Six reasons to buy a media plan, not just ad space:

Are you stuck in the three-month or one-off media syndrome?  Here are six reasons to develop a long-term media plan:

Worried about creating materials for all these consecutive insertions?  Don’t forget that you don’t need to create new material for every insertion.  You can (and should) continue to run a marketing campaign as long as it yields results.  New, edgier ads are not always the best way to build rapport with readers.  But make sure you don’t make the mistake of continuing to run an ad that has worn out it’s effectiveness.

Adapted from Selling Schedules Not One-Timers by Carl Landau (2001)

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Markets Always Change

Markets Always Change in response to cultural, economic and political forces. A marketer’s dominance in one period is never assured in the next period, no matter how strong its brand. Look at GM and Ford. Yet it is the nature of dominant competitor’s to move cautiously to adapt to new market conditions. They do not easily relinquish “proven” formulas that produced so much success. Furthermore, the management, operations and marketing skills that are wed to those formulas run deep within a dominant competitor’s organization, reinforcing internal resistance to change. It’s human nature to become enamored with the trappings of dominance. This opens the door for smaller players who are more in tune with the changing market and able to respond more nimbly.

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Fact-based Advertising

Relentless repetition was once enough to drive your message home. Not anymore! Fact-based statements can be proven or disproven objectively. But the ‘truth’ of a values-based statement hinges on agreed-upon values. Modern advertising overflows with values-based statements, e.g. “Big selection,” “High quality,” “Low prices,” or “Easy credit.” Even though they may be true in the mind of the advertiser, the public has heard them all before. The left hemispheres of our brains detect and prefer fact-based statements. Today we are hype-immune and hunger for statements of fact. To persuade today’s hype-resistant customer, you must learn to make fact-based statements in your messages.

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Latino Market

Immigration is no longer the main driver of growth in the U.S. Hispanic market. It has been surpassed by natural growth of the in-country population, according to a Mercanti Group report. This trend will have big implications for organizations trying to reach Hispanics with tailored marketing programs, including choice of language and media. From ’00 - ’05, growth was split between immigration and natural increase of the resident. Now, natural growth has the upper hand, with a substantial base population tending to produce families larger than the national average (3.87 vs. 3.19). While 73% of Hispanic immigrants prefer Spanish to English, the number falls to 25% of their children and just 1% of their grandchildren. With a larger proportion of Hispanics being born in the U.S., English will increasingly supplant Spanish as the most effective language for marketing messages. third-generation U.S. born Hispanics do retain a sense of Hispanic identity and heritage. For example, one popular new magazine, Urban Latino, is an English-language publication catering to the New Generation Latino (18- to 34-year-olds). The same phenomenon is powering the emergence of a new, mostly English-language radio genre, “Hurban” (Hispanic Urban).

The Nov/Dec '07 issue of Outreach magazine will be dedicated to the Hispanic Church.