Melbourne Herald Sun, 29 May 2010
“I have to promote this little product. Is there any way to get free advertising for it?” At some stage every client asks that question of their agency and you give them the stock reply: “If I knew how to get advertising for free I’d have an endless supply of clients and be much richer than I am.”
The simple fact is that no, there is no free advertising, always it ends up costing you - usually according to the number of people seeing it. That’s why you need to do your sums on a “cost per thousand” basis - how much does each unit of a thousand readers, viewers, listeners, passers-by or whatever, cost?
You’ll sometimes find that a small publication works out more expensive than a big medium like TV or a newspaper.
For example the Wool Knitters’ Monthly may cost $1000 to reach its 5000 readers - 20c a reader. Whereas a TV commercial might cost $10,000 to reach 500,000 viewers. Only two cents a viewer. So which is the better buy?
Now if you are selling ice creams or draught beer, you’ll want as big an audience as possible so obviously the commercial is the way to go. But if you are a wool mill selling hand-knitting yarn, you’re looking for a small specialised market and it may well be worth 20c to reach each granny.
These days advertising is being expected to do a great deal. Think of advertising from your younger days and you’ll remember some department store and job ads in the papers, endless second-hand car commercials on telly. All right I’m exaggerating as usual, but memory does recall a simpler time, doesn’t it?
These days advertising is being expected to carry massive burdens. Like much of the cost of the internet for a start. All these billion-dollar deals involving Google and Microsoft, Times Warner and this paper’s parent News Limited, make almost weekly headlines. Just this month an online publisher called Associated Content was sold to Yahoo! for $110 million. It was founded in 2005 by a Luke Beatty. I must find out if we are related - he may get a visit from his Australian second cousin.
So much money being invested all round, and what’s going to pay for it all? Advertising. So there’s this massive expectation of how much money it’s going to generate, and that’s not forgetting all the myriad current media that still expect to make profits. Free advertising? Forget it.
However there are still cheap ways to do it. I’m frequently amused by a Prahran “fashion” clothing discounter which advertises its sales with placards and sandwich boards. You’ll find bored, desultory students standing on the street corners of Chapel Street holding a sign proclaiming “Huge sale now on!” as they read a book on their next uni assignment.
I’ve often talked with admiration about guerilla campaigns - where a very clever commercial gets hardly any paid TV time but is passed around the web with millions of hits. Or a new and exciting product that generates a tidal wave of chatter on talk sites and blogs, growing legs of its own.
But really this is only an updated version of word-of-mouth. Only now it’s word-of-web. The communication technology has improved immensely, but the product still has to pluck the heart-strings. And I’m sorry to say, however clever you are, it still involves as much luck as winning Tattslotto.
So here’s my advice. Examine your product and its users. Who are they, where would you find them? Spend enough to prepare good, effective, attractive advertising that will touch them. Then dominate your media. Now if the medium is the cooking page of your local paper, be the dominant, most visible ad on the page. If they listen to radio, choose just one of the stations they go for and be one of the biggest advertisers on that station.
In other words, don’t get lost in the also-rans. Too many small companies waste the little budget they have by spreading it too thinly - till it just disappears. It’s more effective to make a couple of big bangs, than a trail of little pops.
ray@ebeatty.com
