The first big assignment I was tasked with after starting with the Devils was to take a good hard look at the given budget and make adjustments to ensure each dollar is spent with as much efficiency possible.

​

My Ideology

What's the key to allocating money to its' best use? You have to know the value of the many instruments available to promote yourself. I do this by looking at both Quantitative and Qualitative measures. 

​

Quantitatively, I like to start by taking a look at the variations of a very important, albeit simple statistic - CPM. CPM is the the cost per 1000 impressions, or how much you will pay for every 1000 views. Depending on your objectives, you can take this one step further and look at unique impressions, which is how many different people will see your ad. If 1 person views your ad 100 times, well it counts as just 1 unique impression. This would count as 100 impressions under a regular CPM model. Both are important to know. Salesmen have catchy ways of posing prices to seed a "perceived value".   By relying on CPM and its' variations, I remove the clutter and cut straight to the nuts and bolts of an ad's pricing. If using digital, we can take these statistics a couple steps forward by looking at cost per clicks, and cost per acquisition (sale).  A great tool to have and another argument for utilizing digital that I will go in more depth under my "digital" page.

​

Taking a qualitative look at a marketing asset takes a bit more critical thinking, as all CPM's are not created equal.  A magazine ad salesman may give a set CPM based on subscribers and issues sold. After some digging let's say we find that the ad is a mere strip in page 18. How many people will turn to page 18 and actually take a look and register your advertisement in their brain?  You may want to slash the amount of promised impressions by 75%, quadrupling your CPM. On the opposite end of the spectrum, what if we hold an event to promote your brand/product, thus allowing potential customers to test out your product, ask questions to brand ambassadors, all while having a good time? It's going to cost significantly more per person than running a commercial, but you can't replicate that sort of impression on a tv screen. 

​

I'd like to consider marketing a mix of art and science. The statistics matter, but so does the overall feel of an ad. Does it resonate with and/or move a potential customer to action? Does it capture emotion or speak to one's logic? Does the price match the value, do the performance metrics stack up? I take a look at both factors before making a critical decision of how to allocate a budget, or purchasing individual advertising space. 

​

My Ideology In Practice:

Out of respect to my employer I will not share specific dollar amounts. I will instead explain our budget in terms of "100 units." In the grand scheme of a year long marketing budget, I will say that 100 units is a medium-low amount in comparison to our business costs and revenue streams, so making each unit stretch is vital. 

​

What jumped off the screen immediately was that 55% of the budget, or 55  units, were being spent with the local newspaper's ad agency for a mix of traditional newspaper ads digital advertising services. I conducted a complete audit of exactly what we were getting with our money. After a deep dive into the numbers, I found that we were paying a near $40 CPM rate for a mix of front page newspaper ads, and small website banner ads that provide big impression numbers, but do little in quality views, actual clicks, or trackable sales. 

​

To put that number into perspective, I run Google Ads and Facebook Ads from anywhere between a $1-$5 CPM rate in the Binghamton area, depending on the ad type and objective. The beautiful thing with these two ad networks is that they cover so many potential people, you can almost always reach your target audience while delivering more quality views, and better click rates. 

​

The answer was simple. Take out the middle man and use those 55 units in a drastically more impactful way handling all digital ads ourselves. We could hit those lost newspaper readers through our own digital means and with our tv and radio partners. 

​

Now it is not in my nature to come in like a cowboy, guns blazing, demanding change just for change sake.  This was a simple matter of doing my duty for my employer to spend the budget as wisely as I can. I knew the newspaper deal went back 20+ years so I ran this by our president to ensure this would not have any major political or other negative cause and effect reactions. I got the go ahead and made the changes despite heavy pressure from newspaper executives. 

​

I scaled back another 4 units that were being spent with a radio company that simply broadcasted too far out of our target audience range. I took those saved 4 units and allocated them to outdoor advertising. Why outdoor? Binghamton University has a large student body with educational buildings, dorm rooms, and popular bars all immediately surrounding the downtown area where our arena is located. Many of these students are new to the city and may not be familiar with us. Coupled with the fact that we can utilize city given banners on light poles, our own surrounding arena property, and our partnering bars and restaurants to serve as free hosted ad space, the cost was relatively low.  We just needed to pay for the physical materials. Doing so we capitalized on the students, and all of those who travel to the downtown area. 

 

All of our other longstanding TV and Radio deals were either trade only or a mix of trade and cash at a very reasonable cost. I left those unchanged from the previous year. 

​

These judgement calls are not always easy and require a lot of thought and research. As I did with the Devils, I can promise to use my knowledge in a way that demands the best for your marketing budget.