Sydney JonesMedia Advertising April 10, 2015 Vegetable Gardeners as a Target Group for LowesTarget Segment Summary:Targets Psychographic Summary: Enjoys the outdoors Likes to garden Takes pride in their food Has the time and patience to grow the produce Knows the seasons well (Fall, Spring, Winter, Summer) Enjoys taking care of valuable things Has the land to plant their crops Target Demographic Summary: Gender: Woman Marital Status: Married Age Range: 45-54 HH Income: $50,000-$74,999 Target Geographic Summary: Charleston-Huttington, West Virginia Tri-Cities, Washington Johnstown, Pennsylvania Client DescriptionCompany Overview:Lowes, a store that supplies customers with products they need to complete various projects. Anywhere from new plumbing material to the flowers in your front yard, Lowes has it all. The company began in 1946, James Lowe had a small local store in North Carolina when he partnered up with Carl Buchan (actual founder), they decided to come together to start a business and talk to manufacturers instead of whole sales. This caused the company to sky rocket in sales allowing them to develop all over North Carolina, later spreading to the rest of the nation not to mention other countries. On average, we open a new store every three days. This is just an example of how big the company really is and how it has expanded to greatly not to mention there are 1,900+ stores around the world. If those 1,900 stores dont suit your location, you can always Request a Lowes with a simple form online. (Lowes, 2014)Types of Products Offered An average store has about 40,000 items of inventory, this allows the store to have a wide range of materials for all types of projects the customer might need; Not mentioning having about ten exclusive brands like Allen + Roth and Utilitech. This makes for a very diverse group of customers, anywhere from gardeners to plumbers you can find the supplies you need to finish the job. On top of all these supplies you have a helpful hand finding these products for you. This would define our 260,000 employees that strive to help and put in long hours just to make a difference in the community. Having someone to help you find a product when you are starting a new project can be very tasking for most, but having a guiding hand along the way can help the customer be confident in their purchase. These people are involved in the Lowes charities and changing the community for the better. (Lowes, 2014)Lowes provides community events that help the local area around the stores. They created many foundations such as, Lowes Charitable and Educational Foundation, which focuses on grades K-12 and they also deal with tuitions rising and budget cuts. They allow students to get the comfort they need going into the next chapters of their life. Some are not as fortunate as other so having a guidance to make sure they are getting the right resources they need to succeed for the future. Those are just a few charities they are a part of, but they have contributed more than 5 million dollars to these education funds and students preparing for college. Making the communities they live in is one of their goals as a company. Lowes has a very strong vision for their company and ingrained values. Vision: We will provide customer-valued solutions with the best prices, products and services to make Lowe's the first choice for home improvement. Values: customer focused, teamwork, ownership, have a passion for execution, respect, and integrity. (Lowe's Community Involvement, 2014)Target Audience: Vegetable GardenersIntroduction:Like many say, if you love to garden and help plants grow, you may have a green thumb. The qualities of a gardener can always very but from constant research we think we have found a match. The typical gardener is going to be someone who loves to take the time, effort, and diligence to make these plants grow. They have to start off with the ability to even have a garden, which requires land. Then looking at local hard ware stores or supplier of seeds, such as Lowes, they can find the right vegetables for their likings. Then the process begins of actual gardening: tilling the land, treating the land, and planting the seeds. Then, you have to waiting for your hard work to pay off, but in the end you get tasty produce that is cheaper, safer, and rewarding to eat.Psychographic Elements of Vegetable Gardeners:Growing a plant can be tedious, hard work, and sometimes inefficient. So why do people choose to grow their own produce? Growing their own food can lower food bill costs, enhance flavor, and they know the food is safe. These factors are the reasons why they choose to garden instead of getting this food at a local food supplier. Most take passion in this hobby that have the time and money to do so. The average amount of time a week is about five hours for maintaining a garden, but the more vegetables you have the more time you will spend in the garden. (National Gardening Association, 2009) Having this drive for gardening causes people to do it year after year, the average gardener has gardened for an average of 12 years, says the National Garden Association. The lifestyle of a typical gardener would be someone who can have the time, so this would most likely imply someone who is older and isnt as busy with children or other distractions. But that doesnt mean that there might not be any kids, gardeners like to nourish things and nurse them to health so there most likely where kids at some point. This also means they should have some land, the average vegetable garden size is about 600 square feet. This is a hobby that is usually shared between people since it is a diligent