The Back and Forth of Marketing Strategies

When I was a kid, my favorite piece of equipment on the playground was the teeter-totter. My goal was always to find someone who could balance the scale so that we would both be elevated a foot or two above the ground. In an interesting way, the world of marketing mirrors that playground activity.

Andy Sippel writes an article for AdWeek titled, “Reach is the New Black: Advertising’s Mass Reawakening”. Sippel looks at two sides of marketing: mass reach and precise niche targeting of specific people.

While specifically targeting the single soccer mom with two kids aged 7-10 who brings in $80k per year in the Kansas City DMA might sound perfect for your advertising plan, it shouldn’t be the only strategy for your campaign. In fact, Procter & Gamble CMO, Marc Pritchard, announced that his brands “were stagnant due to targeting too narrowly on Facebook”.

Big picture being: throwing all your eggs in one basket won’t work. Advertising doesn’t flourish as we would like when it’s limited to one medium. Sippel reports that, “in 2011, there was nearly a 100-point difference in net ‘plan to spend’ optimism between the highest and lowest media” however, advertisers are seeing the flaw in that thinking and, “last year, the difference compressed to only 42 points.”

Along those lines, the digital world is unable to form a regular audience build comparable to that of television or even radio. When people routinely tune-in to their favorite programs, a loyal audience forms amongst viewers that is unique to the delivery method of your ad.

Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) recommends three “smart-spending action steps” for advertisers who might find themselves stuck on the uneven teeter-totter.

1.      Invest in multiple platforms rather than shifting money from one to the next

2.      Add traditional media to your digital investments to maximum ROI

3.      Spend to reach millennials on traditional and new media – and not just mobile

ARF even recommends spending roughly 71-78% of budget on traditional media and 22-29% on digital (based on a $15 million budget).

So, don’t get caught on the high or low end of the advertising teeter-totter; instead, return to the media mix and reach your audience in more ways than one. The more roads your deliver your message on, the more your brand will succeed.