How to Choose Your Marketing Mediums

Many clients ask me what mediums they should use in their marketing. My response is always “Think of your target audience and where they would be receptive of your message”. If your demographic is young professionals who are tech savvy and like the newest innovation, a printed advertisement in a newspaper would not be as effective as a social media campaign.

Think of your mediums as the interior makeup of your house – each medium is a separate room that is one piece of the entire house or an entire marketing strategy. They are not stand-alone entities since they are all housed under the same roof but each has a unique purpose and identity. People would look at you funny if they saw you sleeping on your stove so we use the kitchen for cooking and the bedroom for sleeping.

Each marketing medium serves a different purpose just as each room does. Social media is a great tool to create engagement and immediate interaction while print material is a great tool to give people more information they can peruse in their own time.

A Few Questions to Consider when Selecting Mediums:

• Do they align with your target market’s interests?
• Are they cost-effective and offer a social or monetary ROI?
• Are they measurable and trackable?
• Do they complement each other and work in tandem?
• Do they align with your marketing goals?

A Few Tips:

• Ask your customers.
• Check out the market – see where your customers are and how to best interact with them.
• Scope out the competition. However, just because they are there doesn’t mean you need to be. Are they having success on a specific medium? What are they succeeding or struggling with?

I think the best route is to use a few different mediums that meet the majority of your communication needs and complement one another.

Let’s Look at an Example
You are the owner of a new product called “123Clean”. It is a magic cleaning wand that cleans whatever you point it at. Typically, in-home and in-store demonstrations have been the best way for your sales people to demonstrate the product.

In this case, I would suggest engaging print and digital mediums that instill the key messages you determined in your marketing plan.

On the digital side, utilize your website and social media platforms to push your key message out.

Your Website Should Offer:

• Information on the product (outlining your key points)
• Demonstration video
• Maybe customer testimonials
• Way to view/download the PDF brochure
• Links to your social media channels that are talking about the product
• Include a link front and center on your home page
• For better tracking, set up a dedicate URL such as www.123clean.com/promo and track activity with Google Analytics

Your Social Media Should Offer:

• Engagement such as tips on using the product, suggestions to make your home cleaner, ways to cut time cleaning, ask questions, contests/giveaways
• It should encompass your main key messaging

Which Platform to Use Will Depend on Your Style of Business and Where Your Users are:

• Facebook is great for B2C – longer content, more description, photos, etc.
• Twitter is great for anyone –great for either B2B or B2C – short concise updates with a 140 character limit
• LinkedIn – great for B2B
• Instagram – great for photos – B2C
• Pinterest – great for tangible products, female, B2C
• Google+ – still to be determined. It is becoming a must but no one is really sure why.
• Ideally, link them together through Hootsuite – free for 5 social media platforms. Here are steps to creating a social media strategy.

The bottom line with social media is that there is a difference between being present and having a presence. Engage!

On the print side, your sales team needs a take-away such as a one-pager for customers to take with them.

Ensure to Include:

• The key messaging you determined in your marketing plan
• URL to your website where people can get product information and see a video demonstration
• Social media links so people can join the social media conversation

Marketing Boost
You can even take it one step further and run a contest exclusively for those who follow your social media pages and give away a product. Your sales team can talk about it and you can include banner ads on your website.

In this process, you have engaged 4 mediums – social media, website, print handouts and a sales script. The trick with engaging all the mediums is to keep the branding voice consistent and stick to the key messaging.