Double your media reach without doubling your budget.

While online marketers preach the strength of web marketing, many advertisers find that limiting campaigns to a single medium to be too narrow. The leading products in virtually every category market across a variety of media. But traditional media like TV and radio are often criticized for their lack of direct analytics.

So when it comes to mass media, how do you gauge success? So many marketers understand how to measure effectiveness of a direct response campaign, but what helps ensure success in traditional media? How do we make sure our campaigns are as effective as their direct response counterparts? It's all in the numbers.

If you’ve worked in marketing long, you’ve probably sat through numerous media planning presentations. First you’re faced with spreadsheets and bar graphs that require an advanced statistics degree to decipher, followed by an alphabet soup of media speak. GRPs, TRPs, CPM, CPP, CPA, CPC, reach, frequency, showings, circulation numbers, and so on. I’ve sat through enough media presentations that I consider myself bilingual.

What many marketers may fail to consider is that most of these media figures assume that every ad has an equal impact, regardless of creative execution. So whether your company is spending ten thousand dollars or ten million dollars on media, perhaps the most important media figure to consider is one that is rarely discussed: effective frequency.

Effective frequency is a measure of how many times an ad must be seen or heard for it to register fully with the consumer — the lower the number the better.

It is a number that media planners have no control over, and creative departments tend to ignore. It is also one of the hardest numbers to gauge because in order to truly be accurate, it must take into account the actual effectiveness of the creative product, which is often learned too late.

An ad can be very creative, but if it takes too many impressions to understand, the actual reach and frequency of your media plan will be discounted and sales will suffer. To make sure an ad lives up to its media plan promise, we have learned that our creative executions have to get our point across quickly and motivate customers to act right away. Since mass media plans are typically based on gross impressions (reach multiplied by frequency), we know if we can cut the effective frequency of an ad in half, we can double our reach!

While some clients and advertising agencies have the luxury of focusing on only image or brand advertising, our clients have almost always judged the effectiveness of our television and radio campaigns based on an instant increase in sales or customer visits, often tracking the return on investment daily. Direct response campaigns limit their brand awareness. The more customers our ads can reach, the better our chances for success.

After twenty years of creating advertisements for retailers that demand immediately measurable results, I developed some general creative guidelines to help deliver advertising messages more quickly and effectively.

1. Make the message simple.

While complex or abstract ideas can make for great creative concepts, if the consumer doesn’t understand your message quickly, you have to show it to them more times. This has the same effect as cutting your media budget.

2. Make the creative engaging.

The first job of an ad is to make sure it is seen or heard. If your target audience is engaged in an ad they will be more likely to remember your message after the first impression.

3. Make the ad compelling.

Many creatives are so concerned about creativity or branding that they forget to sell. The goal isn’t just to entertain the consumer with your message, but to make the message relevant. Give the customer a reason to act, and act quickly. If your customers don’t act now, when will they?

4. Make sure the concept is inherently linked to the brand.

Too often people say “I saw this really funny ad, but I can’t remember what it was for.” Funny or not, the idea should be so directly tied to the brand that only one company could possibly come to mind.

5. Create mnemonic devices.

To help consumers recall your company or product more quickly, create a brand icon, jingle, animated logo or other memorable device. I can still remember the jingles from ads I heard thirty years ago. If a consumer instantly recognizes your music or spokesperson, it makes an immediate impression.

6. Consistency is as important as creativity

One of the biggest mistakes ad agencies and their clients make is changing campaigns too often. Advertising has a cumulative effect, so don’t create a series of unrelated ads or change strategies all the time. If a consumer knows the ad is for you right away, then you can concentrate your efforts on selling rather than building brand awareness.

Mark Jones spent 11 years as an art director, copywriter and associate creative director at Publicis before starting Jones Advertising in 2001. He has won numerous local and national awards for television and radio advertising, and has worked with some of the top retail brands in the world. He can be reached by visiting jonesadvertising.com.