4 THINGS TO EVALUATE BEFORE YOUR MEDIA BUY

There are many marketing options out there, and it can be overwhelming to sift through the information and determine the best fit for your company. There are several key factors to consider that will help you compare apples to apples and identify the most appropriate and effective marketing vehicle for your company and the outcome you are looking to achieve.

1) Define Your Goal Are you looking to generate brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, gain “likes” on Facebook, promote a new product, maximize your trade show investment—or all of the above? Who is your target market? Are you looking to target specific business types or geographic areas? Outlining short- and long-term initiatives will help set the scope for your marketing plan and allow you to evaluate options more effectively.

2) For Print Circulation: Is It Audited? It’s important that your media partner is able to guarantee that your message is reaching the intended audience. The best way to ensure you are connecting with the most qualified, engaged prospects in the industry is to look at a publisher’s audit statement. The auditing process is done through a third party and verifies each reader is a qualified industry professional who is a decision-maker in their company and has requested the publication. View WFB's recent Publisher's Statement and check out the graphic below to see the Wood Floor Business audience breakdown for our printed publication.

3) For a Digital Audience: Evaluate Integrity In today’s world, your prospects are consuming information on many different platforms, from email to websites to social media. To ensure you’re connecting with your best prospects, you must evaluate the integrity of the audience you are paying to reach. Some important questions to ask:

• How many visitors and/or page views does a website receive?

• ​How many monthly impressions are your ads guaranteed?

• How many qualified industry professionals are on an email list?

• How are those lists cultivated and managed?

• Have recipients opted in to receive the emails?

• What open rate can you expect to receive?

Click here for an overview of WFB’s digital audience.

4) Seek Proven Statistics One of the wonderful things about digital advertising is that it is trackable. By asking the questions outlined above, you will have a good idea what to expect going into a campaign. If a media partner is unable to provide you with proven average statistics over a period of time, that should be a red flag. A reputable media partner will often partner with a third party to track the analytics of your campaign and should provide a stat report on a regular basis. Click here to view WFB’s digital stats.

---

Want to learn more about how Wood Floor Business can help with your marketing needs? ​Contact:

Kendra Griffin

​National Account Manager

(608) 467-1084

Kendra has been dedicated to Wood Floor Business since August of 2010 and worked for our sister publication, Athletic Business, prior to joining the WFB team. A graduate of the University of Minnesota with a B.S. in marketing and a double minor in retail merchandising and business management, she now helps companies recognize opportunities to exceed their sales and marketing objectives. Her passion is helping companies determine a strategic marketing plan to drive sales and help grow their business. In her free time Kendra enjoys being active, traveling, cooking and spending time outdoors with her husband and Harper, their Golden Retriever.

HOW TO CREATE IMPACTFUL ADS

When creating an advertisement, the visual marketing elements carry great power—they either draw people in to consider what you have to offer, or they can lead someone to simply scroll past or turn the page. Here are the important things to consider when looking to create a successful visual element:

Checklist for Designing a Good Ad

• Determine your goal

  • ​Is it brand awareness, driving web traffic, promoting a specific product, etc.?

• Keep the message and clear and concise​

  • Less is more! Drive prospects to a landing page where they can find all the information

• ​Choose attention-getting images

  • ​​Does the imagery in your ad look similar to other companies' ads, or will it stand out?

• Consider your audience

  • ​Design the ad with your target market in mind

  • Check out our unique audience profiles below created from our proprietary market research

• Select a single font family

  • F​or cohesiveness and consistent branding, use one font throughout the ad (and your other marketing materials)​

• Include white space​

  • ​​Air content out to draw attention to what is important and increase visual appeal—an ad with too many elements can overwhelm people

• ​Show up where your prospects choose to engage

  • ​​Research the demographics of your target audience so you know where they are consuming media

• Consider including a QR code

  • At minimum, include your URL

• Be consistent

  • Ad design should mirror the design of your website, product labels, social media, etc.​

​Contact Kendra to hear how WFB can help provide solutions to help your brand succeed:

​National Account Director | kendra@woodfloorbusiness.com | (608) 467-1084

THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: TIPS FOR STARTING AND MANAGING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA BUSINESS PAGES

You might be wondering why you’d bother to curate a social media presence being in the wood flooring industry. I’m here to tell you it’s incredibly important, and here’s why: ✔️ It’s free ✔️ Your customers are there: 69% of U.S. adults are on Facebook 40% of U.S. adults use Instagram ✔️ The vast majority of people investigate online before they make a purchase ✔️ It adds legitimacy to see an active account ✔️ It’s relatively easy It can become overwhelming to choose which platform(s) you might move forward with due to the abundance of options available. Our 2021 WFB State of the Industry Report revealed the top-used platforms among contractors and retailers are, in order, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. If you have the time and ability to create a social media presence on all four, you’ll be on your way to creating an online community for your customers and an effective marketing vehicle to promote your business. Because Facebook has the largest percentage of retailers and contractors using it, that’s where I recommend you start and focus the majority of your efforts. You'll want to set up a business “page” on Facebook–not a personal account. This will give you access to practical tools such as the ability to schedule posts in advance, boost posts to target prospects and garner additional engagement, receive insights on how posts perform and more. Boosting posts can be extremely powerful. To do this, you click “boost” below the post, select criteria for the demographics you’re looking to target, designate how much you’d like to spend, and finally, select the duration of the boost. You don’t need to spend a lot on each boost to be effective; I’d recommend starting at $30. ​ As with everything, social media platforms have become “pay to play” opportunities. Boosting posts will drastically increase your post engagement, views and clicks. One thing to note is once you boost a post, it’s a convoluted process to edit, so make sure it’s spell-checked with no errors before boosting! Looking to gain qualified industry followers and promote your brand alongside our content? Contact Kendra to hear how WFB can help:

National Account Director | kendra@woodfloorbusiness.com | (608) 467-1084