Advertising Mediums
Welcome to Spring. With the warm weather comes the sound of businesses opening their wallets to spend dollars
to get their target audience to their golf course, restaurant, or destination-tourism attraction. Advertising is a gamble to many businesses, but necessary if you want to maintain or grow your brand, especially in a competitive marketplace. If done correctly, you’ll find that advertising isn’t a “necessary evil”, but rather, it’s your brand ambassador. Your partner. Your friend with a humongous megaphone.
Why advertise? Without advertising, businesses would have to rely on their product’s packaging, customer service or word-of-mouth to grow. Nothing wrong with that, but you are limited in reach to find new customers. It would require a lot of hands-on, pavement-pounding hours of work where mediums such as television or social media do the work in a fraction of the time. Suffice to say, it’s necessary to keep up with your competitors if you want to survive and buy that yacht you’ve always dreamed of sailing to Hawaii.
What is an advertising medium? A medium is essentially any place or space one can adhere a brand message to reach their target audience. Mediums come in all shapes, sizes, and prices. A medium can be the side of a bus or a person’s scalp. They can even live within a video game or tv sitcom. Keep in mind, you should know specifically who your target audience is both demographically and psychographically to reach them with your message. The planet is your medium.
What types of mediums are there? Several. Traditional advertising mediums: radio, television, newspaper/magazine publications, out-of-home (posters/ billboards), collateral (brochures/direct mail) have been used since the birth of advertising. Non-traditional mediums: stunts, vehicle wraps, signs, apparel, hoarding, aerial and more. Social media, websites, podcasts, livestreaming, blogs, etc, once considered non-traditional are now a category of their own due to their popularity and frequency of use. These are mainstream mediums. All are used interchangeably and fluctuate daily with use (like my love handles).
How do I select the right medium to reach my customer? Hire a media or marketing strategist (along with a shop that produces creative content that gets noticed). Depending on the size of your marketing/ advertising budget, they’ll help you to determine where to spend your money and on what mediums. Don’t fall for the “local all-news radio station rep that calls you saying they’ll offer you 50% off on morning radio spots for the next three months” sales pitch. If your customer isn’t a morning news junkie that drives, it’s a wasted investment. On the other hand, if it’s a 50-year-old businessman stuck in morning traffic each day, then it might be a fit. Seems straightforward. But how do you reach him at 8AM at work? 9PM on a Saturday evening? Or during his 6AM jog through the neighbourhood? Many other mediums must be evaluated and considered based on your customers’ hourly, not daily, routine.
As you can see, with so many variables to consider, media planning/selection is not a DIY task. (unless you have a bajillion dollars in your advertising-media budget).
Until then, keep it medium.
Cheers, mark.
