The Most “Fun-To-Hang-With” and Smartest Full-Service Lafayette, Indiana Advertising Firm Offers Tips to Grow Your Business

3 Simple Ways to Improve Marketing Budget ROI

Guest post by Stephanie Bossung, IDC Vice President of Account Services

Today all sorts of advancements in targeted advertising options are available. But you’re still running bus boards with the local bus system. Don’t get me wrong—running bus ads might be a good buy for you, depending on your target audience and your budget.

However, a smarter buy might be a targeted pay-per-click search campaign to put your business in front of the right people at the right time. Either way, start improving your marketing budget ROI by answering these three questions:

1. Who’s Your Target Audience?

You wouldn’t feed your cat dog food, right? Nope, it’s not for them—just as you wouldn’t (or shouldn’t. I’ve seen it many times) advertise products or services to those who are unlikely to buy from your business.

An effective media strategy is framed around your target audience—how are you going to talk to them, reach them?

In a previous life, I was a morning DJ for a local Top 40 radio station, which targets an 18–34-year-old female. (We named this “female” Wendy and hung up a picture, so we knew who we were talking to—an old marketing trick.

One day I was asked to do a commercial for a new client, a funeral home. Let’s think about this. The station caters to all music and content around a young 18–34-year-old woman.

I can tell you, Wendy is NOT interested in funeral homes, nor is she even in a consideration mode. Which brings me to the next question you should ask:

2. How Are You Going to Reach Them?

I know, it can be very overwhelming to consider the many options when it comes to media buying—online display, TV, cable, print and online newspaper, radio, billboards ,and so on. Not to mention, you have every media sales rep in town calling you with deals you don’t want to pass up.

But do they know the overall goal of your business?

Remember my funeral home assignment? I had to ask why is a funeral home advertising on this station. The response? The people who worked there loved the station, they listen every day, and they are excited to hear their commercial on this station. Yes, without consideration to their target audience or at which radio stations they’d find them! This happens more than you think. …

So now that you know your target audience, maybe you have or haven’t picked the right media option because the next question can go hand-in-hand with the previous question.

3. What’s It Going to Take to Reach Them? 

What’s your budget and strategy to reach your audience?

Let’s say you have 4 media options; all of them ARE a fit for your target audience—but you have a limited budget. Some media are more expensive to buy. Therefore, not all of the options in reaching your audience are priced equally.

Media advertising can be expensive; not having enough budget to reach your audience makes for an ineffective campaign. Too much of a budget (yes, there is such a thing) is a waste of dollars that could be spent elsewhere.

What’s the moral of the story? Turn off your paid media spend that isn’t leveraging your target or specifically focused on your audience. Otherwise, you’re throwing your marketing budget right out the window. You should be targeting your marketing campaign to people you want to reach, those who are likely to buy from you. Even if the overall volume is lower, your conversion rate will be higher.

Are you looking for ways to improve marketing budget ROI? From marketing to branding to advertising, we are always interested in helping you grow!

First introduced in 1972, idc-marketing is the most helpful, most prominent, and oldest advertising firm in Lafayette, Indiana. We are a full-service agency that helps companies grow business-to-business (B2B) and consumer-to-business (B2C) market share.