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In this era of a la carte online advertising, it’s easy to forget about the enormous power of print. After all, a campaign should not be limited to just one medium but instead diversified to appear anywhere and everywhere customers might be looking. Advertising began with ink and paper and, although it has evolved, print is still a highly-effective means of conveying a message to your intended audience.

A newspaper’s circulation is the number of copies distributed on an average day. Circulation corresponds to paid circulation that is not always the same as copies sold since some newspapers are distributed without cost to the reader. In many countries, circulations are audited by independent bodies such as the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) in India to assure advertisers that a given newspaper does indeed reach the number of people claimed by the publisher.

Circulation

Circulation is a count of how many copies of a particular publication are distributed. Print circulation is the average number of copies of a publication. Number of copies of a nonperiodical publication such as a book called usually print run. Circulation is not always the same as copies sold, often called paid circulation, since some issues are distributed without cost to the reader. Readership figures are usually higher than circulation figures because of the assumption that a typical copy is read by more than one person.

Print circulation is one of the principal factors used to set advertising rates. In many countries, circulations are audited by independent bodies such as the Audit Bureau of Circulations to assure advertisers that a given newspaper does reach the number of people claimed by the publisher. There are international open access directories such as Mondo Times, but these generally rely on numbers reported by newspapers themselves.

In many developed countries, print circulation is falling due to social and technological changes such as the availability of news on the internet. On the other hand, in some developing countries circulation is increasing as these factors are more than cancelled out by rising incomes, population, and literacy.

Average Issue Readership (AIR)

Readership is an estimate of how many readers a publication has. As most publications have more than one reader per copy, the NRS readership estimate is very different from the circulation count.

Readership estimates also show:

• The demographic profile of readers.
• What else they read and do.

The relationship between readership and circulation is known as readers-per-copy.

AIR is no of copies read within the period equal to periodicity of Publication. AIR might be bumped up by a special issue that everyone goes out and buys. TR may include a lot of subscribers. They might be the same revenue and the same numbers for a given period, but TR may be more indicative of sustained readership.

Total or Claimed Reader

Not loyal readers of the publication but have consumed it in the past. Lower the gap between TR & AIR; more loyal the readership base of the publication

Sole or Solus reader

They read only 1 particular publication in that frequency. Most dedicated and loyal readers of a publication.

A particular challenge with radio is that consumers tend to misattribute radio advertising memories to other media, particularly TV. This is particularly likely to happen where there is a strong executional link between the two media and/or where there is an established history of TV advertising for the brand.

The tendency to misattribute can be offset by using matched samples of listeners and non-listeners. This way, if the increase in advertising awareness is greater among listeners than it is among non-listeners, then the effect can be attributed to radio fairly confidently even if the listeners think the advertising was in another medium. This is the approach we use for Radiogauge.

To evaluate the success of a campaign based on specific business outcomes such as response or sales, it is best to compare data across a region that receives radio advertising and a region where no radio advertising is taking place. These regions should be broadly matched in terms of populations profile and exposure to all other media activity ideally in the same TV region.

To help you track your radio effectiveness, concentrate on the following five key performance indicators (KPIs):

1. Reach

One of the greatest benefits of radio advertising is its ability to connect with large numbers of consumers. Therefore, one of the most important KPIs to consider when purchasing airtime is reach. By looking at past records and historical data, media buyers can estimate the expected reach of broadcasts in particular markets and set conversion goals.

2. Brand Awareness

Although a specific marketing message or special offer may bring consumers to your door, brand awareness is essential if you want to keep them coming back.

You can gauge the ability of specific radio spots to build brand loyalty through a range of informal and formal initiatives. For example, pay attention when clients or customers mention a particular ad when visiting your organization. More formally, you can conduct surveys of the general population both before and after the ad airs to ask whether or not they have heard of your brand. You can also measure the effects of the ad on your brand-specific social media growth.

3. Website Traffic

When it comes to measuring overall website traffic, take a longer approach to determine overall effectiveness. Compare your total number of website visitors after you began running radio ads to your total number of website visitors during the months and years that came before. Consider the effects of changes in specific website conversion rates and general increases in branded traffic (comprised of visitors who arrive at your website after typing your brand name into a search engine).

4. Gross Sales

Conduct year-over-year and month-over-month analyses to see if sales are up or down in relation to the airing of your radio ads. A radio specific discount can be an outstanding way to track its effectiveness. When consumers ask for that discount online or in your brick-and-mortar location, you will know for certain that they heard your ad spot.

5. Return on Ad Spend

After you determine your gross sales and estimate how much of those gross sales can be attributed to your radio ads, you can calculate your overall return on ad spend (ROAS) by dividing the revenue from gross sales by the total amount that you spent on the radio advertisements. This KPI will ultimately encapsulate your radio effectiveness as a whole.

Arbitron Radio Rating

Nielsen Audio (formerly Arbitron) is a consumer research company in the United States that collects listener data on radio broadcasting audiences. It was founded as the American Research Bureau by Jim Seiler in 1949 and became national by merging with Los Angeles-based Coffin, Cooper, and Clay in the early 1950s. The company’s initial business was the collection of broadcast television ratings.

The company changed its name to Arbitron in the mid‑1960s, the namesake of the Arbitron System, a centralized statistical computer with leased lines to viewers’ homes to monitor their activity. Deployed in New York City, it gave instant ratings data on what people were watching. A reporting board lit up to indicate which homes were listening to which broadcasts.

On December 18, 2012, The Nielsen Company announced that it would acquire Arbitron, its only competitor, for US$1.26 billion. The acquisition closed on September 30, 2013, and the company was re-branded as Nielsen Audio. As a condition of the deal to allow a monopoly, Nielsen must license its ratings data and technology to a third party for eight years.

Survey

Arbitron’s syndicated radio ratings service collects data by selecting a random sample of a population throughout the United States, primarily in 294 metropolitan areas, using a paper diary service 2‑4 times a year and the Portable People Meter (PPM) electronic audience measurement service 365 days a year.

The term commonly used in the radio industry for these ratings is Arbitron book, a carryover from the era when ratings were published in a softcover report that was mailed to clients. More specifically, in the diary-measured markets these reports were called the “Spring book”, “Summer book”, “Fall book”, and “Winter book”. Between these “books”, Arbitron releases interim monthly reports called “Arbitrends”, which contain data from the previous three months known as “rolling average” reports. The two interim reports would be known, for example, as “Spring, Phase I” and “Spring, Phase II”.

Arbitron recruit’s diary survey respondents to note their listening habits in a seven-day paper diary and mail it back to Arbitron. The respondents are paid a small cash incentive for their participation. Turnaround time for release of data from the end of the survey period is approximately three weeks.

