Thank you for coming back.

What an eye-opener!

A turn of phrase that stares you right in the face everyday, but sometimes from left field it hits you like a thunderclap.

To this point, my Media Spikes have spoken of different budget levels from $100,000 to a million, to levels above and below that.  The budgets available certainly offer you different media combinations, but one truism remains, no matter what level you’re spending at, your media cost will cost you the same whether it works or not!

Did you get that? Whether you campaign is successful or not, it still costs you the same.

$5,000 for two newspaper ads.
$25,000 for a 3 weeks radio campaign.
$55,750 for a 2 month Outdoor Poster campaign with local magazine support.
$612,350 for an integrated multi-media campaign of radio, online, newspaper, magazines, TV, etc.

You’ve spent the money. Whether it works or not. You’ve spent it. Don’t you want, at a bare minimum, to be able to recover those costs with product sales?

Certainly you hope for a substantially better return on investment than just breaking even. But it begs the question, is just buying ‘more’ the answer?

More TV to reach a wider audience?
More radio to support the outdoor campaign?
More magazines to give more detail and colour to the campaign?
More online via BigBoxes and skyscrapers and leaderboards and Vokens and scrolling catfish to stay in front of the elusive websurfers?

Those are all good things. As a professional buyer, I can always spend more money smartly.

But for too many advertisers, the rush is there to buy now, now, now—don’t care what it takes just get it bought now. So they limit their choices by not leaving enough lead time for planning and negotiations. Then everything becomes last minute and they puzzle over why they don’t get the choicest positions or programs or options, but are gungho to spend the money anyway.

In truth, I’ve seen clients who spend more time and energy agonizing where they’ll go on vacation for a week that sets them back two grand than they will on a campaign where they’ll spend six figures and not care where it goes.

Perhaps this is why I push so hard for the Spike of Angels Media Briefing Template which you received when you signed up. The key element within that document is to help you focus and drill down and as clearly as possible, identify your target group.

In Media Spike #45, we noted our real life sample to help identify our computer printer purchaser candidates. We trimmed our candidates from 31 Million to a smaller universe of well educated males living in specific cities with a specific income and age bracket. And that’s a big enough audience to pursue.

Please, please resist the temptation to drill too deeply.
So much data.
So many numbers that could be used.

Age, gender, geography, employment, income bracket, kids in household, marital status, shoppers, savers, total assets with and without real estate, own luxury vehicles, like to golf, or play tennis, or drink tea more than coffee, buy organic dog food, are smokers – or non-smokers, play games online, have devoted more than 30 minutes a day to their commute, like to listen to the radio in the car...and the list goes on, and on, and the trouble is you can get to refine your audience so tightly that:

One of my favourites was distilling a client’s universe so precisely that it ended up being targeted to:

All Ontario males between the ages of 25 to 34, who were unmarried, had a college+ education, were working in technology fields, who were left-handed, and liked to smoke cigars when they walked their dogs!  The resulting audience size was—well to say laughable is being generous.

You are going to spend the money for your advertising and marketing. By all means do all the testing necessary to refine your messages and media mixes. Certainly use your research tools to help you focus your message.  But don’t get so caught up that it becomes analysis paralysis.

Take the time to learn small to succeed big.

Stay tuned.

Dennis Kelly
dennis@firstimpressionsmedia.ca

"Like to learn more? Nine Secrets of How To Improve Your Advertising and How To Actually Make Your Ads Outperform Your Competition  is not for everyone.  It’s for smart marketers who want proven tips to make their ads work harder and smarter.

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