According to research cited in Entrepreneur magazine, research shows consumers need to hear a message at least three times for them to have name recognition and recall, and nine times before they become a customer.

We recently ran an ad with Val Pak. It was a good experience and the meetings with various advertising service providers was invaluable education. But we didn’t quite break even with money we put into the mailer. I wouldn’t recommend it as a means of building initial brand recognition, but it was a start…

Of course everyones promotion and publicity mix is different. But no matter what it is, I would encourage as much free publicity as possible. A good newpaper article creates online traffic and ranking as well as offline recognition and exposure.