After collection, the data is marketed to radio broadcasters, radio networks, cable TV companies, advertisers, advertising agencies, out-of-home advertising companies, and the online radio industry. Major ratings products include cume (the cumulative number of unique listeners over a period), average quarter hour (AQH Share the average number of people listening in a given 15‑minute period), time spent listening (TSL), and market breakdowns by age, gender, and race/ethnicity. It is important to understand that the “cume” only counts a listener once, whereas the AQH is a product of “cume” and time spent listening. For example, if you looked into a room and saw Fred and Jane, then 15 minutes later saw Fred with Sara. The “cume” would be 3 (Fred, Jane, Sara) and the AQH would be 2 (an average of two people in the room in a given 15‑minute period).

Audience measurement measures how many people are in an audience, usually in relation to radio listenership and television viewership, but also in relation to newspaper and magazine readership and, increasingly, web traffic on websites. Sometimes, the term is used as pertaining to practices which help broadcasters and advertisers determine who is listening rather than just how many people are listening. In some parts of the world, the resulting relative numbers are referred to as audience share, while in other places the broader term market share is used. This broader meaning is also called audience research.

Measurements are broken down by media market, which for the most part corresponds to metropolitan areas, both large and small.

Dairy v/s PeopIemeter

A people meter is an audience measurement tool used to measure the viewing habits of TV and cable audiences.

The People Meter is a ‘box’, about the size of a paperback book. The box is hooked up to each television set and is accompanied by a remote-control unit. Each family member in a sample household is assigned a personal ‘viewing button’. It identifies each household member’s age and sex. If the TV is turned on and the viewer doesn’t identify themselves, the meter flashes to remind them. Additional buttons on the People Meter enable guests to participate in the sample by recording their age, sex and viewing status into the system.

Another version of the device is small, about the size of a beeper, that plugs into the wall below or near each TV set in household. It monitors anything that comes on the TV and relays the information with the small Portable People Meter to narrow down who is watching what and when.

The device, known as a ‘frequency-based meter’, was invented by a British company called Audits of Great Britain (AGB). The successor company to AGB is TNS, which is active in 34 countries around the globe.

Local People Meter

Along with changing their counting methods, Nielsen also started emphasizing their sample in 2003 in reaction to census shifts and requests from some industry sectors. Nielsen’s automated Local People Meter (LPM) technology was introduced in New York and Los Angeles. The LPM improved the method of measurement from active and diary-based to passive and meter-monitored. More importantly, the LPM provides accurate measurements to particular local markets, verse a nationwide sample from the People meter. While diary-based surveys concentrated on quarterly “sweeps” periods, the industry has been pushed towards year-round measurement, due to the automated LPM system.

“Nielsen introduced the LPM as evidence of the rupturing of the network-era business model became broadly apparent, and apprehension about the future of the industry erupted on all sectors. LPM’s more accurately reported full range of what programming viewers watched, including what was observed when channel surfing, in comparison to the diary method it replaced. It allowed Nielsen to maintain established measurement practices, but do them better”.

“While Nielsen’s LPM’s presented next-day demographic analyses on television viewership in major cities, the devices led to accusations of undercounting minorities. A lot of controversy surrounding LPM’s was driven by News Corporation-funded “Don’t Count Us Out” alliance, which exploited activists’ and legislators’ foreseeable mindless reactions to any suggestion of racism”

TRP/TVR

One single television ratings point (Rtg or TVR) represents 1% of television households in the surveyed area in a given minute. As of 2004, there are an estimated 109.6 million television households in the United States. Thus, a single national ratings point represents 1%, or 1,096,000 television households for the 2004–05 season. When used for the broadcast of a program, the average rating across the duration of the show is typically given. Ratings points are often used for specific demographics rather than just households. For example, a ratings point among the key 18- to 49-year-olds demographic is equivalent to 1% of all 18- to 49-year-olds in the country.

A Rtg/TVR is different from a share point in that it is the percentage of all possible households, while a share point is 1% of all households watching television at the time. Hence the share of a broadcast is often significantly higher than the rating, especially at times when overall TV viewing is low. A low TRP can have an adverse effect on a TV program eventually leading to its closure.

GRPs/TRPs

Gross rating points (GRPs) or target rating points (TRPs) are chiefly used to measure the performance of TV-based advertising campaigns, and are the sum of the TVRs of each commercial spot within the campaign. An ad campaign might require a certain number of GRPs among a particular demographic across the duration of the campaign. The GRP of a campaign is equal to the percentage of people who saw, multiplied by the average number of spots that these viewers saw. Targeted Rating Points are a refinement of GRPs to express the reach time frequency of only the most likely prospects. For example, if a campaign buys 150 GRPs for a television spot, but only half of that audience is actually in the market for the campaign’s product, then the TRP would be stated as 75 to calculate the net effective buy.

Gross rating point, a standard measure in advertising, it measures advertising impact. It is a percent of the target market reached multiplied by the exposure frequency. Thus, a program which advertises to 30% of the target market and gives them 4 exposures, will have 120 GRP.

GRPs as a measure has some limitations. People like to think of it as a measure of impact, but that is really overstated. Impact should measure sales; these measures exposures, which is in fact assumed not actual exposures.

Basics of TAM (television advertising measurement):

Universe: Universe is the total or actual number of people in a defined target audience.

Program Reach & Time Spent

Reach: Reach is the number of individuals from the universe who are exposed to the medium or vehicle.

Reach is normally expressed in terms of % (percentages)

Calculation of reach:

If universe is: 1,000,000 individuals (this is approx. data, it is usually defined through sampling through people-meter):

For a single episode of a program (30 minutes or 1 hour) If out of above 1,000,000 of individuals 600,000 saw at least 1 minute of programme then:

Reach = (600,000/1,000,000) x 100

Reach = 60%

Cumulative reach

Cumulative reach: The audiences accumulate over the time

• The number of individuals within the TG who are exposed to the medium or vehicle over a certain period of time
• Total time = Total average minutes (universe) x Universe
• Total time/reach = Avg minutes viewers
• Net reach

Net Reach

Net reach is the summation of all audiences who have been exposed to the vehicle and excludes the duplication of the viewership.

Stickiness Index

An engagement metric indicating the degree to which a program is viewed. The percent of program that has been watched. The greater the percentage of the program viewed compared to all programs of the same duration in a certain time period, the greater the stickiness index.

Sticky content refers to content published on a website, which has the purpose of getting users to return to that particular website or hold their attention and get them to spend longer periods of time on this site. Webmasters use this method to build up a community of returning visitors to a website.

Examples are chat rooms, online forums, webmail, Internet games, weather, news and horoscopes.

Sticky content is also sometimes called sticky tools or sticky gear, and websites featuring sticky content are often referred to as sticky sites.

Product Stickiness Ratio is the ratio of (Daily Active Users) DAU and (Monthly Active Users) MAU. It is one of the widely used metrics for product engagement and tells us how sticky a product is. It was popularised by Facebook and was used by it to understand the true stickiness of the Facebook app.

