The Marketing Agency Talk

Within the traditional advertising realm, print advertising is big. Many advertisers opt for press advertising because of the huge circulation and readership that the dailies and tabloids can offer.

Magazine advertising is a close second. Advertisers with a smaller war chest found magazine advertising much more cost effective because press advertising is usually more expensive and it has a shelf life of only one day This is made more attractive when an advertiser can select a niche magazine that is specially catered to his type of products and fit his audience profile. The issue that’s facing advertisers will be which niche magazine to advertise for. There are just so many fishes in the small pond.

From experience, I know many advertisers will get a creative agency (like us) or an independent copywriter/designer to work on the the copy and creative of the advertisement. However, when it comes to media selection and buying, many chose to DIY over engaging a professional media agency to to the necessary work.

Many advertiser wrongly thought that media planning is an easy task. They will study and pore through the statistics provided by media owners on circulation, readership and even the demographic and psycho-graphic profiles of the reader, and short-list a few suitable media. After that, they will diligently look at the rate cards and review the various media costs. Taking into account of both circulation and page cost, they will make a comparison and choose one that promises the highest R.O.I. This approach is not entirely wrong but advertisers often don’t know that circulation and page cost aren’t the only factors to consider. There are at least 2 other selection criteria.

In fact, page cost is not a great indicator. A media agency will advise its clients on cost-per-thousand (CPM) and not simply based on overall page cost. Using CPM instead of overall page cost, media agencies can advise which media is more cost effective. Little do the advertisers realize is that they can actually generate a higher level of returns simply by placing a few insertions in the largest (and most probably expensive) publication versus many insertions in smaller and lower priced publications.

The other concern that advertisers must take note is whether the nature of the magazine is in line with the advertiser’s offerings. What makes a magazine great? The writing. The ideas. The photography. The design. Sure. But more importantly, a magazine’s worth depends on how it catches readers’ glances, and then their hearts. If the advertiser’s product is out of place with the magazine’s and therefore its readers’ environment, don’t bother to advertiser - no matter how high the circulation is or how attractive the CPM is. To put it bluntly, don’t bother to put a cheap $20 commodity-type, follow-me type product in magazines like “Times”, “The Economist” or “Esquire”. There is a reason to the adage,”birds of a feather flock together”

The last criteria - on top of circulation, price, nature - will be the involvement of the readers. Luminosity Marketing - a media agency that uses a combination of media planning and account planning tools to optimize marketing budgets - defined reader involvement as “a term used to describe how actively, attentively and passionately a person interacts with a publication. These qualitative factors will help you understand how to value the audience.” Many advertisers would not have considered this as a determining factor at all! It even listed the following as factors indicating Reader Involvement:

• Robust “Letters to the Editor” section
• High response rates to reader surveys
• Presence of direct response advertisers/ Business Reply Cards
• Well-attended Signature Events
• Website traffic
• Large percentage of readers opting-in to email lists and e-newsletters
• Frequent postings to bulletin boards
• High response rates to other advertisers’ promotions

If a client comes to us to develop a full-fledge advertising campaign, we will collaborate with a media agency to make sure that we maximize his advertising budget to achieve the best results possible. However, there will always be advertisers who prefer to make their magazine choice. I would encourage them to read this report entitled “Local Magazines: Leveraging a Community Connection”.