When deciding which media to select for promotional purposes, firms must consider a number of factors in order to maximise the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. In this article we briefly discuss seven of these factors.
The diagram below summarises the factors which should be considered when selecting media for your marketing campaign
What is your overall budget for advertising? Will your budget give you the coverage you want? A firm that has a limited budget for advertising will limit the amount of coverage certain media can provide. You will need to strike a balance between budget and coverage.
One factor that will influence the budget and coverage question is the objective of the campaign. If the objective is to raise the brand awareness of the firm amongst the teenage market then this will influence any decisions you make above. You may need to spend a little more on certain publications in order to meet your objectives.
The media you selected is obviously influenced by the target audience. A firm must select media that the target audience is associated with e.g. the magazines or paper that they read, or the social networking site they use.
What is the message focus going to be? Will the message be emotional and work on guilt or will the message be clear cut and say why the firm is better than the leading player?
What is the readership of the media you wish to select? Readership is the number times a publication has been read, so if I pick up newspaper on the train, read it and leave it on the train and that same newspaper has been read by 10 other commuters, the readership in total is 11.
A firm will need to find out what the overall circulation of the media chosen is. So how many publications are sold, and exactly who reads them.
When do you want the advertising campaign to start? Is it specific to a particular time of the year e.g. Easter or Christmas?
So when selecting your media for advertising you need to take into account all of the above factors into account to maximise the success of your advertising campaign. The importance of a particular factor will depend on the campaign in question so it will be important to prioritise the list in a manner that suits you and your campaign.
