TV will continue to be the main driver for advertisers according to a recent Strata survey of advertising agencies. Even though a lot of money is being shifted online, the majority is still being spent on television.
“To advertisers, TV still matters,” said John Shelton, STRATA President/CEO.“But just as radio gave way to television, we can see that TV is slowly giving way to digital. The good news for TV stations and networks—for now – is that they remain the dominant medium. The survey taps into the perception that digital has its limitations in reach and effectiveness and must still be used with traditional media like TV.” (Cable Spots 5/24/10)
Other noteworthy stats:
- About half of the agencies polled feel that business is improving.
- 25% plan on hiring staff this year.
- 87.5% are likely to use Facebook in a client’s campaign; 57.1% Twitter; 39.3% YouTube.
- 32.1% say their clients will spend less money on radio than they did a year ago.
- 67.9% place digital allocations toward online display, then social media, then PPC/Search/ SEO
We are seeing this in Kansas City as well. Online advertising has become an important part of a marketing consultation and that wasn’t the case when I entered this industry several years ago. If you haven’t researched opportunities to advertise on cable providers ISP portals, you are missing out on a great opportunity.
Like this study revealed, TV programming should remain the lion’s share of sound ad allocation, but don’t ignore advertising online. At Time Warner, we have the ability to place banner ads on www.roadrunner.com. This is the site where anyone with a kc.rr.com e-mail address can go to check their e-mail. It’s also a standard homepage for many Internet users. There are all kinds of local news and programming information, even links to online dating!
The biggest benefit of this site is the fact that all banner ads are exclusively placed by market, so in KC you will only have web banners placed in front of Internet users in Kansas City. Most competitive sites such as the one run by the local newspaper does not filter online ads to local IP addresses which means there is often a lot of waste!
In the same way that cable TV advertisers eliminate waste by only advertising in the metro area where the majority of the population lives, online opportunities offer the same advantage. This equates to more commercials or banners in front of the right people more often!
Are you shifting your advertising budget around? Are you using more digital platforms? What’s working for you?
Courtesy of Flickr
One mistake I often identify when visiting with a small business owner, or inexperienced marketer is the desire to be everything to everyone. If you try to advertise in a generic way and you haven’t taken the time to really figure out what it is you do best, then you will be very disappointed with the results of your campaign.
I received training from the Center for Sales Strategy who teaches a 5 step model as well as studied other principles by Al Ries and Jack Trout. I will summarize how I use their teachings in order to help you make better decisions and get better results from your advertising. The first step is finding your niche.
Successful marketing comes from a focus on your strengths over your weaknesses. An example from a coffee shop would be that if 80% of your profits come from your famous danish sales instead of java, then you’re really a pastry shop. Another thing to consider when figuring out your identity is whether or not anyone else already owns the label of being the leader in that category. Where do you fall compared to your competition? What ever you do, don’t try to be the same thing as everyone else. That’s the opposite of finding a niche, but people do it every day! Really dig down to figure out a narrow point to focus in on. When it comes time to advertise, if you can’t say what you want to be to your clients on a billboard, t-shirt, or in a slogan, you haven’t figured it out yet. Don’t invest any money until you have your identity down pat.
Questions I often ask when trying to figure out a client’s specialty are:
- What product or service accounts for 80% or more of your business?
- What do you sell that makes you the most money? Is that also the most profitable?
- Even if people don’t realize it, your company is really good at (blank).
- Are you altering any of your product lines or increasing your services to be more competitve?
Before you can go on to identifying your target or position or are ready to advertise, you really need to know what it is that you should be known for. What is it that your clients or customers really need from you? The problem is that many business owners think that everyone should buy from them. Which would be fantastic, but isn’t realistic.
So, once you have a specialty or category figured out you can move on to the next steps which involve identifying who to target, how you’ll position yourself and then finally what media you want use with a creative message in an advertising campaign or promotion. The advertising and promotion is often the sexy part that people get excited about, but if you don’t stick to these marketing strategy fundamentals when planning your campaign, you run the risk of wasting your money!
Can you think of any examples of companies who serve niches really well?
It didn’t take long for AT&T to fight back against the Verizon campaign labeling the iPhone as a “broken toy” because it’s 3G network coverage is poor. You can read more about it here. I think it was smart to immediately strike back, but is the rebuttal strong enough to overcome the damage that has been done?
It’s no secret that AT&T had been winning the battle for customers because they had the most popular smartphone and while there are some very good alternatives to the iPhone now like the Droid , BlackBerry Storm, T-Mobile G1, and Palm Pre just to name a few, none of them will out ”cool” the iPhone. I do however love the fact that Verizon took their strength and ran with it! They turned the argument back around to the claim that they have the best 3G network in the country.
