Poring over publicity

Technically, publicity isn’t really part of advertising, but good publicity can serve to advertise your business. Publicity is really about getting someone else to advertise your business. Basically, you’re calling attention to what you’re doing in a way that your newspaper may want to report on it, or a magazine may want to write a feature article about your business, or a TV show host or radio host may be so intrigued by something you’ve done that they talk about you on their shows. The two chapters in Defining and Positioning Your Message offer lots of great ideas and success stories on how some businesses have done this successfully.
Where your advertising appears is every bit as important as what message it contains — maybe even more so. Advertising is a numbers game: You want to spend as little money as possible, as effectively as possible, to reach as many people as possible, in order to make your phone and your cash register ring. Consider your many media options very carefully. You can waste your advertising dollars very easily by using the wrong media for your advertising goals.
Mass media advertising is affordable (turn to the chapters in Boosting Your Budget with Co-Op Programs for more information on costs). But so-called “affordable” advertising in the wrong media is a gigantic waste of your dollars and your time. No matter how affordable the media is, if it doesn’t bring customers through your door, you aren’t really saving money. On the contrary, you’re draining your limited budget without being the least-bit effective.

Ogling online ads

Last, but by no means least, is the newest ad medium — online — even though the Internet hardly seems “new”; still, it’s only been since the mid-’90s that companies have used the Web to advertise products, services, and businesses.
Online Advertising offers the pros and cons of online advertising on various Web sites (as well as how to develop your own), and it tells how to create various types of online ad formats, do e-mail advertising, and create your own blog. Investing in Internet Advertising picks up where Online Advertising leaves off and helps you with the financial side of online ads: hiring someone to help you create ads or your Web site and buying space on other sites.

Scrutinizing outdoor advertising

Outdoor advertising includes everything from billboards on highways to ads on bus kiosks, in subway cars, on taxis, or even on benches and other signage. As a $6 billion industry, it’s a small part of overall annual ad expenditures, but if you think it’s right for your business, Opting for Outdoor Ads tells how to choose the type of outdoor ad that can work best for you and how to design memorable advertising in this medium.

Musing upon direct mail

Direct mail is a $45 billion business, and it’s alive and well even with the growth of e-mail and other Internet advertising. Charitable organizations still send pitches for funds to continue their good works (like The Red Cross, The American Cancer Society, and Doctors Without Borders). Similarly, cultural institutions use direct mail to solicit donor support, which they need to supplement ticket prices from their audiences (think of your local theater company, public radio station, and even PBS). And direct mail includes the myriad catalogs that fill all of our mailboxes — from Land’s End to L.L. Bean to Victoria’s Secret, to J.Crew (to name just a few). Collateral Advertising and Direct Mail focuses on developing strong direct-mail messages that can stand out among the abundance in the mailbox.

Contemplating print

Print advertising encompasses both newspapers (daily and Sunday papers), which is a $49 billion business, and magazines, which is a $21 billion business. Newspapers are obviously a good choice if your business is regional and you’re targeting a broad consumer base; magazines are more-specifically tailored to different readers — for example, a subscriber to Glamour probably isn’t also subscribing to, say, Maxim, though the media kits of each provide the details on the number and demographics of the subscriber base. Using Print Ads offers insight on how to write and design eye-catching print ads, and Buying Ad Space in Print Media offers ideas for how to choose the right publication and negotiate a good rate for your ad.
Keep in mind, though, that many people who used to get information from newspapers and magazines now have the additional option of online subscriptions — to either those same publications or to alternatives that have never been printed on paper but are available only on the Internet. Online Advertising and Investing in Internet Advertising cover how to create and buy ad space in this new media

Rating TV

TV is a $68 billion business — and that includes the almost 2,000 broadcast stations plus the many cable and satellite TV stations. The growth in the number of stations has actually made it easier for advertisers, because TV programming is so much more targeted. For example, the audience for The History Channel is probably very different from, say, Lifetime or Oxygen or WE, the Women’s Entertainment channel.
Still, TV advertising is the most expensive medium (even with the tips offered in Demystifying TV Commercials on how to create TV commercials and keep down the costs!), so you should consider TV commercials only if you can afford them. TV is still a mass medium, even with the more-focused channels mentioned, and your ad budget may be better spent on a more narrowly focused media. But if you decide TV is for you, see Getting Your Ads on Television for guidance on how to find the right station and negotiate the best deal for your ad and your business

Regarding radio

Radio advertising is a $20 billion business — and it has expanded both because listeners can now tune in on the Internet and because of the development of satellite radio (Sirius and XM subscriber-based programming). But it’s also competing with MP3 devices, which means there may be fewer listeners to any given radio station or program.
But if your business appeals to consumers who’re likely to subscribe to this type of programming, or if you can reach them on broadcast radio during drive time or particular radio programs (especially those with celebrity hosts), then you should consider this medium. Radio provides guidance on developing memorable radio spots, and Purchasing Ad Time on the Radio offers information on buying radio time to maximize your reach — and your budget.

Getting to Know Your Media Options

Advertising comes in all shapes and sizes. And a big part of developing your ad plans and campaign is to decide which mediums are best suited to advertising your particular business. Following is a brief overview of your options, with details from Plunkett Research, Ltd. to give you a ballpark idea on how many billions of dollars are spent annually in each medium in the United States.

Advertising: Mastering the Art of Promotion

In This Mastering the Art of Promotion

• Being aware of the advertising around you (as if you could avoid it)
• Putting the fundamentals of good advertising to work for you 
• Taking a few lessons from the pros

Advertising is a $300 billion industry in the United States alone. Plunkett Research, Ltd. (the company that provided this figure) points out that the large numbers don’t stop there. In the United States, advertisers flood the following mediums in droves:

• 1,749 broadcast TV stations (and that’s not including cable and satelliteTV outlets)
• 13,599 radio stations
• 2,250 daily and Sunday newspapers

And those figures don’t even take into consideration the thousands of magazines, direct mail, Web sites, blogs, outdoor advertising (billboards, bus shelters, and so on), or specialty or alternative advertising, which includes everything from airplane banners at the beach to tchotchkes, small items like tote bags, pens, and t-shirts that merchants and businesses give away to remind consumers to do business with them.

With all these choices of how to get your message out there, how do you decide what’s the best medium to reach the customers you’re looking for? And how can you develop an ad campaign that won’t get lost in the morass? You don’t have to hire an ad agency (though you can: Deciding Whether to Hire an Ad Agency offers guidance on how best to do this, and Ten Ways to Know It’s Time to Hire an Agency gives you ten ways to know whether you need outside help). But you can also do it yourself, and this book tells how.

You don’t have to hire an ad agency. But you can also do it yourself, and this blog tells how.

In this part, I fill you in on the basics of advertising — what’s effective and what isn’t. Then I give you a short course on all your advertising options —radio, TV (network and cable), magazines and newspapers, direct mail, outdoor, the Web, and more — and I show how you can put them to work for you. Finally, I end with stories about two legends of advertising as well as brief introductions of more recent ad giants, because if you focus on the best and figure out what they’ve done well, you can try to incorporate some of their genius into your own advertising — and come out ahead of the competition.