DEVELOPING YOUR ADVERTISING PLAN
What is advertising?
Advertising is a way to get your message to your desired audience. But in order to do that, you must first have a plan. This plan has many facets, including your marketing goal, advertising strategies both creative and media, implementation, evaluation, and budget.
What is your marketing goal?
Your marketing goal is basically what you want. Do you want X amount of people to visit your city this year or season? Do you want to increase sales an X amount? Is there a problem you need solved, like filling rooms mid-week? Once you determine what it is you’re looking for, you can then determine who you want to speak to and what you want to say to them. This, then becomes your advertising strategy.
How do you build an advertising strategy?
The first four questions you want to ask yourself are:
- Who are you trying to reach?
- What do you want to say to them?
- How, when and where are you going to reach them?
- Why have you chosen the steps you have selected?
Who are you trying to reach?
The audience you want to reach is your target market. In order to determine your target market, you will need to do a little research. You will want to know what the consumer thinks about your city, resort, or product and your competition. It is extremely important to know who your audience is, so you can create the right message for the right person. There are several ways to discover your audience, which is detailed in the research portion of the educational series. It may be helpful to categorize your consumer in order to market to the correct group. Some questions to ask yourself during the research process are:
- Location - where does your consumer live? Urban or rural environment? Out of State? In a specific city? Far away or close by?
- Age - Is your consumer between the ages of 25-54 or 34-54? Are they younger or older?
- Marital/Family Status - Are they married? Single? Do they have kids? How many? What ages?
- Income - Does your consumer make $30,000 per year or $100,000?
- Lifestage - At what stage of life are they? Are they newlyweds just beginning their life together, empty nesters (children are grown and gone), retired?
- Travel Patterns - How many times a year do they visit and during what season?
What do you want to say?
Now that you’ve narrowed your target audience, you can begin the process of deciding what it is you want the consumer to know or think about you. This is called the creative process or strategy. While there may be many ways to position your product or service, you should always try to appeal to the needs and wants of your target consumer, which again you will find from your research. Once you understand their needs, you can then create a message inviting them to visit your area or resort. Some questions you may want to ask yourself during this process are:
- Why would the consumer visit/stay here? Is it a special event? A great deal? A chance to relax? Lots of activities?
- What does the consumer need to know about you? A historical place? A new place? You have something no one else has?
- What does the consumer want to do when they stay here? Research has shown that certain people like to do similar activities. Can you put a package together that groups these activities?
- When might they be more likely to visit?
- It is important not to focus on too many things, because then your message gets too confusing. Pick a topic and focus on that.
Developing Your Creative Strategy
In its simplest form, your creative strategy needs three things:
- What benefit are you promising, what’s your selling proposition?
- Who are you making it to?
- Why should they believe you?
And you can put all that in a sentence or two:
How do you reach your audience?
There are numerous options to choose from when you are deciding how to advertise. What are your tactics? What approach do you want to use? This will become your media strategy.
- Newspaper
- Direct Mail
- Brochures
- Coupons
- Handouts or Flyers
- Radio
- Magazines
- TV
- Outdoor, such as billboards
- Special promotions or packages
- Partnering with another tourism business or tourism area
- Internet Marketing
The medium you choose will depend on what your target audience will see and where they turn to for information, as well as your budget constraints. The educational series on creating and buying media details more about planing and buying media, but here are some of your media choices.
What are your media choices?
Television
Television is a powerful medium because it communicates with both sight and sound. Network television, the most costly purchase, can reach up to 95 percent of the homes in the United States. Spot television, on the other hand, enables the advertiser to hand pick a specific audience in a specific area. By scheduling spots to air during certain times of the day or programs, you can reach your target market in a cost efficient means.
The major disadvantage of both spot and network television is cost. Because of high rates, many advertisers have reduced the length of their commercials from 30 seconds to 15 seconds. This practice, referred to as splitting :30s, reduces costs but severely restricts the amount of information that can be conveyed.
Another problem with television is the likelihood of wasted coverage -- having people outside your product's target market see the advertisement. Cable TV is another area to consider, since ad rates are often less expensive than the prime time on major networks. You may not be reaching as many people, but you likely have less waste since you can pinpoint audiences very precisely.
Radio
There are seven times as many radio stations as television stations in the United States. The major advantage of radio is that it is a segmented medium. There are all-talk stations, rock stations, jazz stations, news stations, etc. A media buy can be tailored to the profile of your audience. There is an immediacy to radio (visit this weekend, attend this event) and greater flexibility to your buy.