task to produce these crops. The most popular crops that gardeners are producing about 86% tomatoes, 47% cucumbers, and 46% sweet papers. These are just the top three vegetables that are the most popular in the gardening world today. Some of these gardeners are also interested in community gardening. Showing you that these gardeners are most likely out of the city limits so they have the space and ability to start and maintain their gardens. It turns in to a life style, doing it year after year and getting the seasons just right. Gardening takes a lot of time and preparation, whether its the soil or the buying of seeds it takes time. This will also give you the impression that the gardener must have the dedication to these plants and put in the time and energy for them to grow and continue to grow. (National Gardening Association, 2009)Demographic Elements of Vegetable Gardeners:According to the Standard Rate and Data Services (SRDS) about 80% of the United States population takes part in some type of gardening, specifically women. Women that are between the ages of 45-54 are the most known for their vegetable gardening habits.About 69% of these women are married, this proves the point of gardening being a two person job. The data is telling us once more that it is much easier to maintain the garden with a helping hand. About 27% of these gardeners have at least one child at home with them. This only makes sense and allows us to refer back to our psychographic elements to show that gardeners can be nurturing people and tend to do the same for their children. A massive 81% of gardeners own a home, which makes sense considering they are probably not going to be moving any time with a garden on their property. 40 percent of these people have a two people bringing in income, so owning a house is reasonable for them in which they are more likely to be able to afford a home with land for their gardening space. How target aligns with Lowes Offerings:Lowes has a massive range of products for the everyday gardener. The seeds they provide are the most popular, even a two gallon tomato plant (Lowes, 2014). They provide these products to please the vegetable gardeners needs and wants. When you shop on Lowes.com they automatically detect you location and tell you at the top of your screen where the nearest location may be. This is one convenience perk that Lowes provides for their customers. Another is when you are on the website for an extended period of time you get a pop up box that asked you if you are doing okay or if you need any assistance. You can actually chat online with an expert in the field of your choice to make your purchase even smoother. Focusing on lower prices such as, allowing the customer free shipping with a purchase of $49 or above. Or even putting up coupons on their website when you order online. You can even get a Lowes credit card and get 5% off every day or a special six month finance plan. When you use your Lowes card you can save money, they usually have a deal going on, this month if you use your card you can get 10% off your entire purchase. This helps the customers feel more at ease buying these products knowing they are getting the best deal that they could be getting. Lowes makes their services known for gardeners, they tend to their needs and even make their website have a page and section dedicated to people with green thumbs. The sections includes anything that a gardener may need, if it is a new pair of gloves or new plate stakes Lowes has them. (Lowe's Plants and Planters, 2014)Media Plan Targeted to Reach Vegetable GardenersIntroduction:The media plan process is long, and a lot of work, but I believe that with each of the media types required to be bought were effectively used in their own way. With magazines I put in half of the budget, allowing this to be my main focus and concern I realized that it was quite simple to find the best magazines for the target audience. Along with TV and internet, they will both just reinforce my magazine media vehicles and allow each ad and its placement, to shine in its own way. Im convinced that for my target audience which is vegetable gardeners, I have figured out the best plan for them to see the ads that I want them to see. They will be reading magazines, seeing television shows, and online shopping for Lowes products, in that order and they will all be effectively used to capture the sales that my client wants for their business.Media Plan Schedule:For my media plan, I decided to choose three months that I thought were going to best fit my target audience. I decided that for vegetable gardeners the three most popular months that they are going to want to be spending money, is going to be March, April, and May. March because it can catch them right before they plant their very favorite vegetables and get a head start to the season but then plant the seeds at the end of this month. April will be the season that you see some growth for the seeds; following with May when everything blooms and produces delicious food and can carry on to the rest of the summer months. Since magazines are my targets most viewed form of advertising, I scheduled all of my ads to continuously appear in these magazines I have chosen. For three months straight I believe that these ads will be affective and worth the money. With television I decided to go three weeks with showing the ad and then stop a week and then continue this process allowing the customers to know that this is commercial is her to stay and just as they might get annoyed with it, it will soon go away and they will see it a week later to repeat the repetitive process. The magazines