Whether you can afford mass media — radio or TV — usually depends on two factors:

  1. how big your town is, meaning how expensive your media is to buy, and
  2. how big you are in terms of revenue

Your profit margins also impact this, as the higher your profit margins, the more money you have to spend on advertising at the same revenue size.

But assuming decent margins and a location that’s not in or in the shadow of an expensive mega-city, the mass media tipping point usually comes at around $2-3 Million in revenue.

Please understand that this is very much a ballpark figure, but if you’re looking for a rule of thumb, there it is.

So assuming you pass the benchmark, here’s how to tell if you can’t afford NOT to use mass media…

  • If you’re suffering from being on the pay-per-crack treadmill, aka, paying way too much for digitally-sourced leads…
  • If you’re stuck in the middle between larger and smaller competitors…

Then chances are you can’t afford NOT to use mass media once you’ve crossed the revenue threshold to afford it.

Basically, if you’re doing, say $2 million in sales and you calculate an advertising budget of $200K in total, then you should be able to carve out about $100K for mass media branding.

And that’s more than enough to get started in most markets — IF…

If you partner with a great media buyer and a kick-ass creative who understands how to market local, owner-operated businesses like yours.

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