Isolating and measuring promotional effectiveness alone is not a true picture of the total cause-and-effect that is relied on for creating demand for products and sales, leading to trail and eventual purchase. Just as advertising spending does not correlate to purchases, the same holds true for promotional programs. It is better to look at their effectiveness in isolation and measure only the factors or variables that the p0romotional program is meant to directly influence. Too often however promotional programs are broad in scope, long-term and lack that level of focus. As a result, measuring their effectiveness is difficult and often imprecise. Media planning involves a tradeoff between reach and frequency. Explain what this means and give examples of when reach should be emphasized over frequency and vice versa.

In fact the essence of media planning is in balancing reach vs. frequency. Reach is defined as the percentage of an market segments' audience accessible by a given media vehicle or outlet typically in small time blocks. The use of demographics is heavily relied on for computing reach as well. An example of reach is to look at how to reach working parents who are interested in all-inclusive vacations that don't require extensive preparation yet deliver exceptionally high levels of adventuring, excursions and sightseeing for example. Reach would be the use of the Travel Channel to target those television shows that have a high percentage of its audience who are families looking for all-inclusive vacations. The percentage of the audience that could be captured is the reach of this specific strategy.

The frequency is the number of times those target audience members see your message. There is a universally agreed on figure of seeing a message a minimum of three times before it is even recalled by a prospect or customer. Frequency is the measurement that is used for defining "flighting" or heavy scheduling of an advertisement to saturate an audience with a message. The use of frequency across multiple media outlets can significantly influence awareness and interest in products, even lead to trial if the call to action it the advertisement...

Reach would also be used for fine-tuning existing advertising strategies that were in progress. Frequency would be favored for strategies that centered on accentuating highly unique messaging that was time-dependent, or in response to highly competitive advertising strategies in a given market. Frequency permeates a market with messaging and often is required in slower-growth, more competitive market segments including healthcare and consumer goods, in addition to automotive products. That's why the majority of television commercials are from these industries.
References

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