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EXAMINE YOUR ALTERNATIVES BEFORE YOU ADVERTISE

Written by: Andy Marken

Article Overview: EXAMINE YOUR ALTERNATIVES BEFORE YOU ADVERTISE

EXAMINE YOUR ALTERNATIVES BEFORE YOU ADVERTISE

Today, business management must realize that no single advertising medium can do an adequate selling job for them. Any retailer who persists in using traditional advertising methods is in danger of being left behind. Each advertising medium has specific strengths and weaknesses that relate to the selling of your goods and services.

Understanding the differences between each advertising vehicle is the key to proper utilization of media and, ultimately, to successful sales results. Your dealer marketing and advertising should take a fresh look and approach.

The Media Mix
No single medium is always best.

In determining the best combination for your particular needs, you should begin by considering the objective of your marketing plan: Do you want to increase sales of items advertised? Increase store traffic and the resultant impulse purchases? Or, establish and/or improve the store's image?

To get the most for your advertising budget, here are some recommendations:
* Use two or more media to complement each other.
* Create a sales message that appeals to more than one of the
consumer senses.
* Communicate with your best prospects in the most favorable
environment at the lowest possible cost.

While the markets that you are targeting will dictate the media mix you develop, there are a few media-plan questions you should consider before and after you develop your advertising plan:
* Does the media plan support your marketing plan?
* Is the plan based on a defined customer and/or prospect target
group selection?
* If more than one target is defined, what are the established
priorities?
* Are you attempting to cover too large a target market or market area?
* Does the plan emphasize the major medium which is most
efficient in reaching your target group?
* Is the plan using too many different media to provide enough
frequency to compete with major competitors who are also using
the same media?
* Will the editorial or programming environment enhance or
detract from the intended communication?
* Will the plan help create enthusiasm for the advertising
program on the part of employees?
* Is the plan free of decisions based on tradition or bias that
cannot be supported by research? (E.g., are you using only
newspapers because that's what you've always used? That’s what you read?)
* Have alternative creative executions of advertising strategy
been considered prior to developing the final plan?

To summarize, ask yourself what the prospective customers read, listen to, watch and respond to? What is the most efficient way to reach them?

Some of the questions may sound a little tough to answer or ambiguous at first. However, take the information and digest it and you can be effective and profitable in your media planning.
Every dealer has one advertising goal--to reach the greatest number of specific prospects in the most favorable environment, as efficiently as possible. Developing a media plan that's more effective than your competition takes time and energy; but, just as you can develop a good marketing/sales/plan, you can do the same with media. Here are some steps that should make media planning easier:
* Define the light, medium, and heavy buyers of your products
and services demographically, within your area.
* Establish the number of these potential prospects in your
metro market, using Census Bureau demographic figures.
* Using the dominant local newspaper circulation figures,
determine how many households/businesses subscribe to that
paper in your metro area.
* Using newspaper audience research, estimate the number of
readers who, demographically, can be considered your
prospects.
* Using Broadcast Market Consultants' "Newspaper Circulation of
Ad Readership" brochure, estimate a realistic percentage of
newspaper reader-prospects who can be expected to read half or
more of your proposed newspaper ad.
* The results of the foregoing should tell you the approximate
number of prospects you can expect to reach with your
newspaper ads.
* Compare these results with the number of prospects that you
can expect to reach by carefully and selectively using other
forms of media to match your prospects' consumer profile.

Media Planning

A healthy guide is to allot at least three to five percent of total sales for advertising and promotion. This breaks down as follows:

Sales Volume Advertising & Promotion
Store A $1,000,000 $30,000 - 50,000
Chain B $5,000,000 $150,000 - 250,000
Chain C $15,000,000 $450,000 - 750,000

The "media mix" approach to advertising is based on good advice ... don't put all your eggs in one basket. Experiment!

Obviously, with a bigger ad budget, you'll have more money for experimentation. Dealer organizations A, B and C differ to a large degree by the geographic radius from which they draw their customers. Store A will be most localized; Chain C will have a larger radius.

On that basis, use a "building block" approach to planning your media. Begin with a solid base, such as a metropolitan newspaper (Newspaper A covers 55 percent of the households in your metropolitan area). If you feel your store has a wide radius of pulling power (will people really drive 50 miles for your sale?), then add publications or other media.

As people moved to the suburbs, their preferences changed from the big metro newspaper to local publications, TV and radio.

Why not 100 percent newspaper advertising? Statistics show that increasing the size of an ad, say 200 to 800 lines, increases the cost four times, but only increases readership from seven to eight percent. Increasing the ad size from 800 lines to 1600 lines doubles the cost, but only increases readership from 8 to 11 percent. The solution is to add a new dimension.

What about TV? Even though there are many success stories of dealers using TV, we recommend waiting until your newspaper and other advertising media have produced such great results that
you're now a 10-20 million-dollar operation with several stores in your area.

With TV, the dominant stations give very wide coverage. Local stations or local cable outlets have the local coverage but not the dominance, and will not lend prestige to a high-quality image that you may wish to convey. Pick the station/cable outlet and specific shows that are best for your target market9s)

To summarize, research and then experiment. Advertise different items in the newspaper than you do on radio. Test one media against another (outdoor vs. regional magazines, direct mail vs. newspaper, etc.) to determine your best "media mix."
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