Daily Active Users (DAU): DAU is calculated as the total number of unique users who use your product on any given day. In other words, DAU is the total count of users who use your product at least once in a day.

Monthly Active Users (MAU): MAU is calculated as the total number of unique users who use your product in a month. In other words, MAU is the total count of users who use your product at least once in a month.

DAUs and MAUs are standalone absolute numbers which can’t be compared for various businesses because the definition of active users varies for different companies. However, DAU/MAU is a holistic metric that speaks about product success. Since it is a percentage, it can be compared for various companies as well to understand their success in reaching their user engagement goals.

Marketing Team:

To segment the users on the basis of DAU/MAU ratio and increase usage of for the segment with low DAU/MAU ratio through strategies such as push notifications, educational email campaigns etc.

To create a lookalike audience of the segment with high DAU/MAU ratio since this segment has the least likelihood of churn.

Retention Team:

To pitch plan upgrades to customers by segmenting them on the  basis of DAU/MAU ratio.

To create a retention plan for customers with low DAU/MAU ratio since customers with low average DAU/MAU ratio have higher likelihood of churn.

Ad Viewership

It refers to the number of viewers that have the opportunity to view an ad during a given time period. Advertising sales executives usually have extensive data about the reach of a show’s or network’s programming, which they then use to make decisions about when and where to air their commercials. In addition, reach is a primary component in calculating gross ratings points, which is a metric often used to evaluate broad TV ad campaigns.

Measuring Reach

The Nielsen company rates the number of viewers watching TV programs for networks, and also breaks the results down demographically so businesses have more detailed information about who those viewers are. Nielsen measures audience through different survey methods, including sophisticated set-top boxes, and categorizes results based on demographics like gender, age, race and income. Nielsen then distributes to TV networks and advertisers data on reach, including details like the percentages of the viewers in specific demographic groups, weekly and monthly averages, and the estimated total number of viewers. Business owners can usually get this information from advertising sales representatives or ad agencies.

Gross Rating Points

Advertisers, media buyers and marketers evaluate ad campaigns by looking at both reach the medium offers and the frequency at which the viewer sees the ad. The tool they use are “gross rating points,” which are calculated by multiplying the audience reached by the frequency of its exposure to the message during a given period. According to Digiday, a rating point is one percent of the potential audience, meaning a show that has a rating of 10 points gets 10 percent of the viewers. So, if a TV ad has a reach of 30 percent of its target audience, and the ad shows four time, the ad campaign has 120 gross ratings points.

Effective Reach

Another way to measure the usefulness of an ad is to measure the effective reach, which tracks the percentage of the possible audience that sees an advertisement and how often that advertisement is viewed. Advertisers use effective reach to judge the quality of the exposure to the ad. Ideally, an advertiser wants many people to see an ad at least a few times. However, if the frequency is too high, the ad is thought to produce diminishing returns. Some advertisers believe an ad must be seen a few times before it becomes effective and must balance frequency with the risks of overexposure.

Using Reach

Advertisers use information about reach to target the consumer demographics or groups that are most likely to buy the product. For instance, a toy maker would want to air ads during children’s programming rather than on late-night talk shows. To make this task easier, in addition to gender, race and region, Nielsen separates ratings into the 12-17 age group, 18-49 age group, and the 55 and older age group. For larger ad campaigns, marketers often test the ad with focus groups before broadcasting it or conduct surveys after its broadcast to determine its effectiveness.

Reach

In the application of statistics to advertising and media analysis, reach refers to the total number of different people or households exposed, at least once, to a medium during a given period. Reach should not be confused with the number of people who will actually be exposed to and consume the advertising, though. It is just the number of people who are exposed to the medium and therefore have an opportunity to see or hear the ad or commercial. Reach may be stated either as an absolute number, or as a fraction of a given population (for instance ‘TV households’, ‘men’ or ‘those aged 25–35’).

For any given viewer, they have been “reached” by the work if they have viewed it at all (or a specified amount) during the specified period. Multiple viewings by a single member of the audience in the cited period do not increase reach; however, media people use the term effective reach to describe the quality of exposure. Effective reach and reach are two different measurements for a target audience who receive a given message or ad.

Since reach is a time-dependent summary of aggregate audience behavior, reach figures are meaningless without a period associated with them: an example of a valid reach figure would be to state that “[example website] had a one-day reach of 1565 per million on 21 March 2004” (though unique users, an equivalent measure, would be a more typical metric for a website).

Reach of television channels is often expressed in the form of “x minute weekly reach” that is, the number (or percentage) of viewers who watched the channel for at least x minutes in a given week.

Reach is the number of people in the Media Market that will likely be exposed to one Spot. Estimating reach is tricky because when you run an ad multiple times, the same person may see the ad more than once but you only want to count them once in Reach. There are many different methods to estimate reach. Most rely on software.

Cumulative/Frequency Reach

Cumulative frequency analysis is the analysis of the frequency of occurrence of values of a phenomenon less than a reference value. The phenomenon may be time- or space-dependent. Cumulative frequency is also called frequency of non-exceedance.

Cumulative frequency analysis is performed to obtain insight into how often a certain phenomenon (feature) is below a certain value. This may help in describing or explaining a situation in which the phenomenon is involved, or in planning interventions, for example in flood protection.

This statistical technique can be used to see how likely an event like a flood is going to happen again in the future, based on how often it happened in the past. It can be adapted to bring in things like climate change causing wetter winters and drier summers.

For impressions, use this formula:

Impressions = Cost / (Clicks Per Impression/1000)

And for frequency, use this formula:

Frequency = Impressions / Unique Users

Discrete & Cumulative distribution

For the different distributions which I will cover in these articles, they are classified as either a Discrete Probability Distribution or Continuous Probability Distribution. A simple way to understand if your data is discrete or continuous is to answer the following question: “Are the number of your outcomes finite?”

If the answer to the above is yes, then you have a discrete dataset. Otherwise, you likely have a continuous dataset.

To put things in a marketing perspective, imagine that you are looking at the number of likes that your Facebook campaign generated, you know that likes are finite because you count the number of likes as 1,2,3, …100, there is no chance of getting a 1.2 or 2.6 likes or other smaller value that isn’t exactly 1 or 2. These outcomes are a set of values rather than a continuous length of values.

Example of a continuous distribution would be the profit margin from your online store. On any given day, the store may report that it’s profit margin is $320. The actual profit margin may not be exactly $320. It could be $320.60, $320.06, or even $320.31415. All these values are different from the other and as such as referred to as a continuous range of values.

Average Opportunity to See (AOTS)

Average OTS is the number of times on average that a member of your target audience will see your ad. Opportunity to See or OTS is a measure in advertising media which denotes number of times the viewer is most likely to see the advertisement. It is basically frequency of media exposure. It is used in media planning or advertising media selection to answer the question- how many times.

