Are you choosing advertising tools for all the wrong reasons?
Sometimes "simple" is the best approach.
When helping clients plan monthly, quarterly or annual advertising budgets, one of the first things we do is pull out our "MITTONMedia Value Pyramid." It's used to measure the return-on-investment being delivered by various advertising tools. We ask three questions:
- - Is the advertising resource Effective? (Good)
- - Is the advertising resource Cost-Efficient? (Cheap)
- - Is the advertising resource Simple to put in place? (Easy)
Businesses new to the MITTONMedia Value Pyramid are often surprised to discover they have been choosing their advertising tools for all the WRONG reasons:
- Not because they were "Good." (Effective)
- Not because they were "Cheap." (Cost-Efficient)
- No, they find they have been chosing their advertising resources primarily because they were "Easy." (Simple)
Not good. Lacking sufficient advertising knowledge or expertise, the decision maker defaulted to following the path of least resistance. A choice that wasted time and squandered company dollars.
While addressing an HR Staffing luncheon a few weeks ago, I took them through the "MITTONMedia Value Pyramid" exercise. We applied it to the different media resources members of the group said they were currently using for recruitment advertising: (My questions/their answers.)
Newspaper:
- Has it been Effective delivering quality candidates in a timely manner? "No. We keep getting responses from candidates who are not qualified to do the job but hope we have other openings which might fit them."
- Is it Cheap? "No. Price keeps going up."
- Is it Easy to implement? "Yes, just pick up the telephone or send an email."
National Job Boards:
- Are they Effective delivering quality candidates in a timely manner? "No. We get hundreds of unqualified resumes."
- Are they Cheap? "No."
- Are they Easy to implement? "Yes, just send the job postings."
Outdoor Billboards:
- Are they Effective delivering quality candidates in a timely manner? "No. It usually takes up to 6 months for our board to get noticed."
- Are they Cheap? "No. Heaven's no!"
- Are they Easy to implement? "Yes. Send the artwork and sign-off on the layout."
As we continued the exercise, different members of the audience suddenly began to blush. After laughing at the poor souls I'd given as examples, it gradually dawned on them that they too had been drawn into following the path of least resistance instead of using tools that were effective and cost-efficient!
When you sit down to formulate 2012 advertising budgets, it might be a good idea to ask the "Good-Cheap-Easy" questions about the tools you used this year. Be brutally honest in assessing effectiveness and cost-efficiencies because you know your bosses are going to be brutally honest in their assessments of performance, too.
If you need some help or would like more information about the different ways MITTONMedia can help, please call me at 832.969.5627 or send an email to jmitton@mittonmedia.com.
Thanks for listening!
John Mitton
President/MITTONMedia