The Best Advertising Media for Small Business

May 19, 2010
by Bill Cherry

1. What is newspaper advertising and when to use it?
2. What is TV advertising and when to use it?
3. What is radio advertising and when to use it?
4. Yellow page advertising and when to use it?
5. Direct Mail/ Direct Marketing.

2. General Advertising:
Target market:
Demographics: describes the customer’s age, sex, income, education etc. Demographics help identify the kind of advertising and what medium to use.

Physiographics: describes what people think, believe, opinions, morals, attitudes. Physiographics can be used to create the advertising message and how to present it.

Which media to use: it depends on the amount of money you have to use, the target market, media usage by the target customers etc.

Advertising is a lot like medicine. For example: if you don’t take enough antibiotic, often for ten days, you won’t get well. It’s the same with advertising. If you don’t buy enough advertising, you may waste the money you do spend. Frequency and consistency are important. One way to get your audience to remember your business is through repetition. One or two radio or TV spots a day will not do the job.

How much advertising will work depends on the market, the target customer, the competition and more. Talk to an advertising sales person to learn how much advertising you need.

Advertising should generally be done on a consistent basis such as every day, every week etc. It depends on your budget.

Cost factors: do you have enough money to buy adequate amounts of advertising?

Message: AIDA formula is a basic principle of advertising.
A- Attention of the customer
B- Interest in the product
C- Desire for the product
D- Call to action

The message must get customer’s attention, get their interest, create a desire for the product, and a call to action.

3. Advantages and Disadvantages of each medium:
Newspaper:
Advantages:
1. They give credibility to businesses that advertise. “If it’s in the newspaper it must be true.”
2. Very wide reach, all over a geographical area, reach lots of people.
3. Mobile, it can be taken with you and read as you travel.
4. It’s tangible so readers can touch it and read it over and over. See your ads several times.
5. Can target certain demographics by advertising in special sections like sports, entertainment, business, social, etc.

Disadvantages:
1. Morning and evening daily advertising is very expensive. Regional papers are more affordable.
2. While newspapers can target some demographics with special sections, the audience is limited.
3. Only 50% of the people in any major market get the daily paper.
4. Young people don’t read the paper; they get info from the Internet and iPods.
5. Newspaper demographics are mainly age 35 plus.
6. Quality of pictures and printing is not as good as magazines.

News paper circulation vs. readership:
What does it mean when the newspaper sales rep says the paper’s circulation is 200,000 people?
ANSWER: Circulation is not readership
Circulation is how many newspapers were distributed to homes, businesses, free give aways, and any papers they give away.

Readership is how many people read the paper. Very different from circulation.
The circulation might be 200,000 but the reader ship might be 70,000 people. And of those how many will read your ad? Even less, much less. Don’t be fooled by large circulation numbers.

4. Advertising Rates:
Newspaper ads are expensive. Local and regional newspaper ads are more affordable. The major dailies are very rigid on their price per column inch. They seldom discount. Regional and local papers are more flexible on rates. They all like to sell you an annual contract.

5. Television Advertising:
TV is the most powerful medium. People spend 4 hours a day watching it.
Advantages:
1. Color, motion, sound, site make TV the most powerful medium.
2. Can target specific demographics by advertising in different shows.
3. Can also reach very broad groups of viewers random schedules.
4. TV reaches 99% of all house holds, more than newspaper.

Disadvantages:
1. Very high cost (consider smaller local stations).
2. Must pay extra for TV advertising production.
3. Locally produced TV ads are poor quality.
4. Not mobile (but changing).

TV advertising rates:
TV ads are often called spots. They can be either 30 or 60 seconds long. Sometimes only 10 seconds. The rates you pay are determined by how many viewers will watch your spots. You can either run your spots during a program or adjacent to it. Prime time 7 pm to 10 pm costs the most. Day time spots cost less because it delivers a smaller audience.

6. Radio advertising:
Radio advertising can be very effective to reach the right audience. You can listen to the programming while on the go, or in a remote location. In every major market, the radio audience is split up between 20 or more stations, so to reach a sizable audience you must advertise on several stations.

Advantages of radio advertising:
1. The message of the spot can be changed in a few minutes.
2. Radio is a personal medium one to one communication.
3. Radio can target specific demographics groups through different music formats.
4. Radio is interactive, listeners can call in and win prizes.
5. Radio is less expensive than other media.

Disadvantages of radio advertising:
1. If you don’t get all the message in a radio spot, you can’t go back and listen to it like with newspaper.
2. Listening audience is divided into many parts of the listening pie.
3. Can’t reach a broad audience.

7. Yellow Page advertising:
Advantages:
1. Yellow page directories are in every home, and business in a market, complete coverage.
2. Your ad is in the book 24/7 when a person wants to buy.
3. The Yellow page book is there when people are ready to buy.

Disadvantages:
1. High cost for the primary book in the market.
2. Can’t change the ad content for one year.
3. Your ad is next to your competition.

Major yellow page books vs. the many independent yellow page books. Advertise in the biggest directory if possible. It gets the most results. If you can’t afford to advertise in the biggest book, advertise in the next biggest one. Don’t buy advertising in the cheap books. It wastes your money.

Direct Mail: You can target exactly your target customer, no wasted circulation, very interactive.

Which media to use:
1. Determine your target audience: age, sex, income, geographical location life style, education, marital status, race etc.
2. What media will reach that audience? For example, Young adult males 18-34, single, white, high school and some college, live all over town but cluster in certain zip codes, listen to lots of radio, like fast cars, loud music, girls, drinking, parties, doesn’t read newspapers, gets info from Internet, radio, and TV.

Radio, harder rock format etc. TV they watch WWF, kick boxing, sports, movies
Which radio stations play the kind of music he listens to?

RADIO IS THE BEST CHOICE FOR MEDIA.

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