With a new year quickly approaching, we are busy at Vantage Consultants devising annual marketing strategies for our clients.
Planning ahead has lots of benefits. Not only can clients start the new year with a good picture of what each month’s marketing expenditures will be, but placing media buys early often helps to secure the best rates and placement.
If you’ve ever wondered what goes into planning an annual marketing strategy, here’s an overview of the necessary steps.
Determine your goals
When considering your media options, it’s tempting to be swayed by savvy media reps with shiny presentations, but often those presentations only include the medium that rep is selling.
Many business owners believe that where they get information is also where their customers’ preferences lie, but it’s important to acknowledge that your customers are not you and may not share the same behaviors and interests.
And finally, some make the mistake of assuming that a single platform is the be-all, end-all to your marketing challenges. In reality, it takes a village – or rather, a media mix.
The first step to devising a solid and effective media strategy is to think about your goals. What specifically do you want your marketing to accomplish? Are you a new business who needs to raise more awareness in the market, or a well-established business facing more market competition? Do you have a website that is poised for conversions but not getting enough traffic? Is there a specific product or service that has potential but needs a boost? Do you have a new product launch or upcoming event that needs heavy promotion?
Focusing on your specific goals throughout the year is the first step to determining what mediums might be a good option.
Determine your budget
Whereas media options are endless, media budgets are typically not. It’s important that you determine what level of spending you are comfortable with, considering cash flow and other expenses.
A good place to start is committing 5 – 10% of your annual gross revenue to marketing. Larger companies or competitive industries might devote more, or you may have immediate needs that require a larger initial investment.
We recommend working through a couple of different percentage scenarios to determine where your personal comfort level lies. Remember that as revenue increases, so should your marketing budget – if you want to continue to grow your business.
Research your audience
Your business probably has multiple audiences, but if you look at the majority of your customers, there is likely some consistency.
It’s important to look beyond the demographics and geographics of your customers (although these are perfect starting points) and delve into customers’ behaviors and interests. Not only does this help you get to know your customer on a different level and open opportunities to create lasting relationships, but it also helps you determine what pain points they face that your product or service can relieve.
Just as importantly, you need to know how your audience chooses to get their information. Do they tend towards a local broadcast station, or are they reading their daily news feed online? Are they active – out and about a lot – and therefor a good target for radio or streaming audio? Are they commuters who could get frequency from a well-placed billboard?
Chances are, there are multiple places your message could reach them, and that’s why a good media mix is typically the most effective.
Build a media mix
Did you know that seeing an ad on a billboard increases the effectiveness of a digital ad you see for the same business?
Using a media mix provides opportunities to reach your audience in different situations and places, and at different moments in their lives. By diversifying your media, you maximize reach and frequency, resulting in a more r=effective campaign.
But your media mix must be strategic. You need to consider all the places your audience could see you, then based on your budget and goals, determine which mediums best complement one another to provide the most reach efficiently and henceforth, the best ROI. Typically, a combination of traditional and non-traditional mediums makes the most sense.
Think long-term strategy
One of the biggest mistakes companies make with their media strategy is to think they can try something for a few weeks or a month to see if it will be effective. But that’s just not how marketing works.
Every buying cycle is different, and all buyers are not in the market at the same time. Plus, most mediums need time to gain traction. Frequency is also a key, as scientific formulas tell us that it takes a repetition of three to five within a single week to make a lasting impression on the brain.
Most campaigns need a minimum of three months before you can gauge actual effectiveness. And if you want to reach and maintain top-of-mind awareness, it is best to have a long-term strategy in place that keeps you in front of potential buyers all year long so that when they are ready, they think of you.
It’s still important to keep an eye on results each month so you can see what’s working well, what’s not and needs some tweaks, and where additional opportunities lie. Placing early and long-term doesn’t mean you can’t pivot throughout the year as things change.
Place your media buys
Most businesses work directly with a media rep or agency to get buys placed.
