Choosing Your Marketing Mediums

When it comes to marketing promotions, the statement that ‘The medium makes the message’ is one that should be followed by any business. When delivering a promotional message, the types of marketing mediums you choose is the key to success. It is important to remember it’s about establishing the right marketing mix, it’s not about just using one medium at a time. Luckily, modern technology allows us to measure the success rates of many mediums so that you can evaluate which mediums are working and which need re-evaluating.

Each marketing medium from traditional forms such as Publications and Radio, to more modern forms like Websites and Social Media, have their individual benefits and costs, which need to be weighed up depending on certain factors. The three main factors to consider when choosing your medium are; your message, your audience, and your budget. By considering each of these factors you can fully optimise your promotions successfully.

Message

The message is what grabs your audience’s attention and shows them how they can fulfil their needs and wants. When delivering a message, you need it to be clear, succinct, and it needs to reflect the identity of your brand and your target consumers. Once the message has been developed, you then need to analyse which mediums will best engage your target consumers. For example, if you are a clothing business, you will want to use more visual and interactive mediums such as Social Media to deliver your message to your target audience.

Audience

Your audience is your target consumers. When choosing a medium, you want to create an ideal consumer based on your target audience, and research their habits to see which mediums they are most responsive to or interact with more. Through performing this exercise, you can focus on specific mediums that will have the highest engagement and reach within your target audience.

Budget

Budget is a massive constraint when it comes to choosing promotional mediums, so you have to be clever with which mediums you allocate your budget on to get the highest ROI (return on investment). Each medium has a different cost, some are very expensive and suit higher budgets and some are tailored to smaller budgets. Each marketing medium can be as effective as each other, no matter the expense, depending on who your audience is and what the message is you are trying to promote.

When choosing marketing mediums, you have to carefully consider what your message is, who your audience is, and what your budget is. Each of these factors needs to coincide with your overall business goal so that you can create effective and measurable promotions to reach your desired outcome.