Lets take a look at old school marketing.
Online advertising is important, I'll give you that. But don't forget the other vehicles; print, billboard, radio, television, give aways, trade shows, transit shelters, word of mouth...you know what I am talking about. No matter how powerful your website is, you can add to it with traditional marketing. And you can expand your target audience reach. (Yes there are still people out there who are not on the web).
Audience, budget and message will dictate the what, where and when of a plan, but be assured, there is a fit for traditional marketing with the web and there is a fit for traditional marketing for your company no matter who you are or what you do. To help you along, in a series of posts on these things, I'll provide some key insights that I've learned throughout my career.
Television
Everyone loves the idea of a television ad. For marketers this means you have made it. Back in the day when I worked for a large bank, I was dealing with their real estate arm and we wanted a tv ad, it was our way of saying we were one of the 'big guys'. Well, the division was sold off soon after and the ad probably ran about 20 times and no one remembers it.
In hindsight we spent all our money on production and didn't have very much left over for placement, not a good equation (unless you are Apple with their '1984' commercial that lives on in marketing history and only ran twice on TV).
Take the romance out of the idea of a TV spot. Look at your budget, can you afford TV to make it worth your while? Can you afford good production quality while still having money leftover to purchase the time to run the spoton TV? Is your target audience watching? Can you reach your target audience without paying for thousands of other impressions you don't need? If your companies audience is within a 20km radius of your location, why buy a television slot that will hit a 500km radius around your location? That's a lot of money spent to reach people who are not interested.
Thinking about those things will help to ensure that your ad has the best opportunity to provide a return on your investment of time and money to develop it.
