Choosing Advertising Frequency
Since advertising is so expensive, you should use some
strategy to concentrate your advertising impact in the
most effective manner for your business. The only exception
to this advertising strategy might be for nonseasonal
service businesses that advertise through the Yellow Pages
or local newspaper service directories.
- Peak season blowout. Employing a peak season
blowout strategy means saving all of your advertising
money for one big campaign. This makes sense for businesses
whose products or services are typically required or
sell highest during a particular season—for example,
a snowplow service.
- Quarterly blitz. Quarterly blitz advertising
campaigns are quite common. They allow you to concentrate
your ad spending heavily during specific times, while
also affording you a better chance of maintaining a
place in your audience’s minds throughout the
year.
- See-saw approach. The “see-saw approach”
is a campaign in which impact is created by running
a big print ad or heavy radio/television schedule for
one week, followed by smaller ad or lighter radio/television
schedule in the succeeding week or weeks to reinforce
the earlier impact at a lower cost.
- Continuous advertising. Many small businesses
place a continuous stream of small ads throughout the
year. This approach never creates enough impact to net
results. If you operate this way, stop it. Drop all
advertising for a while and see if your business falls
off. It probably won’t, and you can then feel
confident in adopting a new advertising schedule.
By Streetwise Small Business Start-Up
