conversion fatigue, marketers have honed new engagement tactics, which we’ll discuss in the next chapter.
How to Overcome Marketing Fatigue
Here are some strategies brands can adopt to overcome marketing fatigue and reduce friction in the customer’s journey.
1. Refresh Your Content and Be Creative
Repetition breeds boredom.
Instead of displaying the same ad over and over again, get creative with your advertising.
For example, you could refresh your images and video and exercise with different ad formats to give your ads a new look. If you’ve been using Facebook carousel ads for the past few weeks, pump the breaks and try a video ad instead.
Visuals matter most because they capture the customer’s attention first. You can update your ad copy regularly, but your visuals matter most.
2. Adjust Your Targeting
Targeting the same audience segment with the same message over and over again can cause marketing fatigue.
The solution is to keep your campaign objective and copy the same but target different people. That might mean:
- New audiences in a different niche/location
- Past website visitors
- Lookalike audiences
If your existing audience is bored with your ads and you don’t plan to refresh your copy, get yourself a different audience.
3. Leverage Chatbots and Live Chat
You can take advantage of chatbots and live chat to reduce friction and customer fatigue throughout the buyer’s journey. Chatbots can be used to answer simple customer queries and guide visitors to a logical next step.
Integrated correctly, bots can anticipate users’ questions and help usher them along the sales funnel. Live chats, integrated with chatbots, can offer multiple opportunities to engage with your audience and reduce marketing fatigue that puts buyers off.
Plus, typing into a chat box is easier than calling customer support, so integrating chat options will motivate sales-ready prospects to interact with your brand more.
4. Take a Human-Centric Approach
Try to reverse marketing fatigue by taking a human-centric approach to advertising.
Conversational marketing can prove very helpful here. This dialogue-driven approach to marketing uses real-time conversations to interact with your customers. Enabling your audience to ask questions is the first step to successful conversational marketing.
It helps customers take a break from ad fatigue. Adopting this approach will help you increase loyalty and reduce churn immediately.
5. Create More Interactive Content
Creating interactive content can help reduce marketing fatigue and increase engagement across channels.
For instance, you could increase interactivity through AR and VR channels. You could also utilize social media to create interactive content, such as content, polls, challenges, and more. However, try not to overdo it, as you may overwhelm your audience again.
6. Reduce Ad Frequency
Unless you’re targeting millions of people, social media platforms like Facebook will display your ads to the same audience more than once.
Viewing the ad twice is great.
But if you’re seeing it more than five times a day, that will likely create fatigue. The costs will also start to go up. If your ad frequency is over seven, pause your campaign and adjust your settings. For instance, you could try automatic rules to reduce ad frequency.
Wrapping Up
No matter what marketing strategies you employ, at the end of the day, your goal is to increase engagement and drive conversions. You won’t be able to achieve that if your audience is sick of your repetitive messages. These six tactics can help you combat marketing fatigue and achieve your campaign goals.