You’ll want a formula that has enough frequency to be effective. Ideally you will compare different mediums and providers based on cost per point, impression, conversion, etc., total reach of your intended audience, placement and added value. This can mean talking to multiple reps and working to get data that can be compared in an “apples-to-apples” sort of way, which can be harder than it sounds. There is also a negotiation factor, as the rates they initially present are not necessarily the final option.
This is where an agency can help. Not only do agencies tend to negotiate well on your behalf, but they also have greater buying power because they buy for multiple clients. And an agency has the full picture of your marketing strategy, making sure each piece fits together for the highest effectiveness.
For example, it may make sense to place ads in an early evening news program during winter months when people are out and about less, then place in later news programming in the summer when people stay out and up later.
Needless to say, buying the media is one of the main areas where businesses can use the expertise of an agency to their benefit.
Develop your creative
Once you have your media strategy determined you need to focus on your creative. What message do you want to convey? How does your product or service help make your customer’s life better? What makes you unique from your competition? What can you offer them that no one else can?
Once you’ve clarified your message, think about what imagery is appropriate and how you will keep it consistent across all mediums. Remember that how you do anything is how you do everything – which means, each encounter your customer has with your brand shapes their brand perception of you. Consistency at every touchpoint is key.
You also want to make sure that the professionals developing your creative assets are attuned to your brand and talented at what they do. This is not a place to settle or cut corners. You don’t want ads that feel “amateur” when you are trying to convey professionalism and garner trust.
Finally, make sure your ads are setting the right expectations. Realistically depict what working with your company is like and don’t try to “dress to impress” beyond what the customer will actually experience. Setting the wrong expectations is the fastest way to create distrust with potential customers.
Set benchmarks before the campaign launches
How will you know if your campaigns are working? It’s important to set benchmarks before your campaigns launch to determine what metrics you’ll be watching. Then, track results. Whereas digital media is able to provide tons of data about your campaigns, traditional media is a little harder to track.
Determine your baselines before the campaign launches, in as many places and ways as possible. Is your goal to drive more phone calls? Make note of approximately how many calls you are getting daily before the campaign to see if the needle is moving. Is your goal to drive more website traffic? Look at your last few months of website analytics to see where it has been. Do you need to grow revenue? Track month-to-month and year-over-year to see where changes occur and get insight into why.
What’s one of the easiest ways to track campaign performance? Ask every new customer how they found you. But do keep in mind that if you have an online presence (which is as important today as having a yellow pages ad was decades ago), the majority of your customers will say they found you… online. Don’t discount the impact your traditional media plays in helping to drive them online.
Review monthly
You got through the planning, the creative looks great, you’ve determined your benchmarks and you’ve launched your campaigns throughout the market. Now what?
Each month, typically with your billing, you should expect to receive statistics demonstrating the effectiveness of your campaigns. Are they moving the needle in the right direction? Do tweaks need to be made to the creative or the ad formula? Is one medium working better than expected and warrants additional investment?
You will also want to closely review your billing each month to make sure everything ran as ordered. Sometimes the wrong ad gets scheduled. Sometimes an ad runs in the wrong place. Sometimes the run dates are incorrect. All of these things should result in compensation – typically either by way of makegoods or credits.
Depending on what happened and where you are in the campaign, usually one option makes more sense than the other. For instance, does extending the campaign with a makegood schedule still work within your timeframe? Or has that moment passed and a credit makes more sense? If you do opt for makegoods over a credit, those makegoods should be at or above the value of what was originally ordered.
Finally, reviewing billing monthly also helps you keep track of how you are pacing on your budget for the year. This is especially helpful when pivots to your plan are warranted.
So there you have it! The formula for creating your annual marketing plan and keeping it effective.
Some clients relish this part of the business. But if you are not one of them, trust the professionals. With a little bit of knowledge, foresight and planning – and a team of people who are genuinely devoted your success – the potential customers should start rolling in, and you can focus on delivering an exceptional experience!
And on that, one final note. Your marketing is not responsible for your business’ health. Marketing’s job is to drive potential customers to your business and create opportunities. Once they get there, it’s your job to sell them and keep them coming back.