The disadvantage of radio is that it has limited use for products that must be seen by the audience. Another problem, not unlike TV, is the ease with which consumers can tune out a commercial by simply switching the station. Peak radio listening time is during the drive times (6 to 10 am and 4 to 7 pm).
Magazine
The marketing advantage of this medium is the great number of special-interest publications that appeal to defined segments. For instance, if your target consists of avid runners, there is Runners World; for the outdoors and hiking enthusiasts -- Backpacker; for vacation planners -- Midwest Living and so on. In addition to the distinct audience profiles of magazines, good color production is an advantage that allows magazines to create strong advertising images.
While the cost of national magazines is a disadvantage, many publications publish regional and even metro editions, which reduce the cost and wasted coverage. In addition to cost, a limitation to magazines is their infrequency. Some magazines are only printed on a bi-monthly basis.
Newspaper
Newspapers are an important local medium with excellent reach potential. Because of the daily publication of most papers, you can place an ad that requires immediate action -- this weekend only, special event Saturday, call this 800 number now.
The disadvantage of newspapers is that they are rarely saved by the purchaser, so companies are generally limited to ads that call for an immediate customer response. Also, companies cannot depend on newspapers for good color reproduction.
Direct Mail
Direct mail allows the greatest degree of audience selectivity. By selecting names from your own database of interested people and past visitors or buy purchasing a qualified list from a direct mail company, you can reach an audience who is already interested in your offering. This is an excellent reason to start your own database if you don’t already have one. Later in this booklet, we’ll discuss the benefits, as well as how to develop and work with a database.
Another advantage of direct mail is that you can provide complete information on your destination or attraction, compared with that in a newspaper ad or a 30-second radio spot.
One disadvantage of direct mail is rising postal costs. Another limitation is that people view direct mail as "junk," and the challenge is to get them to open a letter.
Outdoor
The most cost-effective advertising vehicle is outdoor billboards. The visibility of this medium is good reinforcement for products, and it is a flexible alternative. An advertiser can buy space in the desired geographical market. It can be as specific as a certain expressway location, or proximity to a store, for instance.
The disadvantage to billboards is that there is not an opportunity for a lengthy message. Also, the message is considered "fleeting" since the drive-by times are so often very fast. The message has to stand out so it won’t be forgotten once the billboard is passed.
Transit
This medium includes messages on the interior and exterior of buses, subway cars and taxis. There is a great deal of selectivity with this medium, allowing you to buy space by neighborhood or bus route.
One disadvantage of this medium is that the heavy travel times, when the audiences are the largest, are not conducive to reading advertising copy. As with billboards, concise break-through messages are critical.
Internet
Advertising on the Internet is the fastest-growing media vehicle. To date, there are over 56 million U.S. residents who are Internet users. This media vehicle has the advantage of active reader involvement and attention -- users have the capability of choosing different sites, and for that matter, viewing advertisements. Furthermore, the demographic profile of Internet users is desirable to advertisers -- 68 percent have household incomes of $50,000+ and 83 percent have a college education.
There are some disadvantages to using this medium. With technology constantly changing, it is difficult to completely control the user experience over time. Secondly, the return on investment is sometimes difficult to measure. Lastly, not everyone is online.
When are you going to reach your audience?
Timing is an important aspect when placing advertising. If you place an ad too soon, people may forget about your event. If you place an ad too late, people may already have plans or purchased another product.
For a seasonal plan, you may want to begin running a campaign early enough to catch the "planners" and continue running your ad in order to catch the "last-minute trip takers." By doing this you maximize your chances of reaching your entire audience. Remember: advertising can motivate planning and needs to do so before the customer has already begun their planning their trip.
How do you time the advertising?
There is no correct schedule to advertise a product, but two factors should be considered. The first is the purchase frequency -- the more frequently the product is purchased, the less repetition is required. Second, companies need to consider the forgetting rate, the speed at which buyers forget the brand if advertising is not seen nor heard.
There are two basic approaches to setting advertising schedules:
Continuous schedule - Advertising of a product runs throughout the year, when demand and seasonal factors are unimportant.
Flight schedule - Advertising is distributed unevenly throughout the year because of seasonal demand, heavy periods of promotion, or introduction of a new product.
Who purchases the media, creates the ad, and produces the ad?