I chose will all be weekly magazines and I will have the ads ran every week for these crucial three months of gardening season. This allows our customer to read their favorite magazine and enjoy the ad every time they read it. This will get the point across and is more likely to catch at least one persons eye and attract them to buy the product for the ad. The next media vehicle schedule is internet banners and these will start off slowly and then just smack the customer in their face. We want an ad that is going to appear wherever and whenever the target audience is searching for products. So the schedule will start off with every other week for two weeks then, nonstop for the rest of the three months. This will be sure to grab the attention of a lucky target audience member and bring them to the right place to place a purchase for our client. The last thing on the schedule is keywords and these will be running everyday all day since these will be the most efficient of the media types. This is the most perfect way to advertise this allows people who want to buy something a way to look it up exactly as they want it and they can then find it and purchase it. This helps our ads tremendously and that is why they will be ran all day, every day. Media Type Priorities:My target audiences priority media type would be magazines. Considering the target audience: a middle aged woman, that is married and might possibly have a child, magazines usually are near them. If it would be in the hair salon, or at their mothers for tea they will see magazines around and this will increase the option of them seeing the ad. They are in the culture of this age group and tend to make the biggest impact here. Gardening magazines have a ton of great information about the topic and also a lot of products to buy from them. Magazines have a very good way of appealing to women and are very visual so this allows women to connect with the magazine and eventually look at the ad. My second chosen media types are TV and then internet, knowing the target isnt going to watch as much TV as she would read a magazine is a hard hitting detail that was crucial to grasp. But it made it easier for internet to fall into the third priority column. Knowing that if they werent apt to watch TV they werent going to be tempted to look on the internet as much either, considering it has to do with technology and that topic doesnt fit the demographics of my target audience. Specific Media Choice:Magazine Choices:The magazines that I have choose for my specific ads are: Fine Gardening, Organic Gardening, and Green Scene. They all have great qualities for the ad and will be the perfect place for getting our target audiences attention. Organic Gardening will have 3 insertions of 4th page covers (1 full page). This is going to grab the attention dramatically of the target, with a massive amount of $137,000 this will be well worth the price to spend to do so. The magazine represents the audience well with gardening tips, tools, and seeds that all vegetable gardeners will need for the growing season. With a pass along rate of about 2 its not likely that it will be seen a whole lot so it is crucial for the page to be big, bold, and ready for all eyes to see and lure in. The cost per thousand (CPM) is quite high with a whopping amount of $77.00 the ad is going to be well worth it even for the outrageous cost. Fine Gardening was a little bit cheaper media vehicle but was still pricey. Coming in at a total of $24,000, there will be a double truck design going on, on pages two and three of the inside. This will pull the reader in tremendously, I bought this ad because it is the perfect fit for the target audience, and its going to appeal to all their needs and likes and make them want to read more/buy. The circulation for Fine Gardening is at a 3, just a little bit higher than Organic Gardening, allowing the ad to get passed around slightly more will help the advertisement be seen and talked about. I also chose this magazine because of the lower CPM of all my magazines. It stands at about $22, making this a great tool for the ad and coming at a cheaper price than most of the vehicles chosen. Green Scene is the last and final magazine chosen, this is a magazine that will be shown not only in print but online, allowing my customers to go back and actually see the magazine after it has past will be a great source of income for the ad. Prolonging the shelf time and tending to the targets need, if they need the magazine at a later date, this will help with that problem. It is another double truck spread just like Fine gardening, I chose this because it will also be a massive spread that will not only hold the attention of the customer we are trying to get, it will sell the product as well and help our dear client. It will also be inserted six times, it is bimonthly allowing our target audience to have the option of seeing the ad way more than once if they chose to. The prices for this magazine were also low and stayed in the $40 range for CPM, which is way better than Organic Gardening once again. The magazine has a wonderful feel to it and with a name like Green Scene, I think it is the perfect fit for my target audience. TV Choices:My TV shows are my second runner up for media types, in the cities of Charles-Huntington, Tri-Cities, and Johnstown these are the top cities that will promote my ads. Knowing that it is harder to get people to see or remember a TV ad, I came to the conclusion Im going to do an annoying approach. This will mean my target audience will see the ad multiple times over and over again through a three month span. This is how I configured