Learn How To Investigate The Media You Buy… Before You Buy It
There are two basic ways to make sure 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 clients. It’s really simple; all you have to do is ask them basic questions like… what magazines they read, what radio stations do they listen to, do they read the newspaper, and if so, what sections do they read.
You can ask them if they use the Internet, if they’ve got 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 particular situation.
I know it sounds simple, but many day spa, hair salon owners and advertisers don’t do it… they would rather gamble their budget on their own personal opinion about what their customers will respond to.
Personally, I’d rather deal with facts. Listen closely: JUST ASK THE CLIENT!
Now, one warning or point of clarification when it comes to asking your clients: If you are asking YOUR customers what they respond to, don’t automatically assume if they say they WON’T respond to a certain medium that the medium WON’T work.
Let me give you an example. We take surveys at our marketing seminars to find out these kinds of things for our own business. We ask what radio stations they listen to, what newspapers they read, and on and on. We found a high percentage of our seminar attendees say they DO NOT read the local business journals. About 10 to 15% say they never read them.
So here’s the question: Does that mean if I run an ad for my marketing seminars in a business journal 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.
Here are a couple of ideas: First, call other businesses 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 inquires 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 so you can get the real scoop on the performance of the medium.
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 like magazines, newspapers, or the yellow pages. Just save the back issues or
research them… maybe at the library or at the local university. If it’s TV or radio, you can still find out by ASKING the sales rep. If the sales rep knows 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 favourable information relatively easily, that’s a good sign.
Researching the media you are thinking about buying probably seems pretty obvious. But the fact is 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
other day spa, hair salon, beauty salon, medical spa and massage practice owners before you. So be a sleuth… and do a little investigative work before you plunk down your cash.
Dedicated To Multiplying Your Revenues,
John Uhrig
No comments:
Post a Comment