My problem with AT&T’s come back is that while they are trying to argue that they have a strong nationwide coverage area, they say they have the best 3G “experience”. To me, it’s almost giving Verizon affirmation of their claims by playing around with the label. Verizon claims AT&T’s 3G coverage isn’t very good and they respond with, “well ours is faster!” At least they do it with some humor. Directly going after your competitor by name and punching them in the mouth doesn’t come without the risk of getting a return blow. You’d better be ready for it.
At the end of the battle consumers will have to make a choice between getting the iPhone and dealing with AT&T’s “fast” but lesser than 3G network, or having the coverage they want with an almost-as-hip-as-the-iPhone mobile device. Either way, I get a kick out of watching these two giants battle it out! Don’t you?
What do you think of the campaigns? And where’s Kansas City’s own Sprint fit into this?
Lately I have found myself going back to the basics with many clients who feel like they need to either confirm that they are on the right track with their marketing and advertising or START OVER! What I find myself doing with them, especially as planning for a new year is taking place, is to go through a marketing strategy model that I’ll write more about here soon. But for now, I wanted to talk about an example of a company that was on the verge of something big, then finally nailed it!
It’s no secret that AT&T has been wildly successful in their cellular business because of their exclusive agreement to sell the iPhone. Their competitors have been struggling with a way to combat this iPhone popularity. AT&T made the gadget itself the most important selling point. Verizon has long been known for having the best network, but because the iPhone was so popular, people didn’t care so much. Then they came out with a TV and radio ad campaign that in my opinion really missed the mark. What Verizon wanted to do was show that no matter how “cool” the iPhone was, it wouldn’t have very good performance because it’s on an inferior network. Their horrible slogan…”there’s a ‘map’ for that”.
This was a blatant rip off of Apple’s very popular commercials that suggest that anything you’d ever want to do in your life has an iPhone application to go with it. The problem with Verizon’s tag line was that all it did was point out that the iPhone has a lot of really cool apps. I believe you should always point out your strengths and avoid giving your competition too much credit.
Enter the new campaign…I saw the ad below on TV the other night and found it to be a stroke of genius. Take a look for yourself:
Awwww! That sad little iPhone with all of its cool apps is on the island of misfit toys because its network sucks! That’s the point they’re trying to make anyway and I think this time it may stick. I found this to be a brilliant example of positioning a company’s strength and making the competition look darn near irrelevant.
How does this relate to your business? Every company should have a competitive advantage against their rivals. It’s something that makes you special or unique. When it comes to your advertising campaigns, this point should be burned into the mind of your core target so that your customers will know why they should be doing business with you instead of someone else. Are you taking advantage of that? If you’re not quite on the right track, maybe it’s time for a reassessment.
The following guest post is by Phil Brouillette from Time Warner Cable Kansas City’s monthly Newsletter June 2009:
How many times have you heard “you should continue to advertise even in a soft economy?” Chances are you have heard it more than a few times and most likely you have heard it from a media and/or advertising sales rep. Though it could be viewed as a self-serving recommendation, a recent study suggests that reduced advertising can in fact negatively impact consumer perception of your business.
The latest Ad-ology Research study finds that nearly 50% of U.S. adults “believe that a lack of advertising by a retail store, bank or auto dealership during a recession indicates the business must be struggling.” It also finds that a vast majority of the public perceives businesses that continue to advertise as being competitive or committed to doing business.
It is without a doubt a unique environment for most of us in business today. But there are opportunities out there. I recently went back through the book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout. I landed on law #15: The Law of Candor. Simply stated this law says that when a business starts a message by admitting a problem, consumer minds almost instinctively open up. Once the mind is open, you as a current advertiser, have the opportunity to insert a positive. The positive should be your selling message on how the current environment can benefit them.
If you plan on stayng in business, please don’t sit this one out until things get better. As C. Lee Smith, president and CEO of Ad-ology Research states, “it is critical to advertise in the current economic climate to maintain long-term positive consumer perception of your brand.” As their study found- “advertising appears to play a key role in consumers’ view of how a business is doing. By not advertising, business may be be sending a warning signal to current and potential consumers.” Be wise with your budget, but make sure you are still inviting people to do business with you.
Phil Brouillette is a Local Sales Manager with Time Warner Cable Media Sales.
I ran across this success letter from one of my clients today and thought it was a great testimony of not only the products that I often recommend to others, but also of the fact that it was well written. It reminded me that I should be using these letters more often!
With Dinosaurs – The Live Experience’
to Kansas City in early June, the marketing
campaign included a cross-promotional
schedule with TWC Media Sales
that utilized spot advertising, Video on
Demand and an enter-to-win web contest.
