Can Repetitive Processing Fluency Increase Your Sales?

People who are in the business of selling are regularly looking for ways to move more product and one way you might be able to do that is by utilizing repetitive processing fluency to increase your sales.

While that mouthful of a term might not make a lot of sense, by the time you finish reading this article you will completely understand how useful repetitive processing fluency is and how repetitive processing fluency can help your business.

Repetition is always important

For everything from sports to school to the arts, repetition is important. When we as humans repeat things we learn them. You practice and repeat spelling words and times-tables as a kid in school. Athletes regularly ‘get their reps in’ to get better at different aspect of sports. Music, painting, singing or just about anything that involves some level of learning curve gets easier with repetition.

Interestingly enough, sales is in that boat as well.

The underlying concept has to do with how our brains process information. When it comes to reading, repeated words are easier to process. That is why reading programs work through different levels, starting with a small group of words that slowly increases as you master the initial group that are repeated constantly in beginning books.

So how does this work with processing fluency?

The magic of processing fluency

The idea of processing fluency is how easily information can be processed. Repeated words increase processing fluency which in turn creates preference. Without getting all technical, there was a very good study that took place that has proven that people prefer symbols that they have been repeatedly exposed to over symbols that they haven’t, regardless of whether or not those symbols make sense or not.

So when our human brains find something that is easy to process, they tend to like it more than something less easily processed or unknown.

In a simplistic view, this is why chain restaurants often beat out less known, similar options in any demographic. The Denny’s or McDonald’s, regardless of the quality of food, is a known quantity that almost everyone has been exposed to over and over compared to the Village Pantry or Burger Barn. With the brand name, slogans and other constant marketing McDonald’s does, more people will thing that, “I’m lovin’ it,” is a safer choice than the Burger Barn.

So…you said higher sales?

Right, on to the actual important point we need to make! So how does repetition and processing fluency equal higher sales? Here are two things you can do to utilize our natural brain preferences:

• Carefully pick names – For products and even your brand you should be careful in the selection of the name. Names that are easy to say are always a better choice than something odd, but cutesy or explanatory but cumbersome. Think of something that will be easy to place in slogans or has the ability to rhyme and relate.
• Use repetition in ads and marketing – Make sure to repeat important names in slogans and phrases you use. You can take it one step further by crafting good rhymes. Think of the old school marketing jingles people used to make to help customers remember a name. That was smart use of repetitive processing fluency and definitely has a place in today’s sales world. The key point is to test rhymes to ensure they aren’t an object of ridicule and are instead embraced for being clever.

The bottom line

People have used this concept very successfully over the years to sell millions of dollars of product. You want to repeat your brand names, repeat your product names and get your slogan out there so that people become fluent in it. If you do that then repetitive processing fluency will increase your sales.