| < back How to get more bang for your marketing buck “Which would you prefer; to visit a nightclub every evening and be ignored, or go once a week, enjoy a wild evening, and leave with someone truly beautiful?” That was the answer Pete Hammond, my creative director here at Phoenix, recently gave to the frequently asked question, “Am I better off running small ads everyday or having a full page weekly?” Of course, this generalisation can be shot down in flames, but it’s still my firm belief that if you’re going to advertise, indeed communicate in any way, then either do it properly…or don’t bother! Many find it difficult to calculate how much they should invest in their communications. As I’ve said before in a previous article, there is no magic formula - but here are a few basic questions you should be asking yourself, so as to help you determine your appropriate marketing spend and tactics: 1. What’s your Share Of Voice (SOV)? This is the general term used to compare the percentage of advertising you and your competition have in your sector. Whilst it’s far too simple to say this, and there are many, many examples of this rule being disproved, the company that advertises the most - that has the highest SOV - is often the market leader. Of course, very few companies, even the market leaders, advertise continuously… so you may be able to devise a way to increase your SOV by careful planning and timing; sometimes the less traditional times of day and media can in fact achieve more bang for your marketing buck. 2. What’s your ‘Reach’? To calculate your SOV, you first need to know and quantify your Reach. Media companies use the word Reach to describe the number of people that your media schedule should, in theory, get to: how many potential customers is your marketing reaching? This figure is calculated based on the media selected and its most recent, independently assessed, viewing/reading/listening audience figures (broken down by the type of consumer that fits your target audience). These figures are compiled in good faith and as accurately as possible, however, they don’t take into account Murphy’s, or indeed any other kind of law. For example, a major world event might cause a huge discrepancy within ‘normal’ media consumption trends… and it would be ‘Sod’s law’ that this happens on the week your big new campaign goes live! 3. What’s your frequency? Having established your Reach, the total number of people who will hear or view your advertisement, the next question is “how often and how many times will they see or hear it?” This is often key to the effectiveness of a campaign. I’d rather 500 people saw and remembered my advert for your company (and consequently acted on it when they need your services)…than 5,000 saw it and didn’t make contact. In order for advertising to be memorable, people need to (ideally) see it several times or more within a concentrated period. 4. What’s your Impact Quotient (IQ)? Not all advertisements have the same impact and the best ads have far more recall than poor ones - even poor ones with huge reach and frequency. IQ is possibly the most ignored factor when calculating the effectiveness of a marketing campaign and is the most difficult to predict. No agency or client sets out to create adverts that are average, bland or vanilla - but many are. One common reason for this is the allocation of a totally inadequate budget for the advertisement production due to the (wrong) belief that every thousand pounds spent creatively equals “one less ad on the telly”! It’s nearly always a false economy as the most creative ads, those with a very high IQ, will have 10, 20 or even 100 times more impact. 5. What’s your Share Of Mind (SOM)? Do you start with a high level of awareness and personal experience of your product/service, or are you a new entrant to the market: an unknown quantity in the mind of the end-user? Some businesses acquire the wrong kind of SOM through crude, irritating and repetitive advertising that actually causes the listener/viewer to actively buy from a competitor instead! The right SOM is your dividend for demanding sustained good practice - and this results in your having to spend less to get the same effect. So here’s the advertising equation: Or, to put that in Real Business language: it’s not just about how often you advertise or how much you spend, although both of these have an effect… the key to successful communications is to have high impact and to be memorable. |