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Planning Applies to Advertising Spending Too.

Written by: Heather Mayoros

Article Overview: Planning your advertising purchases for the year will maximize the effectiveness of your marketing, control spending, and allow you to better track your return on investment.

Planning Applies to Advertising Spending Too.

Business planning, whether in the form of a business plan, growth plan, or marketing plan, is often celebrated as vital to a company’s success. Yet, seldom do any of these plans provide the tangible benefits that can be found by using an advertising media plan.
A well thought out advertising media plan improves the efficiency of your advertising spending, allowing you to reach more potential customers for less money than by making arbitrary decisions on how to advertise. It provides a reference for when and where to spend your advertising dollars. Following the plan keeps you from making mistakes with your spending, such as accepting the “unbelievable” deal that an advertising salesperson has whipped up for that month. While taking advantage of those deals sometimes makes sense, the low prices offered also lure business owners into media that don’t effectively reach potential customers.
Another important reason to have an advertising media plan is that following it will keep your business from overspending at the beginning of the year. Poor spending choices early in a year can result in being forced to stop advertising late in the year or outspending your intended budget. This is especially important for retail operations which benefit most from expanded advertising during the year-end holiday season.
A plan addressing these two problem areas can easily be created by any business owner. A more detailed advertising media plan, which includes research into who to target with advertising, how often to target them and what media will reach them most cost effectively requires a much greater time investment. A detailed advertising media plan includes analysis of media based demographics reached, cost per thousand potential customers reached (CPM), the overall number of potential customers reached (reach) and how often the potential customer will see the ad (frequency). Reconciling these different factors requires a significant amount of quantitative analysis, but the result should be a plan that provides the best media exposure your budget can provide.
Because of the time consuming nature of creating a detailed plan and the need to understand a number of specialized calculations, it may be beneficial to have an expert produce your company’s advertising media plan, such as an advertising agency. Agencies have information allowing them to complete the plan much more efficiently than a business owner could. For example, the agency would have an exhaustive list of media options, with pricing and demographic information on file. It would take a business owner many hours to acquire the same information.
Regardless of whether you tackle an advertising media plan yourself, or hire a professional, your company will benefit from efficiently targeting its advertising spending.

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Article Tags: marketing control, return on investment



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Top 19 Copywriting books - 1. Ogilvy on Advertising. David Ogilvy. Wiley. 2. Positioning: The Battle for your Mind. Al Ries and Jack Trout. Warner. 3. The New Positioning. Jack Trout. McGraw-Hill. 4. Tested Advertising Methods. John Caples. Prentice-Hall. 5. How to Make your Advertising Make Money. John Caples. Prentice-Hall. 6. Guerrilla Advertising. Jay Conrad Levinson. Houghton Mifflin. 7. Direct Mail Copy that Sells. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall. 8. Sales Letters that Sizzle. Herschell Gordon Lewis. NTC Business Books. 9. Herschell Gordon Lewis on the Art of Writing Copy. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall. 10. Romancing the Brand. David Martin. American Management Association. 11. The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with William Bernbach, Leo Burnett, George Gribbin, David Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves. NTC Business Books. 12. Confessions of an Advertising Man. David Ogilvy. NTC Business Books. 13. My Life in Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books. 14. Scientific Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books. 15. How to Become an Advertising Man. James Webb Young. NTC Business Books. 16. The Lasker Story as He Told It. NTC Business Books. 17. Advertising Concept and Copy. George Felton. Prentice Hall. 18. The Copy WorkShop Workbook. Bruce Bendinger. The Copy Workshop. 19. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads. Luke Sullivan. Wiley. This should keep you busy for at least a year. Enjoy!
Re: How do you make the most of your day? - Planning, To Do lists, and deadlines all help me. Also being self critical of my own time management helps me raise the bar. I still check email too often though.
Re: Success - I think it was Gary Player who said the harder I practice the luckier I become when it came to his success as a world class golfer. Planning and dedication to a task can make all the difference between success and failure. MichelleJ
Re: Quote of the Day - "If you hesitate, some bolder hand will s - Excellent quote, Evan. This reminds me of the saying, "The early bird catches the worm." It's important to act on impulses, rather than hesitate and plan. Planning isn't a bad thing and is warranted in certain cases, but those who act quickly will get a step ahead of the competition.
Nice List - Nice list, and I agree with everything you all have added! Planning is the biggest one of all! Look at everything from every aspect possible, and then ask others to look at it as well. It's extremely important that you consider everything before jumping into things, and it goes so much smoother! Also, some young entrepreneurs tend to have an unrealistic mindset (I can sell 4000 of this product in my first week!). Make sure you know what you're getting into, and don't expect something that won't ever happen. ~Marie


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