Follow The Leader Off The Cliff

Are you a Follower?

Or are you a Leader?

A couple weeks ago I read a statistic about advertising spending that didn’t surprise me but kind of made me sad.

It’s estimated that this year, digital advertising will account for nearly 67% of all media spending.

That was the opening line in a story from Mediapost that actually advices that going all digital is dangerous to the health of your brand and company. Their headline reads: 5 Reasons To Keep Traditional Media In The Mix.

Radio, TV, newspapers, they are considered traditional media compared to digital media when has been around for nearly two decades.

All media can have some value for advertisers but you have to understand the way people use them and have the right expectations for what you are wanting to do.

Coupled with the rise of digital, the media landscape is increasingly complicated. The best approach is an integrated one — utilizing both digital and traditional tactics.

The reason I titled this Follow The Leader Off The Cliff is I have seen too many business people abandon traditional and go all digital, only to suffer the consequences or wake up and return to radio, print and tv. National companies like Proctor and Gamble did it, and I have a friend that was nearly put out of business when Facebook shut down his Facebook page.

Let’s dig in with the 5 reasons from Mediapost:

More real estate. Smart traditional media placements can complement your digital campaign, in many cases offering additional real estate for comprehensive storytelling.

Added value. Traditional media offers far more opportunity for added value than digital.

Content alignment. Traditional broadcast and print media offer more content alignment opportunities, allowing the message to complement what audiences are already seeing. Negotiating fixed positions adjacent to this content through sponsorships and specific placement can help brands avoid getting lost in the clutter.

Endorsement opportunities. Endorsements promote credibility, particularly for campaigns meant for diverse audiences. By leveraging endorsements with “original influencers,” from DJs to on-air broadcast personalities, messaging is delivered by people whom audiences already trust, allowing paid content to come across naturally.

Internal alignment. It’s normal to want to see a campaign in-market once it launches. However, clients and their internal teams may not always be the target audience for a digital campaign, therefore not ever seeing it.

While digital media is a critical component of paid campaign strategies, traditional media tactics still have unique strengths. Depending on location, demographics and other key qualifiers, there can be an argument made to focus on one over the other. Integrating both digital and traditional together can expand reach and engagement, while also increasing impact.

So that’s their advice and here’s how it works with WOWO radio.Endorsement Opportunities are one of the Secret Sauces of Success for WOWO Advertising Partners. We have a very limited inventory of these that are done live by our morning and afternoon personalities and there are certain exclusivity benefits that come with a premium price tag, but it is well worth it. We have a waiting list for some business categories because these are so powerful. No other traditional media can do this with the track record of success we have on WOWO.

The Content Alignment reason is something we often do with certain advertising sponsorship opportunities that we already have and the More Real Estate reason is when we can tie in the programming and/or what I call Non-Traditional marketing options to make your advertising and marketing go beyond buying air time. We even have a Content Marketing division of our company that my sales team can use to create a combination of all of this including digital messaging on social media, texts and email, all handled by us.

The Added Value reason is not one that I promote with WOWO, at least in the way Mediapost describes Added Value. They mentioned getting bonus ads however, most of the bonus ads get bumped on WOWO because of the high demand for our advertising inventory. Less popular stations that I used to work for were able to do this BOGO style of ad placement, but that rarely works.

The last reason mentioned, Internal Alignment was something I had not thought of, but it’s true. With digital ads being targeted to potential customers and you pay for each of those ads, you really don’t want your staff to be served those ads. The reason I had not thought of this is because all of our ads are heard by the business owners and marketing people and working with small to medium sized companies, we’re usually having face to face conversations with our clients when we change ads. They know, because they are involved. It’s why I call it an advertising partnership.

Want to know more about this or perhaps this sparked some questions? Contact me, Scott@WOWO.com

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