the data to put the ad in twice as much as a normal person might:{You have 2 hours4 ads/hourAds/show=8Showing each show weekly= 12 weeks (3months)2 hr show has 8 ads*12weeks= 96 ads96 ads *2= 192 ads shown}My first show is Creative TV/Gardening, I chose this show because it will be showing the ad 192 times over this three month period. Definitely fitting an annoying approach, but it wont matter the target needs to see these ads and make an impact on their mind. The rating is pretty low for a show but its a gardening show, not most of the population is interested but, its going to be beneficial for the target audience that does see the ad promoted. The CPM for TV is a little bit lower than magazines, this show in particular came in at $8.73. I figured this would be a perfect match since it is so low and affordable for my client. The next show is called Green Fingers, this show is actually not even shown anymore, but I couldnt help but use it because it fits the target so well. I chose this media vehicle because of seeing there would be more viewers than the last vehicle. Allowing for more people to see the ad and for it to also be inserted 192 times. I gave the show a higher rating than Create TV/Gardening because the show is more like an HGTV show and if was still on the air, it would be a prime spot for this target audience to see. Growing a greener world, the selling point is almost in the title of the show itself. This show is bought for my media vehicle because I saw that it was going to reach way more viewers than my other two types and also stay at the same CPM as the rest. Making it a perfect fit for this project. The show will be inserted 192 time in the three months I have to show these ads. This will stick with the original approach of almost annoying our target but making a point to get them to see it. Website ChoicesWebsites were my last priority, considering the age of my audience will be older and might not be as up to date with technology and more stuck in their ways I chose this as my last media type. Each of these will be ran one week of a month then off for a week, doing this only twice and then the last eight weeks ran nonstop. Driving the ad and forcing the target audience no choice but to see it. I went ahead and used two of the four internet sources that are the same as my magazine choices, and this would be Fine Gardening and Organic Gardening. They both had incredible banner ads and would surely reach my target. What better way than to keep it consistent with my magazines and allowing them to see it in BOTH media types. I thought it was a great idea and allowed my audience to not only see the ad once, but a wonderful second time as well. The only exception was that Fine gardening was at the outrages CPM of $18.00. I figured this was a price I was going to have to pay if I wanted to have my target see the ad. The better homes and gardens web page was next, and also HGTV except I went ahead and took it a step further and actually put the ad on each of the gardening pages both sites had. This is going to make it a prime access spot and drive the ads home in all it has. The websites are attractive and appealing to the audiences eye, making it just one more way to please the customer. Google keywords:When you know that Google is the HOLY GRAIL for advertising I felt as though I couldnt go wrong with any of the key words I chose. I know when I am looking for something I want to buy, I usually put in more generic words to find exactly what I want then as the search goes ad in more words to get exactly what I want. This is what I did for my keywords using the phrases like: growing vegetables, planting tomatoes and others these are perfect for my target. They are going to want to see all of their options and not going to want to be tied to a specific word choice. They are going to want simple words that portray what they are wanting to look for, not complex sentences that will make the search engine confused. Justification of money spent:I spent $322,192 as my final total for the assignment. It was extremely difficult for me to find enough ads to cover my minimum price range. I took the approach of dont advertise just to advertise, I like to think of myself as good at finding a big bang for your buck it is about efficiency of getting the message out at the lowest cost. Yes, my client is giving me the money to spend and promote the ad but why not give them the best advertising spots for the BEST deal? I believe that I have accomplished an incredible media plan that will give Lowes a great way to show their ads with a wonderful, pleasing looking budget to follow. They are still spending quite a bit of money and I think this is going to show when they start reeling in the profits of the ads work. I wanted to really know that the ads would work and make the target audience come, I didnt want to just put it in their face and allow them to not see it. So I chose the best placements in magazines, TV, internet and keywords; they all are very fitting for the projected target audience and will allow them to see the ads clearly and often enough to make the ad worth talking about.

BibliographyLowes. (2014). Our History - Lowes Careers. Retrieved February 21, 2015, from Our History - Lowes CareersLowe's Community Involvement. (2014). Community Involvement. Retrieved February 21, 2015, from Careers- Lowe's: https://careers.lowes.com/about_community.aspxLowe's Plants and Planters. (2014). Plants and Planters. Many. Retrieved February 21, 2015National Gardening Association. (2009). The Impact of Home and Community Gardening in America. National Garden Association. Retrieved February 22, 2015