It’s Not a Toolbox, It’s a Marketing Mixer
.
Perhaps you wind up with a picture like this:
1. Young heads of households who need to start saving: 50%
2. Small company owners: 30%
3. Retirees who need to stretch their budget: 20%
Obviously each of those groups would need customized messages and would require a quick analysis on your part:
- Size of the group
- Profitability
- Growth potential
Quintile Distribution and Media Planning
An arcane tool –quintile distribution—gives us a roadmap to media planning. A quintile distribution is simple tool: it divides any universe into five equal segments. As a result, we can compare the behaviors of light users, medium users, heavy users, quickly and effectively.
Every media follows pretty much the same behavior: 45% or 50% of all the medium is consumed by its heaviest users. 5% is consumed by its lightest users. If you buy more of the same media, you pile up on the same users.
So let’s say you buy local cable and let’s consider three levels: $50,000, $75,000 and $100,000. This is how your money would fall:
This is not necessarily “good” or “bad”. But certainly, you would want to understand what is happening to your media budget and make decisions.
Your small to medium-sized business mixer
As an SMB you have a fairly ample range of choices. They go from networking groups to e-mail, adwords, social media, radio, and print all the way to direct mail, out of home and many others.
Strategic planning will help you decide which touchpoint to use and when and how much to invest in it.
We do that via a combination of:
- Your own sales goals
- Volume/audience
- Costs
- Conversion ratios
- KPI’s
Speaking to one person at a time.
Fairfax Cone (one of the founders of Foote Cone & Belding) said: Good advertising is written from one person to another. When it is aimed at millions it rarely moves anyone.
Dynamic Creative Optimization does give us the option of generating dozens of ads in the web.
But, even in more traditionally unwieldy media, good strategic planning will allow you to:
- Obtain key consumer insights from each group
- Isolate it
- Deliver the message that creates the highest persuasion
In summary
- It’s not a toolbox, it’s a mixer.
- Everything in advertising and marketing moves in a continuum.
- A successful small or medium-sized business must move away from the simplistic “consumer à contact point à message” triangle and analyze its sources of business, contact points and customized messages.
Related articles:
What Does a “Free” Offer In Advertising Really Cost?
What Do Rodney Dangerfield and B2B Advertising have in common?
In Advertising, Persistence Wins the Day
Keys to Developing an Essential Small Business Marketing Plan
