Making a Big Impact with a Small Budget: Part 2

Where do you start?

Be clear about your marketing goals. Whether they are to increase your customer base, raise the quality of applicants, re-establish or create a new identity, reverse a misconception, or all of the above, goals must be set prior to the beginning of your marketing plan. This first step forms an overview that enables your team to acknowledge strengths and weaknesses in order to develop a unique plan designed to meet specific needs and expectations.

If your marketing campaign has numerous goals, focus first on specific areas that demand immediate attention. A strong marketing strategy will prioritize goals in order of importance. Targeting too many areas at once will stretch your budget too thin, and none of your goals will be met.

Remember, your product/company is a living organism that will change over time. While long-term plans are ideal as a core structures, it is imperative for monthly and quarterly budgets to be monitored and revised. Expect evaluations and advice, and if you are not receiving any help, perform your own re-evaluation of the company you keep. It is the job of an advertising agency to stay informed of trends and to share that knowledge with you.

An example of a recent trend advertising and marketing agencies alike were forced to work through took place within the automotive industry. For years, it was common practice for annual marketing strategies to plan automotive dealerships’ Q4 advertising toward selling the next year’s lineup, limiting pre-owned vehicle advertising. Our current economic state broke this pattern as buyers’ spending habits decreased dramatically. Pre-owned sales began to surpass new car sales, and advertising creative had to change accordingly.

In Q1 2009, we directed many dealers to continue to feature pre-owned vehicles, in addition to brand new 2009 models. Budgeted dollars for the quarter were adjusted to accommodate the need to reach secondary demographics not originally planned for at the close of 2008. Monitoring customers’ spending habits and adjusting client creative as soon as trends arise is just one way that Davis Advertising works for you everyday.

Making a Big Impact with a Small Budget: Part 1

Marketing with a small budget is a true art form that requires the utmost skill of the advertising professional. In the same way a photographer needs greater skill to produce black-and-white works of art, a true marketing artist shows his/her skill by making a small budget produce greater results than a large budget produced by marketers with less skill.

There are many ways to make a small budget act larger. The one rule when marketing with a small budget is that you do not market to save money, but to ensure that each dollar spent brings a handsome return.

The most important premise to keep sight of is that you can accomplish your goals, regardless of the size of your budget.

Davis Advertising is Hiring!

Media Ad Planner/Buyer

Full service local ad agency seeks experienced media ad planner/buyer. Join our already successful, now growing media department.

Position Requires:

• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Computer proficiency
• Ability to work independently as well as within a team environment
• Building relationships with account management teams internally as well as externally
• Attention to detail, able to multi-task under tight deadlines - includes follow-up, revisions, tracking and make-good information and maintenance
• Significant organizational skills, ability to work simultaneously on numerous media objectives in a comprehensive manner
• Proactive thinking
• Decisive and effective problem-solving ability
• Monitoring and evaluating current media environment opportunities
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience preferred
• Two years+ media planning experience

Responsibilities:

• Full responsibility in developing media plans - must ensure clients’ day to day as well as long term media needs
• Self-motivated with flexible thinking and attitude
• Media research - negotiate rates, placement, added value, sponsorships and promotional opportunities
• Demonstrate complete understanding in evaluating budgets/results and data effectively
• Identify, review and resolve billing discrepancies
• Maintain and update media database
• General administrative duties
• Additional duties may be assigned

We offer full medical, paid vacations, holidays, sick and matching 401k opportunities.

Please send cover letter and resume to:
Donna Chase
dchase@davisad.com

Small Business Social Media: Getting Blog Exposure With Limited Resources

So, you've just launched a blog. You've written a couple of posts, have some plans for future posts, and even have a reader or two. However, now you want to take it to the next level. You want to build a community of readers.

Problem is, you don't have one person dedicated to your company blogging efforts. You're doing this yourself and while you have some time to dedicate to working the crowd, you aren't able to spend every hour of every day on it.

Here are a couple of things you can do to increase traffic, using however much time you have to give to it:

Submit to Digg, Reddit, etc.: Although it is next to impossible to make it to the front page of a site like Digg, that doesn’t mean entries still shouldn't be submitted. By submitting a post you are almost always guaranteed at least one visitor. The odds are that at least one person will click it while perusing upcoming stories. However, when submitting to sites like Digg and Reddit the goal isn’t necessarily getting “Dugg” and making it to the front page, but getting our content indexed within these social news sites. The millions of people on these sites use their search functions extensively, and by submitting our entries we are giving ourselves the ability to show up within searches on these sites. So in sense we can think of submitting to these sites as submitting to other search engines apart from Google and Yahoo, and although the volume is significantly less, the traffic will probably be more targeted. And as we’re thinking of these sites as other search engines, it’s important to submit our titles and descriptions with good, relevant keywords to our posts so that we have a better chance of generating click-throughs on related queries.

Be active on blog communities (like MyBlogLog) and on other blogs: Blog communities are a tremendous resource for finding targeted readers, increasing your subscribers, and even getting backlinks. Other blogs are also a space that you should be active in. By participating and commenting on other blogs, not only will the author visit your site and potentially contribute, readers of the other blog might as well.

A New Logo for The Longfellow Clubs...

Recently, we received a very nice "Thank You" note from The Longfellow Clubs of Wayland, MA after creating a new logo and tag line for them. Of course, letters like this are better when shared with friends:

Dear Davis Advertising Folks,

Thanks so much for taking the time and really working through our logo conversation. We really appreciate the care and the great customer service.

We feel Davis provided us with a fantastic revision of our logo and new tag line, and everyone is excited about it. Your artists are very talented and gave us some terrific options.

And most important you listened to us.

I'm giving a seminar in San Francisco at the national trade association of health clubs, IHRSA, on green health clubs and we're featuring our new logo! This will be fun!

With gratitude,
Laury Hammel, President
The Longfellow Clubs

Davis Advertising and Charter Communications

Davis Advertising has been the agency of record for Charter Communications for a number of years. This quick-hitting video takes you through the relationship:

Davis Advertising and You!