COMMON ADVERTISER QUESTIONS?
HOW MUCH SHOULD I SPEND ON MEDIA?
Clients want help and direction when it comes to setting a realistic budget.
While there is no magic calculation to determine how much you should spend and it very much varies by category, there are some initial considerations to examine as you develop a required budget:
- How much is being spent by your competitors and the category overall?
- What are your growth objectives? Whether you want to maintain, grow or harvest your business will have an impact on how much you should spend.
- Where do you want to advertise? Your desired market list play a big role in what it costs to advertise.
- How long do you want to to advertise for? Is your campaign a short burst, or do you want to create year long continuity?
- What are your revenue and profitability objectives?
SHOULD I ADVERTISE AT ALL?
Advertising is an investment in your business. It allows you an opportunity to inform and influence a large group of current and potential customers about who you are and what you offer. Advertising, done well and thought through properly, will help grow your business, and ultimately your profits.
As Thomas Jefferson has been famously quoted “The person who stops advertising to save money is like the person who stops the clock to save time”
HOW MUCH SHOULD I SPEND ON CREATIVE VERSUS MEDIA?
Similar to the question about how much you should spend in media, the ratio between creative (or production) and media spend really does depend on what it is you hope to achieve. However, the rule of thumb is in the range of 15-20% of the advertising budget should be allocated to creative/production. Having said that, there are many campaigns that have been successful spending either less or more.
It’s important to remind ourselves that the best media plan with inferior creative will not deliver optimal results. And the same can be said with outstanding creative in the wrong place. It is a delicate balance of creative and media that deliver the best results. Another reason to rely on a more experienced partner to help guide you through a complicated process.
HOW DO I KNOW IF MY MEDIA CAMPAIGN IS WORKING?
It is vitally important to establish success measures in advance that will determine whether or not your campaign is working. And ensure that you do periodic checks and course correct where possible.
Some of the more common transactional criteria you can measure include website traffic, phone call leads, social media traction, retail visits and ultimately cash register increases.
There are many more things to measure, and they are all dependent on what it is you want to achieve.
A famous quote from Einstein seems relevant when thinking about measurement: “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count, yet everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted”
It is also important to measure the actual media delivery of your media campaigns once they are complete to ensure you received fair value for your media investment from your media partners. It will not only impact future decision making, it may also result in compensation otherwise lost.
HOW DO I SELECT ONE MEDIUM OVER ANOTHER?
The first place to start is to make sure you have a well defined understanding of your target audience. Once you know who you want to reach, we can then access the many syndicated research studies that provide a quantitative sample of Canadians media usage. Examples of some of these studies include Vividata, Numeris among others.
Once you understand your target audience’s media consumption patterns, you must look at what your communication objectives are, and compare them to each mediums ability to deliver against those objectives in terms of message efficacy. For example, if you have a very detailed message to communicate, outdoor media, which is generally limited to a shorter message capability, would likely not be your first choice.
Each medium offers specific benefits. This is where an experienced media advisor can provide valued counsel to make sure you invest your budget in the most efficient, and effective, channels.
And in today’s media world, it is generally a combination of media delivering a consistent message that is used to deliver the necessary market impact.
HOW DO I GET MEDIA INNOVATION?
Media innovation is channel agnostic and can be delivered through any medium.
It is an approach that can help break through today’s intense media clutter where consumers are better trained to avoid commercial messaging either through technology, sensory overload or plain apathy.
Media innovation is best delivered through an active collaboration of media, creative, strategic and client personnel all of whom share a goal of trying to break new boundaries. Media owners are also an invaluable partner in the process.
Some considerations if you want to enhance your media plan with some innovative media executions:
Give yourself plenty of time. Innovation generally involves some level of risk, which, depending on your organization, can involve the approval of stakeholders not generally involved in advertising decision making. Also recognize that just because you want innovation for a particular plan during a a particular time, does not necessarily mean that it will happen on your time lines. Like all ideas, some take time to develop.
Allocate a budget. Innovation is not added value, it generally costs more to execute. While there are examples of innovation that are inexpensive, consideration to the added use of resources, both internally and externally need to be reflected. Adding an innovative media approach to your media plan is meant to create a bigger impact in the market.
Listen to media suppliers ideas. Share your objectives with them – the more they know about you and what you want to do, the better ideas you will get from them. No one knows their specific medium and capabilities more than the media owners themselves.