Snowflakemedia’s Weblog

It is one of the connundrums of the times we live in that when a small or medium sized business has a little success that there is nervousness in expanding to capitalise on the upturn in fortunes. Perhaps it’s the “not knowing what’s around the corner” or in quite a number of cases it stems from previous bad experiences in buying advertising.

Having bought & sold TV, magazine, newspaper and new (online) media I have been on both sides of the fence and can see where this nervousness starts. Most SME’s at one time or another in the UK have had the call from their friendly “brightly coloured” telephone directory company….let’s call it “Shout!!” to avoid any unnecessary legal issues:) With promises of local saturated coverage and the knowledge that use of the book is widely used it can seem like a sensible idea to part with £200 – £2000. The biggest challenge for most companies though is that they are now 1 of over 100 competing “basic” entries in the listing and tracking what business came from that source a year rolls by before your renewal call. Here are a few key things to consider before spending any money on advertising.

Tracking your media spend

I know you are too busy to worry about taking notes on where a customer called from, but in all seriousness if you are successful in business then you want to do less of the stuff that isn’t working and do more of the cash-generative business that pays the bills. Whether its yellow pages, your local newspaper, a TV advert or even hand-printed flyers pushed through letterboxes you need to ensure your time is well spent. For bigger campaigns try a unique phone number just for that campaign. It doesn’t have to be a fancy one, just one where the phone company can tell you exactly how many people called.

Be sure to Ask the caller where they got your number from. Was it word of mouth, a blog, an advert?

No such thing as cheap advertising?

A very contentious point. The amount of times a business owner or marketeer buys a piece of advertising because it was cheap, too good a deal to resist or they were just caught on a good day is amazing. Yes that advert may have only been £100, but what return are you needing? ie how many sales/leads/prospects? those 3 x £100 ads could have bought something very much more targetted and likely to generate increased sales and profits.

Use a media buying company (not an advertising agency)

What’s the difference? Well the agency generally creates adverts (radio, tv, press adverts, etc) the media buyers generally just buy media all day long. Here at Snowflake media we have established relationships with everyone from major TV stations through to local newspapers, our last 2 clients have needed entirely different things. The 1st has a TV advert that has run on Setanta Sports, the 2nd client needed classified ads in the Halifax Evening Courier!

Why use a media buyer for your advertising? Simply because 99% of the time a good media buyer will get better rates than you would be offered directly. Media buyers buy for several clients so often you can reap the benefit of lower advertising prices because you are part of a collective and as with any industry if you buy more, the price comes down.

How does the media buyer get paid? The advertising industry has pre-agreed commissions that will get passed on to the media buyer. Importantly this doesn’t increase your price as the commission comes out of the rate that was charged, not on top of it. It is unusual that a media buyer would charge you a fee above these commission rates so just be sure that you are not paying twice for the expertise. The joy of this system is that the media buyer is incentivised to make sure anything you buy has the best possible chance of working, after all they only get paid if you keep buying.

No such thing as bad media

Often people will tell me “I’ve tried advertising ther and it was awful” and quite often it’s because the price paid was too high. For example if you placed an advert in the local paper for £300 and got £200 worth of business then you clearly lost money. Hopefully you have a repeat business strategy which can turn that guy in to profit but for this example let’s assume all your business or products are a 1-time sale. So what should you do? Avoid advertising at all cost? No, work out what price you would have been happy to pay to generate £200 worth of business. Lets assume in this case that it was £100, now you have a benchmark figure. The first thing i would advocate is talking to the newspaper and telling them your results. Let them know what you can afford to buy the space at and make them an open-ended offer. “Here’s my credit card or cheque you have my authority to run a £100 ad anytime you like as long as you give me a call or email the day before it goes live. It shows you are serious and you might even get free advertising out of it occasionally.

Next look at the numbers. If the ad reached 60,000 people and you need to pay £100 to reach them it gives you a figure of being able to pay about £1.66 for every 1000 readers. What other papers are available locally or in the next town and how do their rates measure up. There are of course other factors at play such as is the paper relevant, etc but your media buyer can advise on that aspect.

Customer is king

Despite what media buyers, advertising agencies and media owners may wish you to believe. YOU are KING. We don’t exist without your support and just as you may haggle, ask questions and trade a little in your own business please ensure you do the same when buying advertising. It’s not a black art and you shouldn’t be made to feel baffled by all the terminology. Here at Snowflake Media we have been known to not take clients on board because we haven’t felt the direction was right, especially in the case of buying media when we thought the return needed was impossible. Some clients like that, others don’t, but pick a good media buying company who can walk you through the process and if they don’t ask you lots of questions about your business and what the advertising needs to achieve then walk away and find another.

Best of Luck!

Lee

Snowflake Media Ltd is one of the fastest growing buyers of advertising space for small and medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs. For a free consultation, email Lee@snowflakemedia.co.uk