Knowing your product’s appeal

What you’re selling helps you determine what media you should be buying. Are you selling tires? Then make print your primary media, because you need to list all those different brands, sizes, and prices in those long columns of itsy-bitsy type. You may also call attention to your print ads with some radio spots. And, if you want to show how clean and beautiful your shop is, consider some TV. Direct mail, if it’s a stand-alone piece for you and you alone, can be somewhat effective as well.
On the other hand, are you selling a professional service such as accounting, financial management, or consulting? Then you want to look at news, talk, or another radio format listened to by business people. If print is in your ad plan, then the local business journal or the business section or main news section of your newspapers are good bets.
If you’re selling beauty products or run a hair or nail salon, you need to reach your target market by buying on radio stations that can prove to you their audience composition includes mostly women. Women also read the newspaper’s business page in great numbers, as well as the entertainment, society, style, home, and main news sections. And dozens of television shows, even entire cable stations, are targeted toward women — for example, the Lifetime network, WE (Women’s Entertainment), Oxygen, and many others.
What I’m getting at here is that you must narrow your focus in order to get a handle on the amount you need to invest in advertising, by identifying your primary market segment. There’s no sense in taking the shotgun approach when a well-aimed rifle shot can find more of who you’re looking for — and for a lot less money. If you’re selling a female-oriented product, you don’t want to waste too much of your ad budget advertising to men, and vice versa. Sure, you’ll get some spillover, and you can’t do anything about that. But targeting your media buys as narrowly as possible saves you money in a big way.