Calculation:

OTS is calculated by dividing your TVRs by your reach: At 300 TVRs we have about 70% reach. That means the average OTS is 300 / 70 = 4.2.

Reach = TVRs /  OTS. So if you are planning 50 TVRs at 1.5 OTS it would seem that your reach would be 30%. However, reach is not easily predictable. This is for two reasons:

First with you will see that whilst the growth in TVRs is linear, the growth in reach is non-linear i.e. it decreases as you add on every 100 TVRs. Between 0 and 100 TVRs we generate 50% reach. But when we add on the next 100 TVRs we only generate 65% reach at 200 TVRs.

Different types of campaign on different stations, phased in different ways, with different use of daily schedules (dayparting) will increase reach in different ways. For example, a campaign that runs in weekday daytime between 9am and 5pm may struggle to get over 50% reach even at more than 300 TVRs. This is because you will not be reaching the audience that is working during the day.

Effective frequency/Reach

Frequency is the average number of times the advertisement will be presented to the Reached Population. One way to calculate frequency is to divide the number of Impressions by the Reach. Another way is to divide GRPs by Reach Percentage.

Reach can also be expressed as a percentage, which indicates the percentage of the Population that is exposed to at least one Spot.

Gross Rating Points (GRPs)

Gross Rating Point (GRP) is a measure of the size of an advertising campaign by a specific medium or schedule. GRP is calculated by multiplying the number of Spots by Rating.

In advertising, a gross rating point (GRP) measures impact. GRPs help answer how often “must someone see it before they can readily recall it” and “how many times” does it take before the desired outcome occurs.

Construction

“One GRP is one percent of all potential adult television viewers (or in radio, listeners) in a market.” If they are exposed to the ad three times, then that is 3 GRPs.

GRPs are simply total impressions related to the size of the target population: They are most directly calculated by summing the ratings of individual ads in a campaign.

Mathematically:

GRPs (%) = 100 * Impressions (#) ÷ Defined population (#)

GRPs (%) = 100 * Reach (%) × Average frequency (#)

Road Block

Marketing roadblocks are used to eliminate competitors from the playing field by placing an obstruction before them. The obstruction typically takes the form of overwhelming ad buys that leave no recourse for the competitor to even make an attempt at keeping up. Marketing roadblocks are often the tool of large corporations who have the buying power to carry them out, although they can take place in smaller form across all markets.

Broadcast

There are several ways to create a marketing roadblock when it comes to broadcast advertising. Some companies may choose to purchase all or most of the airtime during a given show or event. This eliminates the competition from making an appearance during the show that is deemed most watched by its target audience. Other companies may aim to dominate an entire network or time slot regardless of programming. Still others may opt for a less all-consuming tactic, by purchasing all the slots leading into and out of commercial breaks. These are considered the most desirable spots, because the viewer is most likely to see them while watching a given show. Such domination of prime ad real estate is an effective targeted roadblocking method.

Print

Print advertising is difficult to roadblock, because magazines or newspapers can just add more pages if there is a need. Where a print ad roadblock can be effective is in the case of an exclusive advertising space deal. For example, if company X is able to secure a contract that eliminates competitors from advertising in a specific print publication, the roadblock technique is in effect. You can find this practice commonly among sports teams who sign up an “official car company” who from that point onward is the only car brand that will appear inside the stadium or on any team paraphernalia.

Internet

Internet advertising combines elements of both broadcast and print advertising, and the roadblocking techniques used take advantage of the best of both media. For example, a company may purchase all the banner ads on a given site for a given period so that no one else can get a foothold. Internet advertising roadblocks can also take place when a company sponsors sites or events with an online presence. The logo of the sponsor company is often integrated with the site and no other company can take part. E-commerce roadblocks are similar to broadcast roadblocks in that they take place over a specific period of time on a specific site and are open to all viewers. They are similar to print roadblocks in that they are non-linear and remain present for the entire allotted period without interruption.

Signage

Marketing roadblocks can literally take place on the road in certain circumstances. Let’s say a local business wants to attract travelers passing through on the interstate. When the business buys up all the existing billboards for 20 miles in either direction so that no competitors can edge in, a marketing roadblock has taken place. Such a technique is particularly effective with transient consumers who do not know enough about the immediate area to understand that competitors may exist. They instead head for the only game in town, according to the ads they’ve seen, and bypass any other options.

Problems

Expense is the No. 1 problem for companies engaging in marketing roadblock techniques. For major corporations, the cost is often gladly absorbed in exchange for the exposure. For small and mid-size businesses, the tactic can prove prohibitively expensive. The development of ad wars is also a factor when two companies battle using roadblocks. For example, if a magazine knows that two rivals are trying to play a game of exclusion or generally outdo one another, the rates tend to rise quickly for both. Companies can defeat themselves by spending on ads just to eliminate their competition with less return than a simple and straight-forward campaign would have brought.

Day or Day part

This established phrase expresses an obvious goal for every project – to be completed on time, according to plan and within the allocated budget.  Of course, there’s a lot that goes into realizing that goal.  Even the best plans change and there is no guarantee that the “project” you start with is the “project” you will end up with.  That’s why it’s so important to have a scheduling strategy that is appropriately comprehensive, consistent and flexible.  That’s what strategic project scheduling is all about.

Depending upon the nature of the project, and related management directives, different approaches can be taken to project sizing and scheduling.  Scheduling strategies are driven by the scheduling trigger (the circumstance driving the scheduling approach). Based on individual needs and circumstances, scheduling triggers demand either a forwards or backwards planning approach.

Working with Scheduling Strategies

Forwards Planning:

Forwards planning strategies are used when no specific project deadline is set, and the tasks are used to determine the schedule, and related completion deadlines. In this case, you start at the beginning of the project and work forward. The project timeline is determined by the total estimated duration of all anticipated tasks. Factoring in dependencies and prerequisites, these durations are added together to form an overall project schedule.

When you are involved in the forward planning scenario, it is a good idea to look at each task at multiple timing levels, based on known, realistic planning assumptions:

• Shortest Completion Time (assuming everything else goes as planned).
• Likely Completion Time (assuming that some problems and changes will occur).
• Longest Completion Time (assuming that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong).

Backwards Planning:

Backwards planning strategies are used when the completion deadline is pre-determined and the project must be managed and scheduled to meet that deadline. In this case, planning starts with the completion date and works backwards, analyzing and organizing tasks and events by their individual end dates in an “if – then” fashion, until a start date is identified.   (Also Read:  Managing Project Milestones)

Key Variables for Schedule Estimating

The first step in the schedule estimating process is to identify your scheduling trigger. In all likelihood, projects will require both approaches based on organizational structure (phases) and task complexity. Regardless of the scheduling trigger, you will need to factor the following elements into your timing estimate:

• Task Durations: The estimated length of time that it will take to complete a task using available resources.
• Parallel Tasks: The tasks that can be completed concurrently.
• Predecessor Tasks: The tasks that must be completed before other, dependent tasks can begin.
• Dependent Tasks: The tasks that cannot begin until predecessor tasks are complete.
• Slack/Float Time: The slack or float exists whenever task completion can extend beyond initial completion dates without delaying the start of subsequent tasks.
• Critical Path: The series of tasks that must occur as scheduled for a project to be completed on time. There is no slack or float time along the critical path, if any tasks on the critical path are delayed, the project will be delayed.

