Where to Advertise — Does your message really belong there?

I was driving down the street the other day when I noticed a bus stop bench with a sign attached with the words "Your message here" on it. To be exact, it actually said, "Your message h" because there was a young woman sitting on the bench (waiting for a bus I would guess, not deliberatly trying to obscure the ad message).

This got me to thinking, "Would I really want my message on that bench?" There are so many new places a business can advertise these days: the internet, on top of taxis, bus shelters, the buses themselves. I've even seen ads that were printed on the wheel discs of taxis! …not to mention the traditional media: magazines, newspapers, broadcast and flyers of all kinds. Lack of choice is definitely not a problem!

Thing is though, how many of those mediums are suitable for what you are offering? And maybe even more important, what can your marketing budget afford? I have to admit that those taxi wheel disc ads were for a large soft drink company who is probably represented in almost every advertising medium under the sun but what should a small advertiser do who doesn't have the marketing budget that a large multi-national has?

We find that many smaller advertisers are affected by the "advertising idea of the month" syndrome. That is, whatever new ad medium that pops up, or whatever salesperson eases in the door with a smooth sales pitch for advertising on: waste bins, smokestacks, hot air balloons, supermarket floors or what-have-you.

We recently took a look at the places a new client had been advertising his high-end renovating business. He was in all the local yellow page phone books with a display ad. There are four different books in this area and they are not cheap! As well, he was in two different free magazines that came quarterly with the newspapers. These are full of local interest stories and colour printing but they only reach the exact same audience that the newspapers go to.

The other place he was represented in was a controlled distribution quarterly magazine with a very high reader demographic. Beautifully designed and printed, this one is aimed squarely at the upscale clientele he is after.

What did we recommend? Simply this: go with regular, non display listings in the phone books, cut out the ads in the free newspaper magazines and increase the size of the ads in the upscale publication with the money saved. There's even some dollars left over that we can use for some special sales event ads in the daily newspaper. It's not brain surgery, just figure out who your ideal customers are, find what they read or listen to, and advertise there.

What do you think?