I have a client who has agreed to signing on with us. She also plans to do some print and TV ads as well. The business owners have agreed in principle but have asked her for her advertising plan. She has been struggling for two weeks now. Putting together this plan is obviously not in her skill set. We have a great rapport and I have given her some pointers but progress is still lagging. Is there such a thing as a boiler plate advertising plan of some sort out there that I can give to her to provide some guidance?
Hi Tony,
Sounds like a great start. Congratulations! The quick answer to your question about a boiler plate, as far as I know, there is none. But I am sure someone, somewhere has some guidelines.
I was just tasked to put together a Labor Day promotion for a client that is running now. To accomplish this I drew on what I've learned over the years. At this point all I can do is wait and see. Now about your client's situation...
My first thought is if she is struggling, maybe the owners haven't given her enough parameters?
Is her plan supposed to be for a specific period of time? What is overall goal? What do the owners want to see as far as results? What have they tried before? What has worked? What bombed?
What kind of budget are they looking at?
Without knowing where she is, it's hard to offer anything solid.
I can suggest any plan needs to be geared toward the kind of results you are looking for. Determine who your prospective audience is and then devise a theme that will capture their attention and imagination.
This is the strategy part of the plan. Once you know what you want to accomplish, you can figure out how to accomplish it i.e. tactics. Here you use the above information to decide what media you want to use and how.
I hope this helps a bit. I'm not far from you (Keysville) so if you would like to brainstorm a bit, let me know.
Andy
P.S. I know very little about television advertising - I'd very much appreciate it if you could pass on what you learn, especially about how to produce creative and buy time.
Andy's questions about establishing goals and objectives is 100% on target. The good news here is you have a chance to be a hero. A hero gets more of the budget. My guess is your client does not have enough budget to do all the media she wants to do. I suggest looking at RAB and finding the best complimentary media for radio. You will find pros and cons here also. Include it in your presentation. You may want to put together a monthly flow chart for the year. This is a visual so the client can see the promotions or flights and when they will run. Below is something very simple that you can alter for a base marketing budget.