Sales Pattern

The sales pattern is a collection of data about the sale of a particular product or group of products in the business for a given period and displaying it graphically to understand it’s behavior. These sales patterns are used in retail businesses to identify whether the business goals are being met, the effect of price changes of a particular product impacts sales, sales response to advertising, etc.

Understanding the sales pattern in retail business always helps to correlate the sales variations with respect to the various events happening in and around the business every day. The continuous monitoring of the sales pattern would certainly help the retail business to foresee the upcoming risks and take precautions.

Purchase Cycle

The buying cycle, sometimes known as the marketing or sales cycle, is a patterned process consumers and business buyers go through when contemplating a purchase. Various labels and steps have been assigned to this process, though the basic elements are consistent across most diagrams and outlines. Understanding the pattern buyers go through in your industry is key to effective marketing and promotions.

Awareness

The first step in virtually all buying cycle depictions is awareness. This is the point at which a buyer recognizes that he needs something or the point at which he recognizes your product or service and views it as a possibility. Much of a company’s market research and promotions are geared to reach customers with brand messages at the point they first become aware of a need or in an effort to stimulate this reality. Billboards depicting restaurants, for instance, are often used to trigger hunger recognition.

Consideration

The next broad stage in the buying cycle is consideration. This is one of the most impacting stages in terms of your company’s status with a buyer. During this stage, the buyer formulates a consideration set and evaluates each option on factors important to him. A business buyer may consider the scalability of a software solution, for instance, in case his company wants to expand use over time. Your ability to convey benefits that coincide with target customer needs is crucial during this time. Advertising, public relations and sales efforts all contribute to this communication effort.

Purchase

The point of purchase is essentially crunch time in the buying cycle. This is the point at which a buyer has determined which product or service best matches his needs at the most affordable price. If your product, price and promotions have effectively wooed enough customers during the consideration process, you should be in good shape at crunch time. Capturing customer contact information to develop an ongoing relationship for future sales is important if you are the winner of the customer’s purchase decision.

After-Sale

While most buying cycle models include awareness, consideration and purchase stages, not all go beyond those three steps. Those that do depict after-sale buying activities as ranging anywhere from one to four additional steps. In general, after-sale buying cycle stages include application or use of the product, discussions on additional uses, advocacy of the brand or product with others and intention to repeat purchases. Follow-up support, inquiries and genuine customer care are keys during these stages. Customers assess their experiences, which impacts future buying and the positive or negative word of mouth they spread to others.

Product Availability

Product availability is an important supply chain performance measure and appears as a KPI in most companies. However, if the way of measuring it is sub-optimal, we would end up with a supply chain that underperforms on this measure.

Most companies define it at the point of invoicing. Do we have sufficient stocks to service the distributor orders (protect primary sales)? More progressive companies define it at the distributor level. Do our distributors have enough stocks to service the retailer orders (protect secondary sales)? The best definition is, of course, at the retail level where we protect consumer offtake, but the data is not comprehensive.

Availability is normally measured against the customer demand. If you are still measuring it against forecast, it’s a low hanging fruit to start measuring it against actual demand and improve it. A well-known pharma company was actually measuring availability to forecast as the prime measure and reporting a performance of 98%.

Meeting customer requirements is a basic mission of the firm. Business is not only about generating demand but also about fulfilling it. It seems logical, offhand, that firms should have complete stock 100% of the time.

Making products available entails costs, from the design, manufacture, storage, and delivery of an item. Firms are sensitive to investing in capacity or in keeping more inventories to anticipate unforeseen demand. On the other hand, firms are also conscious that product un-availability could mean lost sales and possibly lost opportunities, sometimes to the point that it can determine the long-term survival of the business. Unless one’s product has quality characteristics unmatched by others or has a monopoly in utility, impatient customers will switch to competing brands if their brand of first choice is not available.

Competitive Activity

Company facing a severe market competition will opt for more continuous advertisement through multiple media. The rule is, the more is the intensity of competition, the higher the frequency of advertisement will be.

Marketing Task

Many businesses see the task of marketing as generating leads for salespeople to follow-up. It’s a short-sighted view that is costing small businesses millions. Marketing is the whole process of taking your goods or services to market. It’s made up of many different disciplines, each with their own skills and expertise.

• Developing Marketing Strategies and Plans: The first task is to identify the organization long-run opportunities given its market experience and core competences.
• Capturing Marketing Insights: Marketers must closely monitor the marketing environment to continually asses market potential and forecast demand.
• Connecting with the Customers: The firm must determine how to best create value for its chosen target markets and develop strong, profitable, long-term relationship with customers.
• Building Strong Brands: Marketers need to understand how customers perceive their brands strengths and weakness.
• Shaping the Market Offerings: At the heart of the marketing program is the product, the firm tangible offering to the market, features, and packaging.
• Delivering Value: How can the firm deliver value to its target market? Channel activities are need to make the product offering accessible and available to customers.
• Communicating Value: Marketers must adequately communicate to the target market the value embodied by their products and services.
• Creating Successful Long-term Growth: The marketing strategy should take into account changing global opportunities and challenges.

Budget Constraints

It shows an ability of a company to spend for advertisement. The rule is, the more is the ability to spend, the more continuous the advertisement will be.

Target Group

A target market is a group of people with some shared characteristics that a company has identified as potential customers for its products. Identifying the target market informs the decision-making process as a company design, packages, and markets its product.

Target marketing involves breaking a market into segments and then concentrating your marketing efforts on one or a few key segments consisting of the customers whose needs and desires most closely match your product or service offerings. It can be the key to attracting new business, increasing sales, and making your business a success.

A target market may be broadly categorized by age range, location, income, and lifestyle. Many other demographics may be considered. Their stage of life, their hobbies, interests, and careers, all may be considered.

Demographic Segmentation

Demographic grouping is based on measurable statistics, such as:

• Gender
• Age
• Income level
• Marital status
• Education
• Race
• Religion

Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation involves segmenting the market based on location. Home addresses are one example, but depending on the scope of your business, you could also use:

• Neighbourhood
• Postal or ZIP code
• Area code
• City
• Province or state
• Region
• Country (if your business is international)

Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation divides the target market based on socioeconomic class or lifestyle preferences. The socioeconomic scale ranges from the affluent and highly educated at the top to the uneducated and unskilled at the bottom.

