An Incredibly Over-Simplified Quick-Guide To Advertising Vehicles.
As a business owner, you know that you need to advertise – but how? There’s so many different ways to do it – and it all seems so expensive!
There is indeed an answer to that question, and The Tomlinson Agency will help you find it… but it ultimately depends on many factors and goals that need to be identified. What is the overall goal of the advertising – is it just to drive more sales? Build Web Traffic? Drive App Downloads? Who is your target customer? What are their habits? Where do they live? Where are your profit centers? What are your competitive advantages? What is your budget? What are you selling? – the list goes on!
These are crucial questions that must be answered, in detail, in order to prescribe the right advertising solution for your business.
With that being said, I’ve bought and sold millions of dollars worth of Radio, TV, Billboard, Print, Direct Mail and Online advertising, and can offer insight into the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each medium, and which may make sense for your business.
Here’s the advertising secret: it all works – if done right! Each medium is effective if harnessed correctly, but some work better for certain businesses than others. At the risk of upsetting some of my friends in the industry for over-simplifying their vehicles, i’ve compiled a very quick list of pros/cons for each advertising medium based on a lot of experience.
TV Advertising:
- Pros : Allows you to reach a large audience quickly. Video enables you to effectively capture the look, feel, and sound of your business. TV works great with advertisers that use endorsers or influencers. Great for businesses with a spread out customer base.
- Cons: Will eat up your budget faster than any other medium, which makes it a bigger dice-roll for smaller advertisers. Producing a TV commercial is time consuming and makes it a slow ship to turn if you want to make changes to your message. Not the best at targeting specific demographics of customers.
Radio Advertising:
- Pros: Can be cost-effective compared to other mediums, making entry point campaigns more accessible to smaller advertisers. With radio, you can establish an emotional connection with a listener via show host endorsements. It’s a vehicular medium, most effective during day-time hours. Can target specific types of customers better than TV. Sort of easy to change messaging. Great for reaching older folks.
- Cons: Audio is the only way to present your business. Music-based radio is losing effectiveness to other forms, such as Spotify and Pandora. Not the best at targeting younger audiences.
Print Advertising:
- Pros: Magazine and newspaper publications can target niche types of customers, and an older demographic of people who still read the newspaper. Smaller print publications can offer cheap entry level openings for small advertisers looking to target very localized areas.
- Cons: Advertising rates for significant publications haven’t fallen in conjunction with their readership. In other words, it’s often too expensive. Smaller publications, like local newsletters, boast low ad rates but often lack in real results delivery.
Direct Mail:
- Pros: Direct Mail can be good for advertisers targeting specific types of homeowners with related goods or services, such as landscaping or home renovations. Also good for low-cost commodities like pizza delivery.
- Cons: Direct Mail doesn’t have a high open rate. In other words, most of the time it’s just thrown in the trash. Contrary to popular belief, direct mail is not cheap through most companies, and there are a few creative ways for advertisers to do it effectively on their own.
Online Advertising:
- Pros: Online advertising is extremely track-able and measurable. Advertisers can gauge effectiveness or lack thereof, and make changes with speed. Now, more than ever, effective online advertising works! Psychologically, people now receive and act upon online ads more than ever before. Advertisers can position themselves to customers at the crucial point in their purchase decision making – when their customer goes to search for a product / service online. Can be very cost-effective and even efficient for low-spending advertisers.
- Cons: As a relative newcomer to the advertising scene, online advertising is a different animal packaged with lots of acronyms and data-driven tools. This can be daunting to advertisers. Many companies selling online advertising often-time are not transparent, and keep a large chunk of your ad dollar for themselves before it ever goes to the digital ad space.
Outdoor / Billboard Advertising:
- Pros: Great for proximity based store-front business. In other words, if you’re a restaurant or retail store looking for foot-traffic, a billboard near your business could be beneficial. Billboards, with the right message, can be good for branding, raising awareness, and driving web-traffic. Works well with radio.
- Cons: Can’t really target a specific demographic of people, so you might be advertising to many people who will never use your product or service. Many markets have one big billboard company holding a monopoly on the inventory, which allows them to drive up rates.
In reality, I could write an entire novel on each of these advertising vehicles! They are highly nuanced and each effective in their own way, and this list is just an overly simplified collection of thoughts and experience. The best solution for any business is the one that delivers the best return on your investment!
Call us today. At the Tomlinson Agency we’ll conduct a free consultation, and then figure out the most efficient direction for your business to go in.
I can’t wait to hear from you!
-Matt Tomlinson, Founder / CEO, The Tomlinson Advertising Agency
(864-421-4471) – Matt@TomlinsonAdAgency.com
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