Just the facts please
Your success or failure in advertising is fact based. Opinions, philosophies and theories have nothing to do with your advertising results. Everyone stands the chance of being lucky, but luck is not a part of the planning process.
Television, Radio, Newspaper, Direct Mail and the Internet can all work, but understanding how they work and why they work is critical to building an effective media plan.
What media will work best for you?
Many businesses spend countless dollars executing media plans led by people who know very little about advertising. For example, you own a business with four people who influence your advertising. One wants to be on TV, one likes direct mail, one lives and dies with the newspaper and the other wants to do radio remotes and give away free hot dogs and CD's. They all have merit, but there are consequences that come with using them incorrectly; resulting in those very same people giving up and blaming the audience they're reaching instead of their method of planning and executing a media strategy. Remember that understanding the facts about how a particular media works, and why it works, is necessary to making it work.
The most common debate:
Print vs. Electronic.
Facts:
1. Newspapers have older readership. The majority of those readers are over the age of 45, 85% of whom tend to be loyal to a manufacturer or business they've established a relationship with. They are not likely to be persuaded by your price and item offers.
2. The percentage of people using the newspaper to shop for products or services is shrinking drastically. In the automobile industry for example, only about 1% of the population is in the market for a vehicle this week. According to the National Automobile Dealers Association, only 20% of the people who are in the market today are going to the paper before they buy. Therefore, only .2% of the market is even willing to look at your print ad, leaving the other 99.8% unreached by the money you're spending in the newspaper.
3. Newspaper is passive. You are almost required to be in the market for a product or service to notice a particular print ad. Electronic is intrusive, it will reach you even if you're not in the market for that product or service.
4. Electronic advertising is intrusive, and reaches people whether they're in the market or not. TV and radio allow you to reach that 99.8% of the population consistently. TV and radio help you create top of mind awareness before your customer chooses who they'll shop with. The goal is to get on their list before they become active shoppers.
5. In Vermont, the daily circulation of the Burlington Free Press is approximately 45,000. A full-page ad costs roughly $2500. If every subscriber read every ad in the paper, the cost per thousand households would be about $55 per thousand. The question is, how many of those subscribers are actually reading the avalanche of ads in a single newspaper? Personally, I don't read any of them. Do you?
6. There are approximately 25,000 viewers of the WCAX morning news. A 30 second commercial costs roughly $150. The cost per thousand viewers is only $6 per thousand, just about 10% of a full-page ad in the newspaper, assuming that all 45,000 newspaper subscribers read your ad, when in reality very few actually do. For the same $2500 you spent in the newspaper to reach a minimal audience a single time, you could reach the morning news audience on WCAX, three times a week for roughly seven weeks.
7. As consumers, we live in an electronically dominant society. Regardless of the popularity of the TIVO, the IPOD and other personal listening devices, Americans, across all demographics, spend more time with TV than all other media combined. Even if you don't personally watch TV, the masses do. Remember that masses of people are predictable, although an individual may not be, the exception does not disprove the rule.
8. The customer that notices your ad in today's paper already knows where they're going to shop. That same person was not actively in the market for your product or service six months ago. Were you reaching them with regularity then? You want to gain top of mind long before they come into the market; before they even knew they were going to be looking.
9. People watch television programs and listen to radio stations so buy them that way.
At Mt. Mansfield Media, we wanted to become the only agency in Vermont to handle TV advertising effectively. It's a tough animal to manage and we specialize in just that. So if we appear to be biased towards TV it's because it's the strongest of all media and it works. Although TV has some pretty obvious advantages, radio can work as well but as a medium, radio is facing a lot of serious challenges right now and is inherently a bit more "background" than TV. If used correctly, electronic advertising can work miracles. If used incorrectly, you'll likely resort to trying to reach the today buyer with print advertising, passing on the opportunity to create a relationship and top of mind awareness with potential customers long before they come into the market. That's what electronic does that print can't do - and it's the only way to grow your share of market with advertising.
Please see this week's example of how electronic advertising can, creatively and unexpectedly, make an emotional connection with its intended audience.
Invisible WomanKeep climbing,
Jake