They should be as specific as possible, and as actionable as can be reasonably expected. Avoid terms like “endeavor to” and “make best efforts”.  If there are concrete exceptions to an expectation, list them out.  If there is a process for having exceptions approved, document it. If there are expected seller consequences for non-compliance, identify them.

Buying Guidelines should be specific to the client’s business conditions and communication objectives. These should drive tactical goals in areas such as preferred or restricted content, commercial separation requirements, quality vs. efficiency expectations, competitive exclusivity, etc.

Include a brief target audience and media objectives overview including considerations beyond gender/age, secondary targets, recommended buying demographic or metrics, reach versus frequency or engagement priorities.

What are your delivery expectations versus Planned and Purchased? These are often expressed as a target percent vs. the goal (i.e. Actual delivery from 95-105% vs. Planned). These may also be further stratified to include expectations by week/flight/brand/message/commercial length (+/- 10% for example) within what may be broader annual or corporate buys.

What level of vendor contracts is required on your behalf? Detailed, current (and signed) orders should protect your investment for every media property order and include the relevant terms and conditions. These are the link between agency and seller in the media supply chain. If you have a broken link, you have no accountability. This expectation should be outlined in the buying guidelines.

How are post-performance methodologies defined? Provide definitions and timing for reporting as appropriate per media type: broadcast media posting rules, circulation analysis methodology, buy types and count-of-record source for digital payments.

What are the provisions and timing for recovery of delivery shortfalls or non-compliance: credits, makegoods, bonus weight, under delivery recovery, etc.? What is the unit of measure for delivery? For example, in National TV, delivery is often measured over the course of a full broadcast year by network. Best practice in local TV is quarterly delivery at the station level (not market).

Do you have time of day (daypart) and other placement requirements and preferences including definitions?

What are your reporting requirements that support an appropriate and timely performance feedback loop? How often will post performance reports be delivered, and how long after the end of the media measurement period in question, and what will be consequences to the seller (and agency, if applicable) for any performance shortfalls vs. agreed compliance items?

Have you defined expectations for financial management including timely invoice reconciliation and payment? Consider specific target dates by media channel (i.e. 60 days end of quarter, etc.). Be aware of the client’s own payment terms to the agency and how these might impact agency payment to sellers.

Phase 1: Pre-placement

Advertising isn’t as simple as making a really good-looking ad design and slapping it up on a wall. There’s an entire strategy that is put in place. Coming up with that strategy often takes the most time, as there are several factors to consider.

Phase 2: Placement

It’s time for takeoff! You’ve found your target audience and discovered where they’re most likely to interact with your campaign. You’ve met with vendors and decided on the ones that are priced the best and located in the optimal spots.

In this phase, media buyers make sure that the media is actually delivered to the vendor and that the vendor fulfills the requests that have been made. The buyer is responsible for making sure that the ad actually appears where it was paid to appear and is in the right environment.

It’s always best to prepare for the worst. If your advertisements aren’t doing well in one place, move them elsewhere. If they’re getting more interaction at certain times of the day, adjust settings and your budget accordingly. Constant review and reevaluation isn’t optional it’s necessary. Nothing is set in stone.

Phase 3: Post-placement

What was this all for if not for measuring advertising effectiveness?

When working with a media buyer, this is a good point to touch base with them and look at the data. Were the places you chose to put your advertisements effective? What worked well? What could have been better? Was too much money spent in one place, and not enough in another? Search for both negative and positive patterns, and make a note so that your next campaign runs even better than the last.

The activities involved in buying are called buying process. The activities involved in buying process are buying elements and sub-functions. The process of buying starts from buying plan. But it ends with actual buying and experience from the use after buying.

The sub-function of buying involves in buying process can be divided in four types as making buying plan, making contact with, talking for agreement and contracting.

1. Describe your company

Provide context and background information on your company to help the designer or creative team get a better understanding of your business. Who are you and what services and/or products do you offer? Include links to your website and any other background material that might be helpful.

2. Summarize the project

What is the project? And why do you need it? Do you need a corporate identity kit for your new company? Are you refreshing your company’s Facebook and Twitter pages for a new season? Describe what the project is, what it entails, and why you’re doing it.

3. Explain your objectives

This is probably the most important part of the brief, and it’s essential that you think through your strategy and objectives completely before you get the project underway. Why do you need this project? What are you hoping to achieve with it? What are your goals? Is there a problem you’re trying to solve? How will you measure success? For example, if you’re developing an eBook, you might measure success by the number of downloads. These details will help the designer understand your goals and come up with solutions that address them.

4. Define your target audience

Who’s your customer? Who are you trying to reach with this project or campaign? Share demographic information about who they are and any behavioral insights you may have on them.

5. Outline the deliverables you need

Do you need a one-page brochure? A batch of 10 banner ads? A logo for print, just for the web, or for both? Be sure to include the file formats you need (i.e., JPG, PNG, PSD), size information (i.e., 300×250 pixels), and any other important details needed to deliver the right assets. 

6. Identify your competition

Who are your competitors? You may want to include an overview of the competitive landscape and any trends or market conditions impacting your industry. For this project, what are your competitors doing as a point of comparison and as a point of differentiation? For example, if you’re refreshing your logo, what types of logos and colors do your competitors use? These details can greatly help inform the direction the designer will go in (they’ll do additional research as well). You can also include a few examples of designs you like or don’t like.

7. Include details on the tone, message, and style

The style and tone should be consistent with your brand and will also hinge on what the project is, what you’re trying to achieve, and what action you want your customers to take. To help inform the messaging and ensure it aligns with your objectives, be sure to include your strategic positioning and the key messages that need to be addressed. For example, if you’re creating a landing page for a contest, you’d probably want the messaging and design to be lively and fun to inspire people to enter. If you’re developing an annual report, you’d most likely want something that looks and sounds more formal and professional to instill trust and confidence. If you have a brand style guide or examples of past campaigns or related projects, be sure to share them with your designer. And also provide any other factors or requirements that might affect the creative direction.

8. Provide the timing

If you have a timeline in mind for your project, include it in the brief. During your kickoff meeting or initial conversations with your designer, make sure to discuss the timeline and agree upon a completion date. It’s also a good idea to talk about the overall creative process and discuss if edits and how many rounds of them are possible and whether or not they’re included if it’s a fixed-price contract. 

9. Specify your budget

If you have a set budget for the project (which is often the case), include it in the brief and discuss it with your designer. If the designer’s estimate exceeds your budget, talk it over and agree upon realistic expectations, deliverables, and project costs before getting started.

10. List the key stakeholders

If other people on your team or within your organization need to be included in the review process, provide their contact information. You can also include how you’d like to receive deliverables and provide feedback. On Upwork, the Messages tool makes it easy to communicate and share files.