The responsibility for actually carrying out the advertising program can be handled in one of four ways:
| TYPE OF AGENCY | SERVICES PROVIDED |
| Full-service agency | Does research, selects and purchases media, develops ad copy and produces artwork. |
| Limited-service agency | Specializes in one aspect of creative process; usually provides creative production work or only buys media space. |
| In-house staff | Provides range of services, depending on company needs. |
| Media sales representatives | Often, a publication or broadcast station can assist you with production and scheduling. There may or may not be a charge. They can also provide you information on their reach and recommend the best schedule for your budget. |
Evaluating Your Advertising
How successful is advertising? How do you know if your campaign worked? There are a few ways to go about evaluating your campaign:
- Do a random research sample asking people how they heard about you or your product.
- Add different extension codes to different pieces of advertising. With each caller, ask for the special extension number, so you can track where they got your number.
- Note the percentage your sales, visitors, or calls increased from the previous year without advertising and then with advertising. You should see a difference.
Five Common Approaches
Your advertisements should be post-tested to determine whether they are achieving their intended objectives. There are five common approaches to post-testing:
Aided Recall - After being shown an ad, respondents are asked whether their previous exposure to it was through reading, viewing or listening.
Unaided Recall - A question such as, "What ads do you remember seeing yesterday?" is asked of respondents without any prompting to determine whether they saw or heard advertising messages.
Attitude Tests - Respondents are asked questions to measure changes in their attitudes before and after an advertising campaign.
Inquiry Tests - Ads generating the most inquiries are presumed to be the most effective.
Sales Tests - Charting increases in sales against when the advertising was running. Could also include total sales volume at the end of a season or year. This should also include analysis of how it compared to similar time periods in the prior year. You can also conduct a conversion study to determine the percentage of inquirers who visited.
What will this cost?
Your budget will determine when and where you can advertise. There are four basic ways to determine what your budget should be. And don’t forget, your budget doesn’t just include media costs, but production costs as well.
Task Objective Method - This is just a way of saying, how much you have to spend to reach your objective. For example, you want to reach 50 percent of your audience. How many people do you have to reach? How many times do you have to run an ad? How much does each ad cost?
Historical Method - This method uses a base budget and then increases the budget each year by a certain percentage. For example you have $10,000 to spend this year, then next year you increase it 5% to be $10,500.
Percent-of-Sales Method - For this, you can take a percentage of your sales as your advertising budget. The tricky thing is that you have to forecast your sales. Here is the formula to help you along:
Step 1: Past Advertising Dollars = % of Sales
Past Sales
Step 2: % of Sales X Next Year’s Sales Forecast = New Advertising Budget
(Average advertising budget will run about 20% of your sales.)
Combination Method - You are never stuck with one method. Many companies chose multiple methods and pick a plan that is right for them. You need to evaluate your situation. How much can you afford and what will it take to reach your objectives?
Tips To Get You Started
Now that you’ve decided your goals, objectives, target audience, strategy, message, and tactics, you can finally put your plan into action. The media section that follows will have more detailed advice, but here are some things you’ll want to consider:
- You can call newspapers and magazines directly. Many media reps will be happy to place your ad. Many times, they can assist you with the development of your ad.
- Check with the Wisconsin Department of Tourism. They offer a co-op advertising program that might fit your needs and budget.
- Look into an outside media buying company. There are numerous free-lance media companies that will place your ad for you for a fee. Their expertise would take the guesswork out of you media plan.
- Check with a local printing house to print flyers and brochures.
- For direct mail advertising, the Department of Tourism offers lists of people interested in tourism in Wisconsin. Those lists are available on labels at a very low cost to you.
- Choose an advertising agency. Small agencies will often put your plan together for you, design your ad, and implement it. Since this requires an additional investment in their time, it will depend on your advertising budget and specific needs.
- To install an Internet home page, visit your local university or high school. Many computer classes teach kids how to build a home page and they are more than happy to produce one for a local business. This service could be free to you.
Recommended Readings
Fortini-Campbell, Lisa, Hitting the Sweet Spot, 1992.
Jones, John Philip, When Ads Work, 1995.
Ogilvy, David, Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1963.
Ries, Al and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for your Mind, 1981.
Roman, Kenneth and Jane Maas, How to Advertise, 1976.
Trout, Jack with Steve Rivkin, The New Positioning, 1996.
Waldrop, Judith with Marcia Mogelonsky, The Seasons of Business, 1992.
Additional Periodicals Available by Subscription
Advertising Age, 800/678-9595
American Demographics, 607/73-6343
Journal of American Research/Marketing News, 800/AMA-1150
Marketing Tools, 607/273-6343
Promo, 800/643-4054
Starch Readership Reports, 212/455-4977
Target Marketing, 215/238-5300
