How to Get the Most Out of Your Media Advertising

Media advertising uses channels such as billboards, magazines, newspapers, radio, television, email and the internet to carry a promotional message to the public in words, sound and pictures. Think of it as a way of shaking a prospective customer’s hand at scale: pleased to meet you, and here is how we can meet your needs. Whatever the medium, the job is the same, which is to communicate a clear message that moves a person to act. That action, whether a phone call, a visit or an order, is what turns exposure into business.

The way people respond to media advertising has changed. Many now research a company before they ever speak to it, and they tune out interruptions such as cold calls, bulk email and unwanted mailers. That shift is usually described as inbound marketing: rather than only pushing messages out, you give people something worth finding and gather them around it. The path runs from stranger to website visitor, from visitor to lead, and from lead to a customer who stays in touch and may write a review or recommend you to someone else.

Paid media still has a place on that path. It is most useful when it makes the first introduction and points people to where the rest of the story is told: a website with clear answers, a profile with honest reviews, a store, a phone line answered by someone who knows the product. Media spending works hardest when what people find after the ad is as carefully built as the ad itself.

Before you choose a channel, evaluate the business honestly.

• What do you offer, and what problem does it solve for a customer?
• Whom do you most need to reach, and what do they pay attention to?
• Where is your business located, and how far will customers travel, or how far can you serve?
• Which form of contact is easiest for the customer: a phone call, a visit, a web form or an order?

The answers narrow the field quickly. A business serving a few neighborhoods in the Atlanta area has different needs from one selling across a whole region, and a service people call about in an emergency needs a different response path from a product people research for weeks. Money is only part of it. You also need to understand your customers’ media habits: which words catch their attention, what makes them respond and when they are paying attention.

Outdoor and billboards

A billboard is a constant presence in one place, seen again and again by the people who pass it. It is limited in what it can say: usually one image and a handful of words, so the message has to land in a glance. It is also a commitment. Changing the copy on a printed board can be slow and costly, so settle the image and the phrase before you commit, and think about location, the direction of traffic and what people can do once they have read it. Digital boards make changes easier, but your message shares the screen with other advertisers in rotation. Our page on outdoor advertising covers the format in more detail.

Radio

Radio reaches a broad audience and rewards repetition, which makes it a good way to build familiarity with a name. The catch is geography: a station’s signal covers a wide area, so a business with a small trade area can pay to reach many people who will never visit. Compare a station’s coverage, format and listeners with your customers, and ask about local audio options, such as streaming, where the audience can be narrowed. A host who understands your product well enough to describe it in their own words can make a spot sound like a recommendation instead of an interruption. Our page on radio advertising has more.

Television

Television adds sound and motion, so a message has more room to be understood and remembered than it does on a billboard. Cable and streaming television can often be bought by geographic area and audience, which suits businesses that want to reach their own communities. Broadcast television reaches the whole market and generally costs more; if you use it, buying specific programs lets you aim at a defined audience instead of paying for everyone. Production quality matters too, because viewers judge a business partly by how its commercial looks. See our page on television advertising.

Print

Print works when a publication’s readers closely resemble your customers: a community paper, a trade magazine or a niche title. General-interest newspaper space is harder to justify as more reading moves to screens, and any print ad depends on the reader being in the market at the moment they see it, or it goes unnoticed. If you use print, give it a clear offer and a clear next step, and track the response so you can compare it with other media.

Email and online

Email is inexpensive to send, lets you reach the same people as often as they welcome it, and can be personalized to each person’s interests. It depends on a list of people who agreed to hear from you. Search and social advertising add the ability to reach people by location and interest and to see what they do next. They are the natural place to send people who first met your name on a billboard or in a radio spot, and our interactive and digital advertising overview shows how those channels fit together.

People meet your business in several places, and the picture should match. Use the same name, the same look, the same promise and a compatible tone everywhere. If your radio spots are humorous, your website should not read like a legal notice. Do not let ads live in a vacuum. Coordinate them so each medium supports the others: radio sending people to a web page, a billboard repeating a phrase from a television spot, an email echoing a promotion that is running in the store.

Speak directly to the audience you chose, and adapt to the platform you are using. An image-led post suits Instagram, a short direct post suits X, and a longer explanation belongs on your website or in a video. Pick the social platforms your audience really uses and do them well, instead of posting the same thing everywhere. And invest in the writing. Copy that speaks to what people care about, tying an emotional reason to a sensible one, does much of the work in almost every medium.

Media advertising rewards patience. Companies that change message, medium and budget every few weeks rarely build enough momentum for any of them to work. Think of the strategy as a relationship: if you stop communicating, it fades. Patience is not the same as ignoring the evidence, though. Decide how you will count responses, review them on a schedule, and move money from what is underperforming to what is working. Buying media is not only about getting good rates. It is about getting efficient advertising: the right timing for television spots, the right audiences for social ads and the right local voice for radio.

A media buyer negotiates and places advertising for you, aiming to put the right message in front of the right audience at a fair price. The firm that publishes this blog, Kirk Donovan Enterprises, presents itself as an advertising consulting firm in the Atlanta area and lists its work as buying media and developing creative for radio and television, plus mobile, digital and web marketing and social networking. You can read more on our media advertising page, and related articles sit in the media and advertising reading collection.