Media CPS
What techniques are avaliable to provide proper adjustments so that all media heve essentially equal CPS'S?
The first and most important place to start is implementing a reporting system to keep track of the CPS. Do you have a monthly marketing report or similar system to analyze this? If so, you are ahead of the game.
Once you have an idea which mediums have the higher and lower CPS's the way to balance them out is usually to move dollars between the mediums. At some point the law of diminishing returns will kick in as you spend more money and your CPS will rise for more efficient sources. Likewise, spending less money in some sources will increase your efficiency and bring down the CPS.
In the end it is almost impossible to get all of the sources to have the same CPS. Making adjustments to move towards that goal should make you more profitable in the end though.
The one thing to make sure you avoid in this effort is just spending more money for the sake of spending more money. For instance, if you have a $750 CPS for newspaper and a $1,250 CPS on TV logic says you should spend more money in newspaper. If you are already in every publication with large ads the additional money may not develop any more leads and all you accomplished is to increase the CPS without creating any more leads or starts.
Have you seen any recent trends in the CPS for Newspaper? Our CPS in Newspaper is ridiculously high. We're in several weeklies because of our geography. I just suggested cutting this budget and redirecting this money elsewhere and I'm waiting on a final decision.
Marci
If you have better places (lower CPS areas) to redirect the dollars we suggest doing so. There may be some areas that are working and the ones that are not are driving the CPLs up. Can you differentiate the CPS performance between publications and the different ads in the publications? Have inserts worked there in the past?
Our Internet CPS is $458...a big gap between that of $8000 for newspaper. So, theoretically, I can get 17 Internet starts for every one news paper start. I'm noticing a trend of most of the local schools shying away from the big daily around here. I'd be very curious to see some newspaper ads that really work. No, Inserts have not worked here in the past from what I can tell.
Have you just done display ads or have line ads been a part of the mix? I would move as much money to Internet as you can with that CPS--it is fantastic! I am sure there is more potential there.
We've done display and line ads in some papers. I'm now looking for more and more internet sources. I will likely shrink our newspaper buy and transfer that money to internet and other sources.
