Partner Article

10 essential steps to choosing the right marketing media

2013 is the year that overall spending on advertising returned to roughly the same level it enjoyed before the financial crisis, with the Financial Times reporting that spending totalled £17.2bn last year in comparison to £17.4bn in 2007.

The figures are astronomical; suggesting that a culture of overspending on advertising from many companies is once again on the rise. Although the companies on the FTSE 100 may be able to afford to pick up the slack of an overzealous marketing department- most businesses need to show a little more restraint when it comes to loosening the purse strings.

A large component of keeping your advertising costs down is by choosing the correct marketing media with which to launch a campaign in the first place. So to help, here are 10 essential steps towards achieving just that.

1. Establish your objective

First and foremost you have to decide exactly what it is you’re trying to achieve with your marketing campaign, as this will shape the decisions you make in each of the next nine steps. Just a few examples of the types of things you need to consider before choosing your marketing media include: are you attempting to generate awareness for a new product, increase existing sales or create more brand awareness?

Setting objectives that are measured against SMART criteria will ensure that they have the maximum relevancy in relation to the achievement of your business aims. SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.

Example of a SMART objective

Objective: to raise profits 10% by the end of 2013 by attracting new customers through the implementation of a targeted marketing campaign.

Breakdown of the SMART objective example

Specific - it is specific as it sets out very clearly what the business wants to do and achieve. Measurable – there is a percentage target relating to an increase in profits. Attainable –the target is not too large or unrealistic, and is certainly achievable in line with a well-targeted marketing campaign. Relevant – links in with the overall aim of any commercial business to increase profits Time-bound – it is to be achieved by the end of 2013

2. What is the target market

After establishing what the objective of your marketing campaign is, it is vitally important to be clear who your target audience is, as this should have a profound effect on the type of media you should use.

To ascertain who your target market is you will need to do a considerable amount of market research in to your existing and potential customers. What are their characteristics? What criteria are you going to use to define their characteristics? Examples include but are not specific to: age, gender, geographical position, and income

3. What media does your target market consume

Once you have established your target market and their characteristics it is important to understand the types of media they consume and enjoy interacting with. What do they read, listen to and watch? What social media platforms do they use and engage with? All these are vitally important considerations you need to be making.

Additionally, you many need to consider the target market’s culture and background and whether they speak another language or communicate with a specific ‘voice’.

4. How well will the media allow you to fulfil your objective

You will need to once again refer to your objectives and evaluate which of the medias that your target market like to consume are best for communicating your intended message. Each of the different advertising media has their own strengths and weaknesses and, therefore, some are better suited then others for fulfilling specific objectives.

Additional considerations include: Do you want to reach a local, national or global audience? How much information do you need communicate? Do you have a new product that needs to be displayed visually? How fast do you need to get the message out there?

5. What is your budget

Having established the types of media you target market like to consume you need to calculate what your budget is and whether you will be able to cover the cost of advertising within them.

Working out how much money to set aside for your marketing budget is not an exact science, and a lot will depend on the size of the business and the scope of the objectives set. However, one of the more popular methods for calculating a budget involves calculating a figure using a fixed percentage of a company’s revenue. For smaller businesses looking to grow and gain market share, 20% is commonly the starting point. For many, though, this technique is far too inaccurate and one that involves a substantial amount of trial and error from that original point to find the optimum marketing budget that yields the desired results.

A more accurate technique is to work out a budget in relation to the level of desired market growth. This can be calculated by finding out how much it will cost to acquire each new customer and then multiplying that figure by the desired number of customers you wish to attract. But to do this effectively, you will need to put a significant amount of effort into sourcing customer data at the market research stage.

6. Which media can expose your message to the most people per pound spent

This step gains increasingly more importance the tighter your marketing budget becomes. Once you have a budget in place and have researched the types of media that your target audience consume, you need to calculate how much it will cost to expose your message per targeted person- and whether it is cost effective in relation to your budget.

Cost per mile (CPM), or cost per thousand, allows you to calculate the cost of exposing a message through a particular medium to a thousand people. For example, if you were to take out a full-page ad in a glossy magazine for your business costing £250, and the readership profiles detailed that 15,000 of your target audience read that magazine, you would be able to calculate CPM by following this equation:

CPM = £250 (advertising cost) x 1000 / 15,000 (people exposed to your ad) = £16.66 – meaning that it will cost your business £16.66 to expose the advert to 1,000 members of your target market.

All mediums have techniques available to them to measure their audience. TV and radio have viewing and listening figures respectively, and newspapers have circulation numbers and media packs that include information profiling their readership.

7. Implement a marketing mix

The previous steps should have led you to discovering which media will be the most effective for your marketing campaign. However, with the huge range of different channels that potential customers are exposed to on a daily basis,concentrating all your efforts on only one media would be foolish.

Because there are so many marketing messages competing to be heard in what marketers call ‘clutter’, the most relevant media must be supplemented, where possible, with complimentary messages within other suitable channels that reinforce the marketing message and maximizes its exposure. However, these also need to be considered in relation to cost and objectives.

For more advice on implementing the most effective marketing mix in the correct channels, expert consultation is available at http://www.spaceandtime.eu.com/. The trained and experienced team at Space and Time Media have the knowledge of a vast array of media channels, to ensure the advertising space you buy will expose your marketing message to the largest proportion of your target market as possible.

8. How well will your marketing media mix allow you to measure a return against your marketing budget

Your research has discovered your target market and the cost of advertising to them through a certain media, now you need to consider whether you will be able to measure a return on marketing investment (ROMI) so that you can evaluate the effectiveness of your chosen marketing media mix.

If you cannot do this effectively, you will run the risk of investing a large proportion of your marketing budget on media that has no empirical benefit. Unfortunately, even if you have followed the previous steps to the letter; there is still likely to be a certain degree of trial and error involved in order to get the right mix. So, it is recommended that you only invest a small amount in each medium at first, and then invest more in the media that is achieving the best results in relation to your objectives.

9. Make sure you have some sort of social media presence

The UK is now the second highest number of people adopting social media in Europe, behind only the Netherlands. Although many of the users are aged 16-24, social media is one of the few marketing media channels that can penetrate a wide range of demographics, with one in five of all over 65’s now having an account.

Because customers are now using platforms like Facebook and Twitter to inform their buying decisions on an unprecedented level, arguably, it is the one marketing media you cannot do without.It is also one of the best channels for creating marketing messages that engage with potential customers, as well as being a source for acquiring customer data through feedback.

10. Continually monitor the effectiveness of your chosen media marketing mix

You have chosen your marketing media mix in relation to the steps as detailed. You have evaluated their effectiveness and the results are positive. However, you must never assume that the most effective mix remains static. Your target market and/or the types of media they consume are liable to change at any time.

Therefore, you must be continually active in researching your customers, so that if your chosen media marketing mix stops being as effective as it once was, you’re armed with the correct information to make an appropriate change.

If you have any feedback on any advice to add in relation to the 10 steps detailed above; please comment below.

Bio:James Duval with his background in marketing has the experience and knowledge to deliver advice on choosing the right marketing media for an advertising campaign.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Matthew Hanks .