Esther
Good morning and welcome to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. I apologize in advance. I have the cold today. So, yeah, I sound like this. But-.
Melanie
Nazily. Good nazily stuff.
Esther
Good husky voice. We are here. We have committed to sending an episode every Monday morning and come rain or heel or high waters. We are here. Or it's not. That's also the reason why Melanie had to do it on her own last week, because I was completely out of it. It's taken a while, and it will take a while longer, so you may hear me snuffling for the next few episodes. But here we are. We're talking about marketing strategy. No, we're not. We're talking media strategy, which is always the same thing.
Melanie
We are. Well, we're niching down.
Esther
Yes. Yeah. So your media strategy, when people hear media, well, I know when I hear media, I automatically think mainstream, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, articles, putting ads on those channels. You're going, why? Why would the Monday morning marketing tell us to put out an ad on a TV station? We're not. We're not telling you to. We're just talking about the options. But media is so much more than that as well, isn't it, Melanie?
Melanie
It absolutely is. And it should cross everything. Social media is such a small... Digital marketing in general, is such a small area of your overarching marketing strategy. So when we're talking media strategy, it could be on the sides of busses, sandwich boards, it could even be flyers, it could be any form of media that's out there.
Esther
Yeah. There are so many, and there will be so many more. I mean, there's even ads on podcasts, hint, hint. There are, like Melanie said, sandwich boards. There's people put them on the side of their cars. T-shirts. I mean, we have T-shirts for the podcast.
Melanie
You can find them at a Etsy store.
Esther
Yes, all of these things need a strategy. You can't just go and throw up your logo on your car without investigating if you need different car insurance, for example, or if it's going to damage the car, and if it's a rental or a higher purchase, where will that leave you when you go to give it back? That's all part of the strategy. But let's talk about... First of all, we'll start talking about the traditional When we think traditional media and the TV and the radio and the ads and the brain fog, newspapers, articles, magazines. And all that. We were recently at an event, and a lady there, Fiona Harold, spoke about getting in the press. You could see the eye rolls because people think that nobody reads newspapers anymore, but she has the statistics to prove that that's not correct.
Melanie
It was quite high, actually, wasn't it? I was shocked.
Esther
Yeah. It's not just that... Obviously, physical newspaper sales are declining, but they've all moved online, and people are reading the newspaper online. It sounds really weird when you think about it, but they are still reading it and the articles are still... If you go to Google an article, then it will probably pop up from a newspaper a magazine that has it online. You may have to pay to read it, but it'll be there. The value of getting in the press is still getting in front of millions of eyes, and you just have to have the right strategy.
Melanie
Where your media strategy sits is inside your digital marketing strategy, potentially, or just your overarching marketing strategy. Again, your media strategy is just another element of your overarching strategy. Keep saying that. I wonder if somebody could count this and tell us at the end how many times we said the word strategy. Now, the reason why I wanted to focus on this is because we tend to generalize, and I think that's fair enough, we tend to generalize when we're doing the podcast explaining how a digital marketing strategy or marketing strategy works in general. But this is slightly different. It needs to be a little bit more refined and a little a bit more niche. The more experience that you have in creating strategies, the more detailed it's expected to be. Now, let's say, normally this is something that you would present to a client when you've agreed to work with them and you present to them how you're going to create a campaign. Normally, it's in the form of a presentation, which could be Canva, Google, or PowerPoint presentation. How many people do PowerPoint presentations these days? I do. Big fan.
Esther
Well, Fiona Walsh does. Well, that's true. She's the queen of PowerPoint presentations.
Melanie
So back to this. So as part of this, and a crucial element is where the marketing budget, the ad budget, particularly, is going to reside. How much percentage-wise is going to be spent on each element that we've already discussed, from sandwich boards to side of busses. You need to justify that amount and how you feel there is going to be a return on ad spend or ROAS.
Esther
Yeah. You need to measure where it comes from by asking people, How did you hear about us? How did you find us? How do you know? Where did you phone us from? Because it's all well and good Putting an ad in a newspaper or a magazine or putting it on the side of a bus, having millions of eyes see it. But if you don't ask them which one they saw, then you'll never know which one worked.
Melanie
And so this, again, is a lot to do with awareness. This is very top funnel stuff we're talking here. But the media strategy can do the entire funnel when you're spending your budget properly. So as you know, there are elements that are better serving as conversion and others are better serving as awareness. So you could have maybe four social media channels and you can use, say, Facebook for awareness, if that's where your audience is, Instagram for consideration, and maybe meta-adds or Google Ads or even Pinterest or TikTok ads to take people through conversion. This is the refined data that you need to work through the client's insights, look at their goals and objectives, and then document this in a written format. So it's something that can take quite some time doing.
Esther
Yeah, but everything that's worth doing takes time.
Melanie
Yes.
Esther
So again, I'm caveating this with this is not right for every business, but in a lot of cases, it will work for any business. I have a friend who is a hypnotist, and his car is completely branded, and he walks around in his T-shirts all the time, and everybody knows him because of it. It works. It was obviously a huge outlay at the start to get the car completely, and I mean, full.
