"Our company, Exselleration, is not an advertising agency,

a graphics firm or a creative house.

We are a training company that teaches high quality businesses

(both large and small), how to make more money

and insure they get a targeted ROI from their marketing investment"

Learn How To Investigate The Media You Buy…Before You Buy It

MYM Tip #58

There are two basic ways to make sure that you make good media buys: The first is by asking your customers which media they pay attention to and the second way is by doing a little investigative work.

First of all, ask your customers. It’s really simple, all you have to do is ask them basic questions like...”what magazines do you read”, “what radio stations do you listen to”, “do you read the newspaper”, and if so, “what sections do you read”.

You can ask them if they use the Internet, if they have/read e-mail, if they attend seminars, if they read books, if they read faxes, if they look in the yellow pages...and anything else that would be helpful in your company’s particular situation.

It does sound simple, I know, but many companies with marketing budgets do it? I’ll tell you...not very many.  These business owners would rather gamble their budget on, their own personal opinion, about what their customers will see, read, listen, and  respond to. Personally, I’d rather deal with facts. A good example is a Lexus dealership we worked with ...they never asked – they assumed that the customers listened to that one certain soft jazz/easy listening station. Hey, the ad salesperson had plenty of data and statistics to back up the claim that rich people listen to his station. But that didn’t necessarily mean that the rich people who would buy a Lexus listened to that station. You have to find out more information about your target market. How do you do that? Here comes the secret, read carefully: JUST ASK THE CUSTOMERS!

Now, one warning or point of clarification when it comes to asking your customers: If you are asking YOUR customers what they respond to, it would be a mistake to automatically assume that, if they say they WON’T respond to a certain medium that this specific medium WON’T work. Let me give you an example. We take surveys at our seminars to find out this type of information for our own business. We ask what radio stations they listen to, what newspapers they read, and on and on. We found that a high percentage of our seminar attendees say they DO NOT read local business journals, like the Washington Business Journal. About 10 to 15% say they never read it. So here’s the question: Does that mean that if I run an ad for my seminars in a business journal that it won’t work? Answer: Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the way I’ve generated leads in the past (via certain other mediums) didn’t get me the crowd of people who read business journals. Now if 80% of the attendees said they read it every week that would be a good indicator. But here’s the point: asking is a great way to find out what will and won’t work…but you’ve got to do more. You’ve got to do some investigative work too.

So let’s talk about how to do it. I remember one time, back in the early days of consulting, we had a client who manufactured rubber stamps. You know, like the kind you stamp on the back of a check or something. He wanted to be in the yellow pages, but he didn’t know what section he should put his ad in. Do you put it under R for “Rubber Stamps” or just S “Stamps” or O “Office Supplies”…or what? What do you think the right answer is? He had been in the “Rubber Stamp” section the previous year and he didn’t get very good results. But this year, we had helped him rewrite his ad so he was excited to get more calls.

Now YOU play the consultant.

How do you find out which yellow pages section to stick this guy’s ad in? Use your imagination a little bit. You can’t call his current clients because chances are they just call this guywhen they need a stamp. They don’t look in the yellow pages at all. So now what?

INVESTIGATION – Important for any investment

Here’s what we did. We had someone on his staff randomly call 150 businesses out of the phone book and ask this simple question, with no introduction. As soon as the person answered, they asked, “If you needed to order a rubber stamp, what section of the yellow pages would you look in?” We knew that the person answering the phone, the receptionist, was often the person who ordered the stamps anyway, so this was a pretty fair survey. Guess what the results were? First of all, just about everyone they asked answered. Then almost 75% said they would look under “office supplies.” Total time investment, about 4 hours. But those four hours made a big difference that next year. I can’t emphasize this enough: Take the time to ask and save yourself a lot of headache.

Here are a couple of ideas: First, call other businesses that are currently advertising in the medium you are considering and ASK how it’s going for them. If you’re planning on running radio ads on a certain station, call some of the advertisers currently on that station and ask them how it’s going…same thing for newspaper or yellow pages or anything else. Here are some questions to ask them: How long have you been advertising here? Does the investment pay for itself? How many inquiries or leads or sales do you generate from your ads? How long do you plan on staying with this particular medium? You don’t need to talk to all of the advertisers. Some of them won’t want to give up that information. But enough will that you can get the real scoop on the performance of the medium.

So one way you can gather information on a particular medium is to call the people who already use it and interview them about their results. Another way to investigate is to check the history of the medium and see how long their advertisers have been with them. This is easiest if it’s a printed medium such as magazines, newspaper or yellow pages. Just save the back issues or research them out…maybe at the library or at a university. If it’s TV or radio, you can still find out by ASKING the sales rep. If the sales rep knows that the true facts might cost him a sale, he may not be very willing to deliver this kind of information. Take this as a negative sign. If the sales rep does give up favorable information relatively easily, that’s a good sign.

EXCLUSIVITY – Maybe not the best idea

Here’s one more thing to check.  Let’s say a magazine or newspaper sales rep comes into your office and makes this pitch: “ If you advertise in this section (whatever that section might be) you’ll do really great, because you’ll be the only widget manufacturer advertising in this section.”  What do you think…would that be a good deal?  Before you plunk down some of that hard earned money ask yourself this one question: “Why aren’t any of my competitors advertising here already?” The reason might just be because they’ve tried it and the sales dollars could never justify the cost.  Being the only widget advertiser, no matter how exclusive, might be a bad investment.

Researching the media you are thinking about buying probably seems pretty obvious. But the fact is that most people just don’t go through the effort to do it right. Then they wonder why it feels like they’re throwing their advertising money down the toilet. You'll find that these little tips will tell you, with a great degree of certainty, what has worked and what hasn't worked for others before you. So be a sleuth…and do a little investigative work before you plunk down your cash.