Please note: this is an old article
It was published in February 2012, so the information may be out-of-date.
Choosing which advertising medium can be difficult and knowing which is the best deal for each dollar spent is hard to gauge.
The trend seems to be heading towards social media advertising but not everyone has the time to constantly blog or update social media websites.
Many businesses have different results from advertising and now with new ways of reaching your market it's better to have a holistic approach in raising your brand awareness. If your needing more customers in a hurray newspaper ads are fast offering an array of editorial topics to match your product. Reader response items, such as coupons, contest entry forms and surveys are a great way to track your results and attract new clientele.
It's important to remember when advertising in newspapers that they don't make noise or have moving images as do radio and TV. In comparison, radio has more formats which can reach listeners during a specific state of mind this can complement your message. People listen to radio while driving to and from work. The best thing about radio, is that it can be effectively targeted to consumer segments, such as teenagers, seniors, men or women.
The negatives with radio can be that most people have the radio on for background noise usually otherwise engaged with something and often are only half-listening.
Television on the other hand uses all elements of sight, sound and movement at once to form a powerful package. It can deliver your message to all people in a room simultaneously. It's great for target marketing as it has a wide variety of programming to match the nature of your ad. TV can also have its down falls as most often the ads are cluttered, your commercial may be within a string of other commercials. TV is perhaps the most expensive of all the mediums as there are a lot of production costs.
The best advice for business owners is to research your target market first and choose the medium that suits. Be mindful of the costs and calculate how many items you need to sell or clients you need to attract to pay for the advertising and profit from it. Ask you account manager selling the advertising to provide quotes and negotiate a deal. Your account manager should be able to value add to your campaign.
Remember there is no use doing a campaign unless you have a call to action plan in place. Back up your campaign with clear signage or website referral and cover the basics of who, what and where. Don't forget to allow for the extra overheads more business may bring, you don't want people walking out of your store because you haven't enough staff to serve them.
If you would like more assistance on choosing the best medium please don't hesitate in contacting Small Business Development Officer Lonnie O'Dwyer on (03) 58321 100.