Advertising is a big part of business, so why not make it an effective part as well. There are way too many businesses these days who just buy out some advertisements, expect a return, and when they don't find the return they expected, they are left scratching their heads wondering what they did wrong. I have bought advertising in various places for many different businesses which I have owned/do own currently. They range from major league ballpark signage to newspaper ads to online advertising. I have to say that, in my opinion, no advertising is worthwhile, unless you go all out.
Let me start off by telling you a story. A couple years back, my friend and I both owned multiple franchised quick service restaurants a.k.a. fast food shops all in one city. We were looking at doing a big promotion, but were unsure where to put the advertising dollars and see the most return. My friend came up with the idea that we should buy out some small signage in a baseball stadium. We then looked into the costs, which were not cheap, and decided to consider it. Then I thought to myself, instead of buying multiple forms of advertisements which were small like behind first and third base, in addition to our advertising in newspapers, etc, we should just go all out and have all eyes on us. I proposed to my friend that we buy scoreboard signage.
The difference between buying advertising on the field and on the scoreboard is 1) not everyone can see the advertisement from each angle, 2) it is small which will go unnoticed, 3) we are not the only ones advertising at that level, and most importantly 4) people don't really pay attention to the ads, they are watching the players. On the scoreboard, I felt like there was more exposure and people notice the ads when they are checking the info on the board, in addition to having the ability to see it from throughout the stadium and possible viewers at home.
We went ahead and bought out the scoreboard signage and divided the cost per location we owned. Sales were up for ALL locations while the ad was running and we had a lot of baseball fans come into our shops during those times, so we figured we got our moneys worth, plus some.
The point I am making here is that if you are buying advertising, don't buy small chunks here and there. If you do so, it will probably go unnoticed or just blend in with other advertisements. It truly applies to all forms of advertising. A bunch of websites sell 125x125 ads and have 8 or so showing in a group- how many do you think people notice? It is just a big blob that people ignore. On the other hand, if you bought out that whole space, people would probably notice your ad and not be ad blind. Same thing goes with newspapers. Why buy a small portion of the page and not the whole page or a free standing insert?
Those are some things to truly think about when you are buying advertising space. Spending even the smallest amount of money can give you different types of ROI depending on how you split it up.
Now if you are selling ad space, you should also take this into consideration. Instead of selling 10 blocks valued at $250 give the option to an advertiser to buy the same amount of space and be the "prime advertiser" for $2,500.