Melanie
It's a full wrap.
Esther
It's the full wrap and then the outfits and stuff, the clothing. But once it's done, then you don't have to keep on spending on those every year or every six months. Those types of ads last as long as you have the car, as long as the clothes still fit. It's the ads on the side of a bus where the bus then gets changed out or they only put them because it's rented space. It's the same as putting an ad on Facebook or on any of the social media platforms. It's rented space. It's not space that you own. Whereas you could put an ad on somebody else's website. Remember, Kerry Hall was on and her awarenessdays.co.uk, awareness-days.co.uk, has, accepts ads from people. That's another place where you could put your ad. You have to figure out where people look for your product or service, first of all. If they're the type of people that would be walking down the high street, then busses, park benches, we don't really do that here in the UK or Ireland, but they do in America. The sandwich boards, the billboards, all of those things would be perfect.
Melanie
Do you remember the little bicycles we saw people running around in as well, and they had all the advertising around it as well?
Esther
Yeah, depending on where you are, if people are more pedestrians, if that's your audience, then have them on the road and on the side of the street. If people are flying, have them in places on the plane. If people are driving, then huge billboards, not really a thing here in the UK, but they are still a thing in many places around the world.
Melanie
We do actually have billboards here. We don't have as big as the States do, but we do have billboards. I can think of at least three in Mullingar, believe it or not.
Esther
Really?
Melanie
Yeah.
Esther
There's so many ways that people consume.
Melanie
One of them is a rotating ones.
Esther
Yeah. But people consume their information in different ways. It's like we've always said, if you're going to write a blog, also then audio, video, people consume it in different ways. They're going to consume it in different places as well. Those that still read magazines, newspapers will get their information from there.
Melanie
There's also different formats that you can use on each of these platforms. So although we're saying Instagram and Facebook and everything else, remember, there are different methods of reaching people, especially the likes of Instagram, which seems to have every method you can think of, from live stories, reels, the grid itself, carousels, and I'm sure they'll... And highlights, don't forget those. They seem to have every single method of reaching people. As competition goes on with the other social media platforms, they're going to be trying to do like for like as well to match. So I really do think when you're creating this media strategy, you have to put down everything. So you've got to put down what your objective is for that particular media Then explain the different formats you want to use, also who you're trying to target. And don't forget to put down the actual budget for each of the media types that you're going to be doing and the duration.
Esther
Yes. Yes. There's another channel that we haven't mentioned, and that's email marketing.
Melanie
Well, we did talk about it, actually, but I don't think we mentioned it on here.
Esther
No, we haven't mentioned it on here. That's what I'm saying. Because there's no point in us having all the information and not sharing it. When you have your people coming in and you start your funnel, then send them to your email marketing list. Have them in a place that you can retarget, that you can send them out to again, that you can continue to have different ways of contacting them.
Melanie
It's still the best conversion route, isn't it? To get people over to your email list is by far the best way to convert.
Esther
It is. It is. And in the newspaper, you can put a QR code that people can scan. You don't have to go fully traditional and just have, oh, here's my phone number and contact me here. You can put in whatever information information you want into the different ads and make sure that they will contact you in a place that is suitable for you. Don't be sending them to an email address that you never check. Don't be sending them to a website that is broken or has lots of issues.
Melanie
A poor user experience, because that's another thing. Having a decent landing page for all of your campaigns is essential. It's high up there with the old UX.
Esther
Oh, definitely. But figure out first Before you start any type of ad, figure out your budget, figure out how much it's going to cost in each place, because even when you're doing ads on Meta or Google or Bing, they will fluctuate the price, sometimes on a daily basis. So just bear that in mind and maybe have that little bit of cushion that, say you're going to spend 5,000 on your ad campaign, maybe aim for spending four and a half because it'll probably get to the five anyway.
Melanie
Yeah, it's decent. It's actually a very good idea to have a bit of wiggle room because there could be errors, there could be an issue with one of your ads that you need to stop and then restart. And don't forget, all part of your media strategy is also getting all of your graphics ready beforehand. Otherwise, you can't start your strategy. So that needs to be also put down in your strategy as well.
Esther
Yes. So maybe we've confused the life out of you. Maybe we've given you more ideas on how to market yourself. Maybe it's a mixture of both. But if you are interested in learning more about this, do reach out to one of us and we will be able to help you. And if you're looking to start running ads, reach out as well. It's something that we offer as a service. And just keep listening, first of all, listening, learning, and then doing, because you have all the skills that you need for your business to succeed.
Melanie
Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for listening. I'm sorry if it hasn't been in the greatest direct order in the world, but if you go back, you'll hear that it makes a hell of a lot more sense the second time around.
Esther
We hope.
Melanie
We'll be back next week with some more useful tips. And if you guys have got any suggestions on anything that you'd like us to cover, or indeed, if you'd like to come on as a guest, do let us know. Anyway, that's it for now. Bye-bye.
Esther
Bye.
