In the 19th century, an American merchant called John Wannamaker was credited with creating what was in effect the world’s first department store, or at least initiating the concept of having a set price for goods and everything being returnable. Things we take for granted now, but back then was something of a novel concept as bartering and haggling was more commonplace. This may not sound like it’s related to agribusiness and agriculture marketing, but bear with me.
Wannamaker was also somewhat of a pioneer when it came to advertising. Recognising the value but also the pitfalls, he is recorded as saying ‘Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.’ This has been paraphrased and repeated many times since and, to a large extent, remains true.
But what if it wasn’t?
What if we could more accurately understand who our advertising reached, and where they were more likely to pay attention?
Doubtless the growth in digital advertising, and the ability to track, monitor and ‘watch’ what people do online with cookies and other tools has had a significant impact on analytics and measurement in the digital environment. But online is not necessarily the ‘go to’ media platform for some sectors, agriculture being one of them. Our research suggests print media in the ag sector is still more popular, has a longer lifespan and is the most important channel for reaching an audience that isn’t sat in front of a computer for the majority of the working day.
In the print arena, performance is still largely estimated by each publication’s media pack. Some titles will have their circulation figures audited, lending more authenticity and authority to them, but even then the difference between confirmed copies distributed / bought and actually being avidly read is open to debate and interpretation.
Imagine being able to gain an inherent (and accurate) understanding of the audience of a title – who they are, what their interests are and how frequently they read a specific publication. It would be a gamechanger in planning a paid media campaign. Can you imagine planning a campaign with robust and independent knowledge of the actual readership of the titles you were targeting?
RDP sees such a world
That’s why we instigated an in-depth piece of research to gain a true understanding and insight into farmers’ reading habits. With around 1,000 responses across all sectors including arable, livestock and dairy, we used the data to create a new metric, Average Issue Readership (AIR) per magazine, and also an accurate measure of digital audience size and profile across the primary agricultural media websites in the UK.
This process and the new metrics it has generated means that, when planning a paid media campaign for our clients, we can be much more targeted and ensure that the largest percentage of our clients’ intended audience see the adverts, and the budget delivers best value for money. By leveraging this and applying our skilled and experienced design team to create bespoke, eye-catching and impactful graphics, we are delivering for our clients, whilst optimising their spend.
We’re sure that Mr Wannamaker would have appreciated the additional insight to help him identify the 50% of his advertising spend that could be reallocated, but our research and analysis can still help our clients, existing and future, to make the most of their advertising spend.
If you’re unsure that your current advertising budget is being utilised to its best, then maybe you should be talking to the agency that has done the research and knows how to spend your money most effectively. Maybe you should be speaking to RDP.
