The Maketing Moment, Volume 5

In our first four weeks of The Marketing Moment, we have talked about:

1. Advertising without a goal or objective.
2. Having a small "presence" in a number of different mediums.
3. Placing ads instead of a campaign.

This week, we are up to 4 on our list of advertisers mistakes.

Treating mediums as a commodity. Whether it is print, radio, billboard, TV, you are buying an audience. If the medium has a huge audience, the price is higher. Supply and audience should drive the rate. If you only buy on rate, you may have lost the game before it started.

Most people do not go to a car dealer and expect to buy the top of the line products for the same price as an entry level model. However, there are a lot of advertisers who are all about price.

Of course, you need to get the best deal you can get. You need to be smart with your budget, you need to make sure that you can pay for what you buy. However, paying the lowest rate is usually not the best deal. Let me explain.

You advertise when you can't go see someone. You are hiring a salesman that can reach people you can't talk too. Regardless of the medium, you are buying an audience. Once you have a strong audience and you couple that with strong frequency and a motivating message, you will get results.

The more results a medium gets for advertiser, the higher the demand, the higher the demand, the higher the price of the advertising. The lower the results, the reverse is true. With that in mind, you need to ask yourself why the medium is so much cheaper than all the others. Usually, it is in direct correlation with the results.

I am not saying that there are not over priced mediums, there are and you need to be careful. I am saying, if someone is a whole lot cheaper than everyone else, be careful with your money. Good Luck.

The Marketing Moment, Volume 3

This week is a continuation of our discussion of the 6 major mistakes of advertisers. Please feel free to review last weeks entry to remind yourself of mistake 1, advertising without a goal.

But now, we have a goal. We know how many people we need to see in our store. So how do we get there? At Hometown Radio, we believe that Reach (The Number of people who see, read, or hear your message) Frequency (The number of times they see it) and message (Are you communicating to them how you can improve their life) are the three central components to getting results.

The second biggest mistake is "having a small "presence" in a number of different places, without dominating any place" (IE...trying to reach too many people) Roy Williams, The Wizard of Ads, talks about reaching 100% of the people convincing them 10% of the time or reaching 10% of the people and convincing them 100% of the way.

Remember the TV Commercial with the three little ballerinas? They all had a small amount of milk in their glass and they could not reach the milk with their cookies. Obviously a problem. Then, they combined all their milk into one glass and the problem was solved.

Take a look at your advertising. Are you unable to reach your prospects because of too little frequency. Sometimes, advertisers see their competition advertising in a medium and they feel like they should be there as well. Before you realize it, you have a very small amount of milk in a number of glasses, but not enough to have an impact.

You can learn from most successful advertisers, whether it's radio, billboard, print, or web. When they advertise, they are dominant.

What can you do? If you are in a number of different mediums, you can probably improve your advertising, simply by spending the same amount of money but concentrating that money in fewer places.

Do some homework this week on how you are spending your advertising dollar and see if less places can mean more results. Good luck.