Advertising 5- Print Media Budget

Its been long time that I have not updated my blog....Was trying to figure out the way to upload some xls sheet and document template for advertisement plans.

Neway I will just put in details today about creating the advertising plan. If anybody is interested to have look at the template they email me at santosh.pania@gmail.com

Advertisement plan

Two approaches:

1. Have a preset budgeted amount for advertisement plan ( using your judgment and then fine tune it as you examine the results)

2. Prepare a budget depending on the awareness and reach of the medium ( this is something that you would like to have your company ad in a certain magazines and newspaper for creating an image of being in elite class, or the magazine is widely read by your customers and you advertisement is imperative, selecting various magazine of such sort and identifying the ad that will be put across and then coming to the cost of advertisement for all such magazine)

Steps

1. Identify Top magazines/newspapers and media based on the circulation figures, content and audience classification for your market. Short list them and put them in your xls sheet.

Sl. Name of Magazine Ad 1 Cost Ad 2 Cost Frequency/number of ads Total Cost of Ad1 Total Cost of Ad 2 Circulation/Exposure Cost Per Exposure Time Period Sales Increase (To be filled in after the campaign)

2. Shortlist Advert (position & frequency) program for each of these magazines. And note it down in ad 1 and ad 2 columns along with frequency and other details as required.

3. Depending on the various criteria you can identify which media to choose . Trade off can be made on price or Cost per reach or exposure or the media content itself. If the total budget is of no constraint or is within range intended, then various alternatives can be selected based on criteria and tested.

4. The Last Column Sales Increase is the data that needs to be filled in every time an ad campaign is done. The sale increase figure should be incremental sales generated as compared to last year during the same time or it can be compared against the trend of the sales before the ads were placed

5. After 2 or 3 campaign some result will come up but you need take care in your analysis various other factors like peak season, addition of sales executive, increase in market demand etc which might be the factor of increased sales instead of advertisement. The best way would be to sample test all the new customers or job coming in during the advert period, asking them on telephone , how did they came to know about you or was it because of the advert they saw. Probably if your ad is targeted and correct you will certainly get 4-5 clients.(minimum).

6. Continues Record of each campaign and its end result will provide a benchmark to test all other parameters of advert. Certain Type of ad will be effective for certain market for eg: An Information based article was more successful instead of one page full ad. Or an loose insert along with magazine was more successful then a half page ad. Etc

This is just a normal advertisement plan which can include directories also. A survey a few marketing related question like which directories are being used to source products and services etc. can be asked with multiple options and some media habits can be sent to prospects and customers. This information is useful in determining which directories/magazines reaches your target market. This survey twice a year is really useful.

Your first initial Advert plan would be based on your analysis of media and your instincts while after some period you will be able to judge and quantify the effetiveness of each media and its parameters if you keep it recorded.

If there are no noteworthy change in sales figure, then either your medium is wrong, or the ad type is wrong or your company doesn't really need to advertise a lot. you can slowly decrease the participation and look at the figures and if there's no noteworthy dip after a period of no advertisement, i guess you need to look to some other activity like events or customer service initiatives etc to put your budget in to have some positive feedback instead of wasting it on adverts.