Showing up beats perfection |  The Mere Exposure Effect

Welcome to back to B2B Courtship, where we give you the specifics behind building digital relationships because whether we like it or not, Mindshare leads to Marketshare.

Today, we’re talking about Susan.

Susan's Story

Susan drove past the stump that used to be the giant oak tree on the corner of her street. She had never even noticed it before, but now that it was gone, a sense of sadness washed over her. It wasn’t like the oak was in her yard or that she even sat under it like others in the neighborhood, but it felt like it belonged. And now that it was gone, something felt off about the drive.

This, my friends, is a perfect example of the mere exposure effect in action.

What is the Mere Exposure Effect?

The mere exposure effect is our brain’s tendency to develop affection for things—sights, sounds, smells, anything—the more often they show up around us. We don’t even have to consciously recognize or think about it. Our brain is quietly taking note of that repeated exposure in the background.

Think about a song you hear on the radio. The first time you hear it, you might not care. But as you hear it more and more, you start to like it. That's the mere exposure effect!

The Science Behind The Mere Exposure Effect.

The mere exposure effect, as we understand it today, was observed in 1968 by social psychologist Robert Zajonc. I think it was a weird experiment. Zajonc had people read words from a foreign language out loud and changed how often they read each word. After the reading exercise, they were asked to guess the meaning of each word.

Surprisingly, the words that were repeated most often were rated more positively, while the words that were repeated less or not at all were rated negatively. Just the mere exposure caused a more favorable response. Pun intended.

Now, let’s dig into the brain mechanics behind this for a minute or two. Stick with me because this is the foundation of why the mere exposure effect is so important for marketers.

Our brains are wired to prefer familiarity. Familiarity means our brains don’t have to work as hard to recognize what’s happening. And when the brain doesn’t have to work hard, it's a happy brain. Basically the brain is lazy.

Essentially, when something is familiar, the brain is fluent in processing it. That ease creates a positive experience, and that positive experience creates affection. It's like the brain is saying, "Hey, I know this thing! I feel good about this thing!"

Why Marketers Should Care

And that’s exactly why we, as marketers, should care about the mere exposure effect. At its core, this behavioral psychology concept means that if our audience simply sees our brand repeatedly for long periods of time, they’ll develop an affinity for it. 

Now, it’s never that easy in the real world. We’ve got competitive interference, fading memories, and divided attention to compete with. People are bombarded with messages every single day.

But if we can overcome those obstacles, there’s an important lesson here. Showing up every day wins in the long run. It’s less about having the perfect asset, the perfect copy, the perfect brand from day one. It’s about showing up consistently, day in and day out.

How to Use The Mere Exposure Effect to Build Digital Relationships & Mindshare

You see examples of this all the time with big brands. Fortune 500 companies have their logos everywhere, from stadiums to race cars to non-profit events. They seem to be everywhere you look in their target market because they know the power of showing up. I saw an article somewhere that said mature organizations spend about 60% of their marketing budget on brand marketing and generally immeasurable tactics, with the other 40% on conversion-focused tactics.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have $1 million per month or even per year to dedicate to brand building. You get the point. I don’t have a massive budget, but I still want that kind of exposure, so here’s how I’m using this concept to build my business, and you can too.

First Step: LinkedIn Text Ads

A semi-easy first step I'm taking is to leverage low-cost advertising on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has a medium called text ads. They are those small, short ads that show up to the right of your screen on desktop, but they don’t appear on the mobile app. And most of the time, when someone is on LinkedIn on their desktop, they're at work and in a professional mindset. I don’t know many people who mindlessly scroll through LinkedIn for entertainment. No shade if you do, though!

LinkedIn text ads have another major power: you only pay for clicks when you use the "website visitors" optimization target. And almost no one clicks on text ads. I currently have a text ad campaign running with 100,000 impressions and only 4 clicks that cost me $70 total. This might seem like poor performance on the surface, but here’s the thing: the number of people searching for my company has steadily increased.

When properly set up, the LinkedIn pixel can tell you about view-through conversions. This means that someone saw your ad and then took a trackable action on your website within a certain period of time.

My only goal with these text ads is for my target audience to constantly and consistently see my logo and company name, allowing their brain to register that repetition.

Adding a Layer: The Power of Association

To make this tactic even more powerful, I’m combining the power of association with the power of the mere exposure effect.

Text ads have a 25-character headline limit and a 75-character description limit. Remember that the mere exposure effect works without us consciously thinking about what we’re seeing.

I’m testing 30 different phrases as text ads, such as:

• "Mindshare leads to marketshare"
• "Free mindshare building newsletter"
• "Build your brand"
• "Read why people buy"

All of these are intended to open a subconscious curiosity gap that the audience is itching to close. They see these phrases repeatedly, and they start to associate my brand with these concepts.

Next Level: Boosting Organic Social Media Posts

From here, I’m looking to boost my organic posts across social media platforms to target my audience on other channels. I focus on authority and credibility-building content with no direct sales pitch. The only call to action I use is to subscribe to my newsletter.

This allows me to expand my reach and get my brand in front of people who might not otherwise see it. By consistently providing valuable content, I can further reinforce the positive associations with my brand.

Advanced Level: Be Everywhere All at Once

And that leads to the hard version of this tactic: be everywhere all at once.

Each week, I plan on creating a podcast, like this one, on a behavioral science topic. That podcast script then becomes a blog post, a newsletter, 10-20 video clips, 1-5 carousels, 1-5 static images, and 1-5 new LinkedIn text ads.

The podcast gets posted on my YouTube channel, Spotify, and Apple podcasts. The newsletter gets sent to my list. The blog article gets posted on my blog, which gets 500 clicks a month and counting. The video clips get posted on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn Company, and TikTok. The carousels, static images, and clips get posted on my personal LinkedIn page.

Be everywhere all at once. Now the goal is to do this do this almost every week for the rest of time I own this business. Slowly but surely, I’ll build the audience and people will look forward to my content and develop an affection for what I have going on.

This won’t be crappy content either, I want this to genuinely help people connect with their potential clients.  Whenever something I create helps someone, I reinforce the positive association between my brand and the problem I’m helping them solve. Building a digital relationship with their audience.

Ok, here are your action items:

If you’re in B2B, then your audience is on LinkedIn. Go create a text ad campaign and launch it with 10 ads. Full disclosure: people do click on these ads. Just not very often, so be prepared to pay around $50 monthly for this.

Second: figure out how you can show up on social where your audience plays. I choose to prioritize platforms where people who don’t follow me can see my content. YouTube, YouTube shorts, LinkedIn, IG Reels, and TikTok because why not, I’m already creating the videos.

It doesn’t have to be huge or a lot. It just needs to be consistent. If you can post something valuable once a week, then you’re well on your way. If you can’t post something valuable, try commenting on other people’s posts with something valuable. Get people used to seeing your face and your brand.

And that’s all folks! If you found this valuable, be sure to subscribe to the B2B Courtship newsletter however you want to consume. Blog, email, youtube, podcast and let me know your thoughts.

Remember Mindshares leads to marketshare. Until next time.