What Is Frequency?

Frequency is the number of times an event, value, or occurrence is repeated in a set of data. 

Reach and frequency are terms that are used a lot when it comes to advertising campaigns. But these concepts can be applied to a variety of other promotional activities as well, such as direct selling and networking.

So, reach is the number of people that view, get access to, or understand your marketing message. But frequency is the number of times that message touches each person. 

Marketers usually aim to maximize both reach and frequency.

Gaining knowledge of primary business statistics can go a long way for business owners and help them make better decisions. Therefore, understanding concepts like that of frequency is important because these are often represented in reports and used in business data.

When Measuring Frequency Is Helpful

Frequency can be a useful value to calculate for purposes of measuring things such as:

• the rate of success of ad campaigns (frequency of clicks)
• the number of goods sold (frequency of purchases)
• number of site visits on your website
• number of reads per web page 
• and more.

As you calculate the frequency at which certain actions happen, you can then also analyze what may cause the variable to rise or sink. 

For example: if the frequency of visits on your site is low, what’s causing this and how can you improve it?

Thus, measuring frequency can help you understand success rates, the extent of reach you may have, how effective something such as an ad has been, and more!

How to Determine Frequency

To determine the frequency value of a variable that may be affecting your company, you must first collect and analyze data. 

One of the most popular methods of collecting business data is conducting surveys. You can survey various stakeholders such as customers, employees, and even partners, including distributors and vendors. 

Then, you can add up the results of the survey to determine the frequency of specific responses. For example, if 10 people chose the answer "A", then it has a frequency value of 10.

Similarly, there are different ways you can calculate the frequency of actions. Sometimes, all you need to do is enter the values in a digital tool and it does the work for you. Other times, you can determine something like the frequency of site visits by the number of clicks on a web page, for example.

Key Takeaway

Overall, calculating the frequency of things related to marketing, sales, or other parts of the business can contribute to indispensable business data that stimulate progress. It can show you how often something occurs and then help you analyze what variables come into play to cause change.

In other words, once you can figure out how much, you can also figure out why, making frequency a valuable statistic to add in business reports and analytics.