What’s your best bet?

In the past, media and advertising has been a bit of a 3 horse race.

The star stallion has always been Television with the other 2 frisky fillies being newspaper and radio.

With the occasional run of outdoor, the market was pretty dull until recent years.

The digital revolution has opened the flood gates to a whole new breed of mediums and it’s making for an interesting race for us Marketers. More to the point though, it’s taken away the ‘sure bets’ for many businesses who have been using traditional mediums for years.

Many of you would have heard me harp on about the power of campaigns in previous blogs but the short of it is, that an integrated and cross medium approach is what is going to achieve the best results.

What does that all mean? Simple…you’ve got to use more than one of these new and old mediums to make your marketing more effective.

The only problem is, that there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ solution. What is right for client A isn’t necessarily right for client B. It’s a case of understanding the dynamics of each medium and how to mix them to put your money with the best combination – thus maximising your ‘winnings‘.

Buying media has never been easy (despite the number of clients that would disagree and the number of direct sales reps who will quite happily convince you about why their company is the best medium and version of it!) and with the event of so many more channels available in recent years, it has become a whole lot more difficult.

For me, media has always been a strategic issue. Choosing the right mix, the right channels, the right size, the right time, the right place. There are so many factors.

Then to top it all off, you have to have the magic ingredient…content!

If you’re content is no good, your message is not on song and your communication isn’t hitting your audience, then all the media in the world isn’t going to help. But that’s a blog for another day!

So if you’re sick of taking long odds at what is working for you, perhaps it’s time to take a bet on a different approach. It could be as simple as backing a new horse rather than the ‘ole faithful’.