How do the 2012 Presidential Candidates measure up on their ‘Brand Visibility’?

How do the 2012 Presidential Candidates measure up on their ‘Brand Visibility’?  

As some of you may know on October 25, 2010 – Before the Election for United States Senate out of Florida took place, I measured the “Sociability” of each candidate using Social Metrics on HowSocialable.com


The metrics measured the “brand visibility” of their names on search engines, social media sites, and other  media platforms. The candidates previously measured were: Senator Marco Rubio, Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and Former Congressman Kendrick Meek.


The results do not necessarily indicate who would win a political election. There are many factors that come into play as to whose name is more popular within those channels. Click here for the 2010 results


This time, many of you emailed me asking to do the same for the “possible” GOP Presidential Candidates for 2012 and so here are those results:


Sarah Palin             Score 2058

Mike Huckabee       Score 916

Bobby Jindal          Score 900

Scott Brown           Score 819               

                                                                                              
Mitt Romney            Score 791

Newt Gingrich         Score 602

Donald Trump        Score 533

Tim Pawlenty          Score 459

Paul Ryan                Score 432

Jim DeMint              Score 423

Chris Christie         Score 413

John Thune            Score 346

Mike Pence             Score 331

Mitch Daniels          Score 317

Rick Santorum       Score 266

Haley Barbour        Score 221



*I believe Scott's score is high only because his name is so common. Palin's score is beyond strong. She has become a "Power House" in  Media.

Interesting huh?

What is a good score?  If you are a local brand operating a local business, maybe state wide, the score of 30 or higher is fairly good. Anything past 100 is really good and beyond that is excellent.

If you are a national or global brand you should have a score of 1,000 or higher. For example: ‘Walgreens’ has a current score of 1,064 while ‘Facebook’ has a score of 31,274.

Need to improve your brands visibility? We can help.                                                                         Contact us at www.WhillyBermudez.com

Calculating Your AD / MARKETING Budget

Calculating Your AD / MARKETING Budget

Q: I've never really done much advertising for my business; I've always relied on networking and word-of-mouth. Now I'd like to launch a small campaign, but I'm frightened it will cost a lot of money. How can I figure out where to start?

A: The first thing you must do is calculate your minimum and maximum allowable ad budgets:

• Step 1: Take 10 percent and 12 percent of your projected annual, gross sales and multiply each by the markup made on your average transaction. In this first step, it's important to remember that we're talking about gross markup here, not margin. Markup is Gross Profit above cost, expressed as a percentage of cost. Margin is gross profit expressed as a percentage of the selling price. Sell an item for $150 when it only costs you $100, and your markup is 50 percent. Your margin, however, is only 33.3 percent. This is because the same $50 gross profit represents 50 percent of your cost (markup,) but only 33.3 percent of the selling price (margin.) Most retail stores in America (carpet, jewelry and so on) operate on an average markup of approximately 100 percent, some operate on as little as 50 percent markup and others add as much as 200. More expensive items, such as cars, recreational vehicles and houses, typically carry a markup of only 10 to 15 percent.
• Step 2: Deduct your annual cost of occupancy (rent) from the adjusted 10 percent of sales number and the adjusted 12 percent number.
• Step 3: The remaining balances represent your minimum and maximum allowable ad budgets for the year. At this point in the calculation, you may learn that you've already spent your ad budget on expensive rent, or you might also learn that you should be doing a lot more advertising than you had previously suspected.

Now let's calculate an ad budget. Assume that my business is projected to do $1 million in sales this year, I have a profit margin of 48 percent, and my rent is $36,000 per year. The first thing to do is calculate 10 percent of sales and 12 percent of sales ($100,000 and $120,000, respectively).

Second, we must convert my 48 percent profit margin into markup, because markup is what we've got to have to make this formula work. Most business owners know their margin by heart, but never their markup. To make the conversion from margin to markup, simply divide gross profits by cost. Dividing $480,000 (gross profits) by $520,000 (hard cost) shows us that a 48 percent margin represents a markup of 92.3 percent. Bingo.

Now we multiply $100,000 times 92.3 percent to see that our adjusted low budget for total cost of exposure is $92,300. Likewise, we multiply $120,000 times 92.3 percent to get an adjusted high budget for total cost of exposure of $110,760. From each of these two budgets, we must now deduct our $36,000 rent. This leaves us with a correctly calculated ad budget that ranges from $56,300 on the low side to a maximum of $74,760 on the high side.

Most advertising salespeople will tell you that "5 to 7 percent of gross sales" is the correct amount to budget for advertising, but don't you believe it. It simply isn't possible to designate a percentage of gross sales for advertising without taking into consideration the markup on your average sale and your rent. 

Yes, expensive rent for a high-visibility location is often the best advertising your money can buy, since a business with a good sign in a high-visibility location will need to advertise significantly less than a similar business in an affordable location. To prove this, just look at the example above and change the rent to $75,000 per year. In this case, the ad budget would range from $17,300 to $35,760, representing just 1.7 to 3.5 percent of sales. The formula I've given you is the only one that reconciles your ad budget with your rent as well as the profitability of your average sale. 

Good luck!

Whilly Bermudez Media  


www.WhillyBermudez.com