How to plan your media spend for next year

Many marketing professionals are currently starting to pull their marketing plans and budgets together for 2009.

If you are faced with making some hard choices due to budget cut backs because of an uncertain economy*, then let me offer some advice.

Attempting to spread your marketing investment across as many different media as possible is dangerous. Depth in media is absolutely essential to get the results you want.

All too often people spread their marketing dollars across too many different media and dilute their message and their success. They believe that “being everywhere” to create awareness is the most important thing they can do.

They are dead wrong.

These marketers would be more successful if they focused on mastering a few media first and then made the bulk of their marketing investment in those proven media rather than trying to be everywhere. Just because you test on a small scale with one medium and find a winning campaign that is ready to be scaled-up within the same media does not mean that it is time to roll it out into many different media at the same time. Different media might deliver very different results.

Concentrate on the few media channels with which you are successful. Experiment and measure until you have the return on investment solidly working in your favor and then pour most of your allotted marketing dollars into those media while testing new media on a smaller scale. Master each one of your media channels one at a time and then add them to your mix one at a time until you find the optimum mix and balance.

A winning message in one medium might not translate into a winning message in a different medium. Don't gamble on unproven media because most of the time you will be disappointed.

Don't spread your marketing dollars as far as they will go. It is a huge, classic mistake.

* As of August 29, the U.S. economy grew GDP at a 3.3% rate in the second quarter of 2008 which was stronger than expected. The U.S. economy has continued to post growth and has not met the threshold of being defined as a recession which is defined as a period of two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. Despite this fact and because of uncertainty in the housing and energy markets, many business managers are being very conservative in their spending and budgeting processes for 2009.