‘Our 30-second commercials did a great
job of teasing the event, but I think
guests didn’t quite understand the enormity
of the show. With our three-minute
clip airing on Video on Demand, viewers
were able to watch additional behind-the
scenes footage about the show and learn
how the dinosaurs actually worked. My
follow-up report showed over 300 VOD
viewings. In addition, we interwove a
dinosaur trivia web contest into the campaign.
Nearly 200 participated in the
contest to win ticket packs to the show.
Cable was a great value to maximize our
advertising dollars. It allowed us to target
by location a diverse group of potential
guests with more disposable income.
Thanks to this multi-faceted campaign
using cable networks, VOD and Internet,
Time Warner Cable put us over the top of
reaching our sales goal!’
Manager, Communications & Marketing
AEG Sprint Center”
Last month an Adweek/Harris poll was released with over 2,500 respondents that said TV was still the most helpful medium for making purchase decisions. TV beat the runner up (Newspaper) by double!
37% of Americans say that commercials on television are most helpful when making a purchase decision and only 17% said that newspaper ads were the most helpful. What’s even more shocking are the results of internet & radio. 14% said that internet search engines were most helpful and only 3% of respondents listed radio as the most helpful. Ouch! The bottom of the barrel was internet banner ads with only 1% indicating them as the most helpful for making a purchase decision. Those banner ads were also listed as the type of advertising completely ignored. 46% said that they tend to ignore banner ads. (CableSpots 7/6/09)
In a year where business owners are trying to save a buck or two this kind of information is incredibly valuable. I hear the kind of deals that are out there for web advertising and I’ve been at the radio stations and know what kind of sales antics are used to get people to advertise with them. It’s even worse now in the current economy. When taking a hard look at where you can cut back and where you should spend more, it is apparent that TV is still the most effective medium available.
If a banner or radio ad falls in the forest and no one is there to see or hear it, did it actually happen? I bet the radio or internet company will still bill you for it!
Pontiac & GMC are two brands hanging on for dear life with the government involvement in restructuring GM. The administration would like for these two brands to be eliminated. Pontiac would have a couple of popular models move under the Buick brand as they are already planning with the Saturn Vue and Regal. They would also like to see the high end GMC trucks and SUV’s sold as Chevrolet. GM, however is fighting to keep Pontiac as a boutique brand with fewer models and they do not believe that GMC owners will buy from Chevy. GM is already planning to sell off Hummer, Saab, and Saturn. Kansas City does not even have any Saturn dealerships left although GM claims they are still looking for a new business partner in this market. (CableSpots 4/20)
Despite all of the attention given to various ways consumers can now watch video programming like Hulu, YouTube, iTunes, men’s restrooms (yes, some bars actually have video players over urinals in their bathrooms, but I digress…) TV is still the number one source for viewing video content. This new Nielsen funded survey reported by medialifemagazine.com found that television makes up 99 percent of all video consumption.
So, even though there are more trendy print publications cropping up, “new” radio stations changing their formats, and new online tools for social media such as Facebook and Twitter all vying for not only your advertising dollars, but attention as well, TV is still the reigning champion for telling your story to potential customers!
Just because people can watch some of their favorite shows on their iPhone or computer at home doesn’t mean that they do. I think this study shows that as an industry, TV, is still very much alive and remains relevant because it can deliver an emotional message with pictures and sound to a targeted audience.
This is all the more reason to be considering cable TV as an important tool in your media arsenal. Even NBC President Jeff Zucker admitted last month that two thirds of NBC Universal’s profits now come from cable. “We’re first and foremost a cable network company,” he said. He also mentioned that advertisers must consider USA as a competitor with the traditional broadcast networks. “If you’re an advertiser and want mass reach”, he said, “you have to be on USA,” the top-rated cable network.
If 99% of video content is still on TV and more than half of that viewing is on cable networks, shouldn’t cable TV be the largest share of a companies media allocation?
Image Source: Flickr
If you’re a business that typically depends on tax refunds for much of your 2Q sales, you may want to accelerate your marketing plans because consumers are filing online and getting their refunds sooner this year.
My feeling on advertising and marketing is that most purchases are not impulsive these days. Longer term image is more important that catchy tactics. Even if an incentive pushes a buyer over the edge, a seed was planted long before that said to that person, “this is something you want to buy!” My experience tells me that when you spend the time and investment creating an image for your company and prove to the consumer that there is real value in what you do or sell, then they will come to you when they have the means to do so. Those of you who are doing it right may have already seen the benefit of consumers’ tax refunds this year. Even without the money in hand, people are willing to go ahead and make purchases on their credit cards knowing they’ll be able to pay it off as soon as that electronically filed money is deposited into their account. Those of you out there who have postponed your advertising plans this year hoping to catch up when things “turn around” may already be too late.