Elements of Buying Brief

Planning For Buying

Planning for buying is the primary function of buying process. At first, the buyer realizes need of goods. Then makes plan for buying of goods, finally takes decision to buy the goods. Planning begins is buyer’s mind from want or desire for goods. Then the buyer decides when to buy, where to buy from, how to buy the goods. Such decision depends specially on buying situation, buying motive and buying behavior of the buyer.

Hence, need of buying is realized in buying plan. Budget for buying is estimated. Then decision for buying is taken. Finally, buying plan is ready for the combined form of mental and physical activities.

Contact Function

After making buying plan, the customers think from where and which source the goods to buy. For this they should search for suppliers and identify, prepare their list and establish contact with them for supplying the goods. This is called contact function. The customers may contact the suppliers through correspondence or visiting to their supply sources. Generally, if a large amount of goods are to be bought, the buyers contact supplier or sellers personally and find out the capacity and possibility of the supplier for supplying the necessary goods.

Before selecting supplier of necessary goods, the buyers think about different matters such as price of the goods, delivery schedule, transportation cost, quality, capacity of the supplier, means and resources, after-sale services, promotional policy, credibility and responsibility of the supplier, terms and conditions of selling, buying plan etc. Only then, proper supplier should be selected and contacted.

Art of Media Buying Negotiation in Media Buying

Another important function of buying process is to reach the decision to buy and sell goods or services through negotiation. After buying plan has been made, perspective supplier has been identified and contact with seller has been established, negotiation is held between buyer and seller. Such negotiation is held on terms and conditions of supply, price of the goods, discount, mode of payment, time, delivery schedule, means of delivery etc. and then selling and buying reaches the conclusion.

After such negotiation, buyer decides to give purchase order and makes agreement with supplier to supply the goods.

Contractual Function

Contractual function is the actual buying function. After the agreement has been made with supplier on terms and conditions, buyer gives purchase order. If the goods are to be bought by final consumers, they make agreement with seller on price at the selling place and buy immediately. Buying may be on cash or credit depending upon their agreement. If the goods are purchased on credit, the buyer has to follow and implement necessary terms and conditions mentioned in credit documents.

Industrial consumers, institutional buyers, government offices etc also make agreement with supplier to buy necessary goods. Buyer and seller both parties should follow the contract made for the supply of goods. If any party violets the terms and conditions or does not carry out the responsibility according to the agreement, the other party has the right to get compensation or fine or any loss. The seller should supply the goods as according to the agreement and the buyer should make payment of price according to the terms and conditions.

Plan Presentation and Client Feedback

Customer feedback is the information, insights, issues, and input shared by your community about their experiences with your company, product, or services. This feedback guides improvements of the customer experience and can empower positive change in any business even (and especially) when it’s negative.

Customer feedback is important because it serves as a guiding resource for the growth of your company. Don’t you want to know what you’re getting right and wrong as a business in the eyes of your customers?

There are 5 main reasons why you would want to collect feedback.

• Customer engagement
• Understand your customers
• Product improvement
• Obtain testimonials, reviews, referrals
• Evaluate and get better things

Ways of collecting important feedback from your customers.

• Regularly call your customers
• Provide live chat support
• Social media activity monitoring
• Collect feedback from your live chat sessions
• Provide feedback forms
• Customer service performance analytics
• Provide an active online community with support
• New and existing customer email surveys
• Use NPS to evaluate customer loyalty
• Create a feedback area on order confirmation page
• Online Polls
• Review feedback on your competitor’s sites
• Display any Positive Customer Feedback
• Facebook reactions
• Make your online store more ‘human’
• Offer a gift or prize in return for feedback
• Use negative feedback to showcase professionalism
• Create a feedback area for cart abandonment
• In-App feedback
• Ask for feedback at the point of service

An Media budget is an estimate of a company’s promotional expenditures over a certain time period. The term “advertising budget” in essence is nothing but planning the advertising expenditure. The amount of money to be utilized for advertising purpose is charged to the profit and loss account of the co. and therefore is of vital importance both to the company and to the advertising agency that handles advertiser’s account. Advertising costs money & before spending, it is necessary to ensure its proper investment.

Every ad is a long term investment in the personality of a brand. Therefore, when advertising is recognized as a type of future investment, care must be taken today to make it more effective with proper planning of advertising budget.

More importantly, it is the money a company is willing to set aside to accomplish its marketing objectives. When creating an advertising budget, a company must weigh the value of spending an advertising dollar against the value of that dollar as recognized revenue.

Importance

1. Check on Media expenditure

Media budget helps to have a check on advertising expenditure. Depending upon the budget, the advertiser will utilize the right funds to achieve the advt. objectives. There will be no wastage of funds by over spending on advertising the right amount will be spent to achieve the advertising objectives.

2. Approval from top management

The framing of Media budget will enable the advertising manager to obtain approval from the top management. If the top management feels that the budget amount is more, then the advertising manager may have to provide necessary justification for higher budgets.

3. Balanced focus

The ad budget is prepared taking into consideration the requirements of the products that are to be advertised. The right product is to be allocated the right amount of money. Again, there will be proper focus on the right place & the right period of advertising.

4. Facilitates Planned Execution

The right amount will be spent on the right product in the right media at the right period and place. This will enable the advertiser to achieve ad objectives.

5. Provides direction for drafting of Ads

The Ad budget provides a proper direction for drafting of ads. Depending upon the budget, the ads will be filmed or drafted. When there is a large budget, the advertiser may think of selecting popular personalities, shooting the film at exclusive locations, using sophisticated computer graphics & so on.

6. Selection of Media

When Media budget is large, the advertiser can select rich media mix which includes television channels, various magazines, newspapers & even outdoor media. However, if the budget is small, the advertiser has to be very selective in the choice of media.

Companies’ expenditures on print, broadcast and other forms of advertising rely on the funds in their media budgets. Media buyers specialize in wringing the best array of exposures for brands and products out of their clients’ media allocations. Buyers’ efforts drive down the cost of each TV or radio spot, newspaper or magazine ad, billboard, transit ad or any other pay-to-play placement, maximizing advertising impressions and effectiveness. New media options take their places in the 21st-century media budget, expanding brands online.

Advertising Task

A more effective budgeting strategy would be the one which considers the firm’s overall promotional objectives. The budgeting then is done according to the requirements for meeting these goals.

Objective and task method:

The most logical budget setting method is the objective and task method whereby the company sets its promotion budget based on what it wants to accomplish with promotion. This method entails defining specific promotion objectives, the tasks needed to achieve these objectives and estimating the costs of performing these tasks.

Objective setting and budgeting should not come in sequence, one after another. They should be considered simultaneously because it is difficult to establish a budget without specific objectives in mind, and setting objectives without regard to how much money is available makes no sense.

The approach used by the objective and task method is buildup approach consisting of three steps:

• Defining the communications objectives that are to be accomplished,
• Determining the specific strategies and tasks needed to attain them
• Estimating the costs associated with performance of these strategies and tasks. The total budget is based on the accumulation of these costs.

