Mid-Missouri Marketing Resource Blog

Developing a marketing plan takes time. Everything from the timing to each ad’s placement needs to come together strategically in order to deliver solid ROI. But there’s one thing that shouldn’t get left off of the list: advertising creative. Using bad ad creative is a fast way to undermine an otherwise successful advertising strategy. Today we’ll cover four tips to help you use winning creative.

Marketing ROI is more than just industry jargon, but the term is tossed around as though it’s just another buzzword. Of course, the process of measuring your marketing return on investment is among the most complicated pieces to determining your budget and efficacy; 43% of marketers say that proving the ROI of their activities is a top challenge. The question is, how do you beat this ROI puzzle, and where do you start? There’s plenty of marketing ROI tips that will certainly help improve your process and accuracy, but there’s one thing you absolutely need to do first: define what ROI means for your company specifically.

Holiday marketing budgets are a tremendously important piece of your overall marketing strategy. During the holidays, sales numbers go way up as consumers purchase gifts for their family, friends, and even themselves. Most companies expect this holiday sales boost and do some preparation, including traditional marketing activities like dropping prices and adjusting ad campaigns for holiday shoppers.

It can be all too easy to make misguided assumptions about any particular audience, especially one that can be a caricature in pop culture, like country music fans. That might mean you haven't even considered the question, “Should I advertise to country radio fans?” But the truth is, not only should you ask that question, the answer is a resounding, yes! In fact, according to Brandon Gaille, there's about 100 million listeners, and country music is the top format across the U.S.. In fact, according to the CMA, 42% of adults in America listen to this genre daily. In today's post, we'll take a brief look at the five biggest reasons this audience in particular can be valuable to your business.

Oh, childhood…

There’s nothing quite like the nostalgia of a good ol’ peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We’re pretty sure this sandwich is the most comforting food ever. Perhaps you can relate, but for us, middle school lunches were never quite complete without a PB&J packed. Even though some days we maybe envied the cool kids who had lunchables, PB&J was then, and is now a classic.

Measuring marketing effectiveness is one of the most important things a business should be doing — especially in the digital age. Marketing ROI is a critical metric that should be studied within any marketing plan — after all, without it, there’s no way to measure the strength of your efforts.

There’s an old saying about marketing: “Half of your marketing budget will go to waste. The trick is knowing which half.” However, that was in the old days where marketers lacked the technology and digital tools to measure the success of any marketing effort, whether it be TV, radio advertising, print or digital. Today, businesses are more focused than ever on getting the most out of their marketing efforts, and making sure every channel contributes positively to the bottom line.

If there’s one area that many businesses struggle in it’s measuring marketing ROI. Tying results to a specific marketing effort or campaign is often challenging, and failure to set up the right goals and metrics can lead to sunk marketing costs.

But is there a solution? In fact, there are specific metrics for tracking marketing ROI that are easy to implement and that will give you the insight you need into where your marketing dollars are going. If you’re just starting out in terms of learning how to track marketing ROI, you’re probably best served to taking a “KISS” approach to metrics. In other words, “Keep it simple, stupid.”

In today’s marketplace with millions of companies vying for a customer’s attention, using only one or two forms of marketing will not effectively reach your audience. If a business utilizes several different marketing channels, it creates a better chance of engaging and eventually converting potential customers into sales.

However, before jumping into every marketing avenue you can think of, you should start with creating a strategy that complements your budget. To get the most out of your marketing dollars, focus on consistency and frequency in the marketing efforts that you decide to pursue.

The biggest question about any marketing campaign is whether or not it's doing something positive for your business. At the same time, marketing ROI isn't always the easiest thing to understand or determine for small businesses, even for traditional marketing methods, like radio advertising. We've written more extensively on ROI recently, but today we'll take a look at how to know if your radio advertising is really working.