As media proliferates in types available and number of opportunities, picking the right combination to actually produce results is getting harder and harder.

These tips can help you get the most out of your advertising budgets in 2009.

1. Have your online sales process right before you advertise
   - Perhaps test with some cheap PPC Search traffic first
2. Have your objectives clearly defined
   - Is it sales, visitors, or even phone calls that you are targeted on?
3. Start an affiliate program
   - Emusic.com do it very well by paying a bounty for anyone getting them a free trial subscriber
4. Consider auction models
   - e.g Bid4Spots on radio allows you to select the price you want to pay as well as areas and
   target audiences. And radio can be a good place to sell music!
5. TV has never been cheaper
   - Especially ITV. Don’t think you need six figure budgets, a £10k media budget can get you on air and a commercial can be made for only a few £ ‘000 these days.
6. You don’t need a series of 4 ads to tell you if a title works
   - This is a staple of the newspaper and magazine advertising sales people but we know from
   years of response data that ads usually work right away or never at all
7. Doordrops can work very well -
   Household distributions by leaflet are very old skool and low tech, but they can work for the
   entertainments industry. NB Royal Mail is the best carrier by far.
8. Radio promotions are very effective for most products
   - They get involvement from the listener and get under the ‘ad avoidance’ radar
9. Loose inserts have never been cheaper
   - And they are portable, can be personalised and have the handy ability to end up beside a PC
10. Measure everything
    - E.g. when you are on radio are you looking at the effect on your brand term search impression
    levels on Google?

To this day I’m still surprised that no record label has built a proper marketing ‘funnel’ for their artists and used the techniques of direct marketing to optimum effect.

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