Implementing the objective and task approach is somewhat more involved. The manager must monitor this process throughout and change strategies depending on how well objectives are attained.

This process involves several steps:

1. Finalise Communication objectives.

Any company generally has two kinds of objectives viz. the marketing objectives for the product and the communications objectives. The first job is to establish the marketing objective and when that is done the net task is to determine what specific communications objectives will be designed to accomplish these goals. Communications objectives must be specific, attainable, and measurable, as well as time limited.

2. Determine tasks required:

The strategic plan designed to attain the objectives consists of various elements one of which could be advertising in various media, sales promotions, and/or other elements of the promotional mix. Each has its own role to perform and hence the specific tasks should be finalised.

3. Estimate aggregate expenditures:

The next stage is to determine the estimated costs associated with the tasks fixed the last step.

4. Monitor:

A regular monitoring is required as to how much the objectives have been attained effectively. If advertisements are an investment then a close monitoring of the invested amount and its return is must.

5. Re-evaluate objectives:

Once specific objectives have been attained the budget should be reevaluated to check how better it can be used to attain the other goals. Thus, if one has achieved the level of consumer awareness sought, the budget should be altered to stress a higher-order objective such as evaluation or trial.

The major advantage of the objective and task method is that the budget is developed from the bottom to up, which is a proper and rational managerial approach. The method does not rely on past sales figures, forecasted sales, what the competition spends and considers only those factors, which are under the advertiser’s control.

6. Payout Planning:

The budgeting for a new product is a very different story because the first months of a new product’s introduction require heavier-than-normal advertising and promotion appropriations to stimulate higher levels of awareness and subsequent trial. James O. Peckham studied the Nielson figures of more than 40 years and estimated that a new entry should be spending at approximately twice the desired market share. But the major question is what will be the profitable amount of spending on promotion of the new product.

In order to determine this, marketers often develop a payout plan that determines the investment value of the advertising and promotion appropriation. The basic idea is to project the revenues the product will generate, as well as the costs it will incur, over two to three years. Based on an expected rate of return, the payout plan will assist in determining how much advertising and promotions expenditure will be necessary when the return might be expected.

Competitive Framework

In a market with a large number of competitors and a high advertising spending, a brand must advertise more heavily to be heard.

Market Dominance, Market Coverage

To get a good market share in comparison to their competitors, the company should have a better product in terms of quality, uniqueness, demand and catchy advertisements with resultant response of the customers. All this is possible if the advertisement budget is high.

Despite the empirical relevance of advertising strategies in concentrated markets, the economics literature is largely silent on the effect of persuasive advertising strategies on pricing, market structure and increasing (or decreasing) dominance. In a simple model of persuasive advertising and pricing with differentiated goods, we analyze the interdependencies between ex-ante asymmetries in consumer appeal, advertising and prices. Products with larger initial appeal to consumers will be advertised more heavily but priced at a higher level that is, advertising and price discounts are strategic substitutes for products with asymmetric initial appeal. We find that the escalating effect of advertising dominates the moderating effect of pricing so that post-competition market shares are more asymmetric than pre-competition differences in consumer appeal. We further find that collusive advertising (but competitive pricing) generates the same market outcomes, and that network effects lead to even more extreme market outcomes, both directly and via the effect on advertising.

Media Cost

Media cost is the price you pay display, run, or present your advertisement or campaign during a specified date range or campaign period. There are many different ways to price media including points, impressions, flips, clicks, leads, actions, days, weeks, months, etc. Media Cost excludes the cost to create the advertisement (copy or artwork) and other costs.

Market Task

Marketing management has to do a set of tasks necessary for success in marketing. The basic tasks of marketing are as follows:

• Develop marketing strategies and plans
• Creating marketing information system
• Build customer relationship
• Build strong brands
• Determine marketing mix
• Deliver value
• Communicate value
• Create long-term growth
• Implementation and control

Pricing

Advertising costs are a type of financial accounting that covers expenses associated with promoting an industry, entity, brand, product, or service. They cover ads in print media and online venues, broadcast time, radio time, and direct mail advertising.

Advertising costs will in most cases fall under sales, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenses on a company’s income statement. They are sometimes recorded as a prepaid expense on the balance sheet and then moved to the income statement when sales that are directly related to those costs come in.

Advertising costs are typically not a surprise to a business owner. In fact, many will have budgeted for a certain amount of advertising costs. The U.S. Small Business Administration notes that most companies set their marketing budget based on revenues.

Frequency of Purchase

Purchase Frequency is the number of times an average customer purchases a good or service from your store in a specified time period.

Purchase Frequency = No. orders / No. unique customers

Remember that some businesses won’t typically have people buying from them regularly. Online stores that sell larger, high-value goods can expect to have a lower Purchase Frequency than businesses selling consumable products.

Reasons:

Repeat shoppers drive business success. One of the most common mistakes businesses make is constantly chasing new customers. Why is this a mistake? While new customers are important, it’s your existing customers who drive the success of your business. There are two main reasons for this. Repeat customers are cheaper and easier to acquire than new shoppers. According to one estimate, trying to recruit one new customer costs up to five times more than nurturing an existing one. Second, engaged and retained customers are your best fans and biggest advocates! That same research study found that loyal customers spend 60% more than one-off customers, and are five times more likely to share positive word of mouth messages about your business. If your customers are busy recruiting new customers on your behalf, it means you don’t have to! So, keeping your existing customers coming back time after time makes sense for your bottom line.

It helps you to understand how to drive profitability. You have two main routes for increasing sales among your existing market: you can either attempt to encourage your customers to buy more with each visit, which is known as increasing the average order value, or you can attempt to get your customers to shop more frequently with you. Until you know how frequently your customers are already purchasing from you, it’s impossible to choose the best possible route.

It helps you segment your market and structure your marketing strategy around your segments’ habits. After decades of research, supermarkets know that they can essentially segment their customers into two types based on their habits: weekly shoppers, who try to grab everything they need for the week in one go, and top-up shoppers, who might also do a weekly, or even a monthly shop, but who pop in to buy the odd item they need here and there. Knowing the distinction is important there is little need in trying to tempt top-up shoppers into greater purchasing frequency with bulk discount deals, for instance. By combining knowledge about how often your customers are purchasing with demographic and other information about your customers’ buying behavior, you can perform a segmentation analysis that can help you create highly targeted, powerful marketing campaigns.

It’s the basis for deeper understanding into your operations. While customer purchasing frequency is a simple metric, it holds the key to much deeper analysis that can help you optimize your processes. For example, starting with frequency of purchase data, you can pinpoint the exact days of the week and times of the day when the most profitable purchasing takes place vital information for smoothing inventory management and supply chain operations. You can also identify those customers that contribute the most to your overall revenues and profitability, and develop appropriate methods to reward them.