This time of year much of the programming on television is dedicated to March Madness. For about six weeks in March and April the content of hundreds of college basketball games fill the schedules of multiple networks.
If you are watching many of these games surely you noticed there are a ton of advertisements. In a college game there are a minimum of eight television timeouts, in addition to the five timeouts each team has available to them in every game. Because of all these timeouts it’s no doubt that you could easily name more than five brands that are continuously being promoted during all these breaks. Obviously there is a lot of value to putting those brands in March Madness to make sure you recognize them.
March Madness is an event. That event is what brings the viewers, which brings the advertisers. It’s the event that makes it extraordinarily easy for the advertisers to get the most viewers in the smallest amount of time and space.
Unlike a handful of advertisers, the vast majority of businesses can’t afford the prices charged for advertising during an event such as March Madness. If your business can’t afford those prices, does that mean you are out of luck, or should you create your own “event” instead?
Actually, neither.
Fortunately, your business can benefit from built-in “events” throughout the year that don’t have outrageous advertising rates attached to them. One such “event” has to do with the change of seasons throughout the year.
Take advantage of the change of the seasons. Consumers almost instinctively adjust their buying habits on a seasonal basis. Consumers are active during seasonal changes and you can make money from this by asking for their business at these specific times. One of the biggest benefits of the change of seasons “event” is that you don’t have to pay a premium to participate. There’s no extra fee or producer of the event to charge outrageous advertising fees. Get active promotionally during these times and adjust your offerings according to the seasons. Even if you don’t have a seasonal product or service, it doesn’t matter. You can always adjust pricing or add-ons in order to make your offerings more attractive and valuable to consumers when they might not have otherwise been thinking of you.
Keep this in mind though, if you don’t get proactive about marketing your products and services at key times of the year, someone else will. Who do you think would earn that business?
Contributed by Jeff Vice.