• Paul M. Stubenbordt
  • Paul M. Stubenbordt focuses his blog on what steps a practice can take to optimize traditional and Internet marketing, public relations, social media as well as non-traditional marketing tactics that can help maximize your current practice development program.

Friday, January 8, 2010

An introduction to choosing the right media plan

Paul M. Stubenbordt

Happy new year!

Another year has come and gone. Our agency has been busy creating Q1 media plans and campaigns for our clients, which brings us to our very exciting and somewhat complicated topic this week.

I intended to write this blog about choosing the right message and medium for your 2010 marketing campaign, but soon realized that the blog would become a novel very quickly. In an effort to start 2010 on the simplest note possible, we'll cover "Choosing the right media plan" in several installments:

  • Radio
  • Television and cable
  • Print
  • Web
  • Social media

In each of these installments, we'll also include proven messages to make your practice successful for ad campaigns in LASIK, cataract or general branding. Let's begin with some basic advertising definitions before we delve into more advanced topics.

Impression: A single instance of a consumer hearing or seeing an advertisement.

CPM (Cost per thousand): This is the cost (per thousand impressions) you are paying (or have paid). If a billboard gets roughly 32,000 impressions a month and the board cost $500 a month, then your CPM is $15.53.

This is calculated by taking the price of your advertisement and dividing it by the total thousand impressions. In this case: $500/32=$15.53.

Reach: Size of target audience exposed to an advertisement during a broadcast at least once during a specific time period.

Frequency: How many times an individual is exposed to your ads in a specific time period.

Medium: A vehicle or group of vehicles used to convey your message or advertisement. These include newspaper, cable, television, Web, radio, billboards, etc.

CPI (Cost per inquiry): In direct response marketing, this is a term used on getting one person to inquire about your products of services.

Demographics: Description of consumer you are targeting: age, sex, household income, education, etc.

Psychographics: Relates to personality, interests, values, lifestyle and attitudes of a consumer.

Effective reach: Percentage of targeted audience that is exposed to a particular ad during a specific period. Usually this is three or more times. It's crucial for getting consumers to react to advertising.

The old saying is, it takes three times for someone just to understand who your commercial is for, another three times to understand what it is saying and another three times to react to it.

Drive time: Term used in radio that refers to morning and afternoon times when consumers are driving to and from work.

Direct response: A type of ad campaign designed to generate a response from a consumer immediately or within a short time of hearing an ad.

Example: Call now and save, limited time offer, call before the end of the month.

And there you have it. Now that you know some of the terminology, you'll have a better understanding of the marketing strategies we'll discuss in the later blogs.

 

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