Choosing the Right Traditional Media for Your Company

Using Traditional Media (newspapers, magazines, television, radio, billboards, etc.) may not be for everyone and it is certainly only a portion of your overall marketing efforts. Once you determine whether or not these advertising vehicles even make sense for you, it can definitely become a daunting task. With all of the options and media reps constantly vying for your business, it is easy to get distracted and not use the best choices for your business.

Now more than ever, companies are being extremely careful and cautious when it comes to spending money. It seems that advertising budgets are being cut left and right. Instead of thinking about cutting your budget, perhaps it is time to reevaluate your spending to make sure the best possible choices are being used. A few tweaks and changes could prove to be more effective, yielding you a much better result for the same amount of money! Who wouldn’t want that, right?

Here are some basic tips for making the best media choices:

When deciding on the right mediums for your business, take your target audience into consideration.

Many of my posts preach about carving out your niche and deciding on your target audience. This is because having a grasp on this information can save you a truckload of money and instantly make your advertising more effective. For example, if your ideal customer is female between the ages of 35-54, you may want to look into certain lifestyle magazines or radio stations that are programmed to attract this listener. The point is, do not purchase your media with the sole intent of reaching the most people. You will end up paying way too much money to reach an audience that may not be the best.

Targeting also allows you to use advertising consistently. Back to my previous example, TV spots in the evening news may be too expensive to purchase consistently. You may have reached more people, but you were not able to achieve the amount of repetition necessary to be effective. Instead, looking to certain cable channels that appeal to your demographic will allow you to spend less and hit this targeted audience more frequently.

Become familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of each advertising vehicle. Click here for a list of some of these advantages and disadvantages.

Determine your advertising goals.

Are you suffering from a wrong branding perception? Then it would not benefit you to run a one week radio schedule. Are you holding a blow-out fall celebration sale? Then a heavy campaign during the week leading up to the campaign would be appropriate and beneficial. Weigh your goals against what each medium does well.

Weigh the costs

Cost to your budget is usually the main concern when buying traditional media. How much are you willing to spend for a customer? Based on the cost of the advertising and the amount of people in your target audience that you will be reaching, is it worth it? What do you need to break even? Are the results you desire a reasonable expectation?

Hopefully, using these tips as part of your overall marketing plan will help alleviate some of the stress of traditional media buying. Have other tips? I would love to hear them!

Wal-mart Re-Branded

Wal-mart… we all have certain feelings associated with the retailer, but through their new campaigns they are trying to change these previous feelings. The task is to create a new image still resonating with those tightening their budgets, but adding the aspect of high value and sophistication. Hence, “Save money. Live better.” They began with their logo change months back that introduced the “sunburst” and took them from Wal-mart to Walmart. But their re-branding efforts have continued (as they must in order to break the thought patterns of millions Americans toward the store).

Remember those smiley commercials with the smile bouncing on prices and watching them “rollback”? Instead, we are seeing clean, simple, ads, with much more sophistication.

Magazine ads are also clean and chic carrying messages such as “beauty for less” and showing models next to the Walmart products. Whether you like Walmart or not, one can hardly ignore the cleverness of such a campaign in tight economic times like this. They are basically saying, “Hey you gotta spend smarter and be more careful, and that’s okay. You can still live your life with all the luxuries you did before. Going to Walmart makes everything better.”