There are a number of ways to spend your money on advertising. Most ad budgets utilize different media outlets. There was a day when newspaper was the dominating media, until a few years ago when television passed newspaper to become the top media for dealers. Often dealers will use a combination of media to create a media mix. It is important, however, to have the proper reach and frequency in all media to be effective. Therefore, I want to give you some guidelines for each media to assure success. It is better to maximize one media before using another. Let’s review the top media outlets to determine how much of each is needed to secure results.

·         Television—the biggest mistake dealers make with TV is they don’t have enough reach and frequency. The easiest way to make this evaluation is to get a media buyer show you a breakout of gross rating points. If you don’t have 700 points for a campaign, then I suggest you stay away from TV. You may consider saving money until you have the proper amount of point to be effective. Anything less than the desired amount of points will not generate a lot of traffic. In order for you to be able to sustain a TV budget you will need to see noticeable traffic, from your campaign.

The 700-point level, with the right message will definitely show you a spike in sales. It is difficult to achieve high point levels in major markets, however. Therefore TV becomes almost cost prohibitive in bigger markets. Most advertisers that buy major markets are limited to cable in local areas. While reach will be considerably down using cable, a high degree of frequency will easily be achieved. I believe that buyers need to see your commercial at least six times before they respond. Keep that in mind when buying TV.

·         Radio—uses some of the same principles as TV. Frequency is again vital. The difference in radio is most of your listeners are driving. Therefore, you can get a radio listener into your store quicker than you would from TV. Radio provides the quickest results in advertising.

·         Newspaper—has been beaten up quite a bit these past five years, but I still believe that when used properly the paper can create successful sales. There are no set amounts of ads you need to be effective with newspaper. However, the more ads you run in one week, the better each ad will work, because of the residual results you will achieve. I would rather see an advertiser run small ads more often than a big ad once in a while.

·         Billboards—are better the more of them you have and the more often people see them. Mobile billboards have become extremely effective in targeting your customers for a specific location. Again, as with all advertising, the more they see you, the better the results.

·         Internet—has many options. If you are buying tiles or banners on your local websites, just like any other medium, make sure you have enough of these banners to create enough frequency to be seen.

With any ad campaign, don’t keep jumping around thinking you need to do everything. Make sure you are effective on one media before you add your next media.

Tom Letizia is the president of Letizia Mass Media, a full-service advertising agency specializing in automotive. He can be reached at 702-777-2121 or email  Tom@letmm.com .