Media buying – you don’t know what you don’t know
I meet with clients, on what seems like a daily basis, that have been spending their advertising dollars in the wrong channels, or spending loads of money in places they are not really sure if they know much about. BUT, they have been getting a “somewhat” decent response, and choose to leave it alone for fear of “rocking the boat”. Sorry for all the double fingers quotation marks by the way. We recently had a client tell us they had spent a majority of their advertising dollars on broadcast TV. For the past 20 years that is. They were not aware a TV station pre-empts a commercial from running. What is a pre-emption you ask? It is when someone spends more money for the seat on the plane and you get bumped for your flight – funny thing is a TV schedule is actually called a flight…or not so funny if you don't get your flight. If you spots never run you never move product – which is going to be a focal point next week of mine – “Buying TV spots on price points” – it's dangerous!
I also seem to find myself running in to clients that spend WAY too much in Yellow Page type of directory advertising, again, for fear of losing business. Now I am never of the school of though that says to pull completely out of a directory listing like YP, unless you fall in to categories of companies that can survive without it – I use the term survive loosely! However, you should never spend a lion share of your dollars on the active only seekers. We seem to forget the driving principal of advertising – REACH and FREQUENCY. You have a limited reach, and virtually ZERO frequency when you are spending most of your advertising dollars to be in a directory. People don't go out for eggs, bread, milk and diapers and say “shoot honey I forgot to look up the electrician in the phone book and call him, I will be right back!”. Sorry that just doesn't happen.
The bottom line, and advertising agency is here to help you understand these principals that drive advertising your marketing plan to consumers. That is why you hire us. So do not be worried about things you don't know, after all you really don't know what you don't know.