Are you tired of Christmas advertising? I thought so.

There’s no time of the year when advertising is more intense, but there’s a year-round lesson to be learned: Your marketing message can be over-exposed. But guess what: it can just as well be under-exposed. Maybe no one even knows you are communicating.

Too much and too little are both mistakes. Consider that for every aspect of your marketing:

1. Make your text too small and your message gets lost. But did you know text that’s TOO large can be overlooked as well? It just doesn’t register as words.

2. Email marketing needs to be sent often enough to have an impact. Chances are if it is too infrequent it won’t even get noticed. Too often, we all know, gets annoying, ignored, and unsubscribed or reported as spam.

3. Tell your consumers too little about your product or service, on your website, and they’ll wander off without getting interested enough to inquire. Tell them EVERYTHING about it and they have no reason to contact you or they just get overwhelmed by all the information. You can overdo it, but a little mystery is an essential ingredient of marketing.

4. A website can look like all the other websites in an industry – and no one can even remember it. Or it can be so different as to look weird and scare people off.

I’m sure you can think of other examples. But, then, how do you know where the Goldilocks zone is? Not too big or too small, too hot or too cold, but just right? Experience helps, but it isn’t a total answer. You can also put yourself in the viewers’ shoes and get a pretty good idea of how well something will work.

Ultimately it’s going to be a judgement call or best guess. Then, if possible, you can try different options. It’s easy enough crank up the frequency of email broadcasts until people start to scream.

However you approach it, the first big thing is just knowing this: For each aspect of marketing, there is a mean, somewhere between extremes, that will produce the best results.

Good luck with it!