“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” This famous quote attributed to John Wanamaker, the early 20th century department store magnate, emphasizes the sometimes haphazard way businesses buy advertising. Especially small businesses. Large companies with extensive marketing and research departments usually do a better job with their advertising than businesses that buy based on what their gut tells them.
To lower the percentage of wasted advertising that Wanamaker complained about, first do a little research. You don’t need to hire a research company – you can acquire the necessary information yourself with a simple questionnaire for your customers. Age, gender, income bracket, ZIP code, education level, occupation, and hobbies & interests will tell you a lot about your primary customer.
That’s the key, identifying your primary customer demographically. Once you have a good idea of what that customer looks like, you then match up the media with that customer. Now, it can get a lot more complicated than that, but boiled down to the essentials, that’s pretty much it.
Let’s create an example to look at. Say you own a small suburban shoe store that specializes in higher end women’s shoes. You may have an idea of who your main customer is, but you do some informal research to refine that notion. After you’ve analyzed the results of your surveys, an image of your primary customer emerges: She’s educated, works in a professional field with an above average income, is in her mid-40s, is married with one child, and lives within the same ZIP code as your store.
What can you do with this information? For starters, you can make far more educated decisions about what advertising to utilize to target this customer. Look at individual advertising mediums in your community (newspaper, broadcast TV, cable TV, radio, billboard, magazine, direct mail, web/mobile) and see if a particular type of media reaches your main customer.
As a quick and obvious example of what not to buy, you probably would not want to avail yourself of the fishing channel on your local cable TV provider. Regardless of how cheaply you may be able to buy spots, the chances of reaching a high number of your target audience is slim.
So what should you buy? In this instance, I would take a look at newspaper (newspaper readers traditionally have higher than average incomes and are better educated) and a local magazine that is aimed at the metro area’s arts, fashion, culture, etc.
What about radio or TV? Why not advertise in all media? The presumption here is that, as a small boutique shoe store, your advertising budget is limited. While it’s certainly possible to advertise in all the above listed media, your marketing dollars would be stretched too thin to do any good.
The audience for radio and TV (especially cable) is too fragmented for a small advertising budget to have much of an effect. In later blog posts, I’ll make the case for TV and radio, but in the example of the small specialty shoe store, newspaper and magazine will work the best.
Obviously, the above is all my opinion and there may be other factors at work which may dictate selecting other, or additional, media. But that’s the point of this blog. Let’s get some discussion going!
- Bob
