sales & marketing
By John McGuigan

After more than 20 years of planning and executing integrated marketing programs for clients, I have come up with The Seven "Undeniable Truths" for Media Planning. When Ingram’s asked me to write this article, I saw it as a great opportunity to share.

1. Set measurable and realistic goals for the media program. We’ve all heard stories of supposed great ad campaigns. But do you hear about results? As a steward of your brand, you must ensure each investment is tied to a specific result.

Are you looking to increase sales by a particular amount? State the exact amount. Make sure you put some tracking mechanisms in as well. Maybe it’s creating a spreadsheet with sales or gross margin dollars per day. Accountability starts with establishing a goal that is measurable and realistic. When the program is over, it should be very easy to determine whether you achieved your objectives.

2. Recognize the need for branding and response. Branding is the term used for creating a deeper connection between a product or service and its customers. Branding is the fuel that drives company sales at all levels. When branding is doing its job, the product flies off the shelf, prospects grant salespeople appointments, stock prices increase and people might actually consider taking an unsolicited phone call.
But branding alone cannot always do the job. In most marketing situations, it takes a mix of branding and direct response. Direct response provides a call to action for the prospect. In most cases, an offer is provided to stimulate action. It is the blend of branding and response that is critical to overall success.

3. Get to know the media habits of your target audience. Does your current media mix align with those habits? Ask your agency for an MRI profile of your target. MRI is a huge marketing and media database that enables users to combine product usage with demographics and media data. Now you can find out how many of your brand users are actually using the medium you’re investing in so heavily.

4. Always make "apples with apples" comparisons. Often people make media/marketing decisions without understanding the comparative value of two different variables. A classic faulty comparison is cost per spot. It’s like comparing prices of two cars. No one would try to hammer a dealer on a price of a Mercedes based on what he could pay for a Toyota. However, advertisers make value judgments all the time based on the price of spots or ads without comparing them on an "apples with apples" basis.

5. Understand the learning curve. I won’t bore you with the statistics on how many ads we see each day. Let’s just agree we all see way too many ads to even begin to process them. The truth is, we require frequency of exposure before we understand what is being said.

The learning curve is our defense mechanism. As consumers of media, we have to filter out messages. We would go crazy if we didn’t. Even relevant messages require frequency. It is generally believed that it takes three or more exposures to a particular message for prospects to cycle through the learning curve.

6. Once you raise awareness, it’s easier to sustain. "Front-loading" media is a great way to spike awareness early. Once you achieve that spike, it is easier to maintain it. Fast-food marketers who measure daily and even hourly traffic can tell you how fast traffic falls off when they turn off the tube altogether. Most major advertisers learn to sustain awareness and response at lower levels of media.

7. Don’t be afraid to "Test and Learn" from results. Test and learn should be a way of life for all of us. Yet most people repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Maybe it’s an aversion to admitting that we don’t have all the answers. However, when it comes to making marketing decisions, don’t be afraid! Tell yourself the only way to find out is to test. Set up tracking and read results often.

John McGuigan is VML's director of integrated marketing. He can be reached at jmcguigan@vml.com