Monthly Archives: June 2010

Your Internal Marketing Plan

Your Internal Marketing Plan

            The radio station marketing model is unique, in that we have three distinctly different target customers. Most other businesses only target those who can spend money with them.
            But in radio, we have three target groups that affect that ‘spend’. And we need a strategic marketing plan for each of those target customers.
            One, of course, is our audience. Most stations do have promotional and marketing plans to attract and maintain audiences.
            Our second target group is our paying customers…our advertisers. Most stations are fairly effective at reaching and influencing this group as well.
            It is important to calculate the per capita value of each of your customers. If a station has annual revenue of $1 million with a listening audience of 50,000 people, then each listener is worth $20. Using that same revenue base and a total of 250 advertisers, each advertiser is worth an average of $4,000.
            But it is our third target that is by far the most valuable per capita and yet we often have no marketing plan to attract, motivate and keep these customers. The third target is our internal customers; our staffs. If that same $1 million station has a staff of 20 who sell, create, administer and invoice the $1 million in revenue, then each staff member is worth an average of $50,000.
            When the lights go off, your biggest assets go home!
            Do you have a marketing plan to attract and create customer satisfaction for your most valuable customers…your internal customers?

Opprotunity’s Door

Stick Your Foot in Opportunity’s Door

           Did you know that Yellow Pages takes more money out of your market than all radio and TV stations combined?  And a full page in your local Yellow Pages costs more than 20 spots a week for 52 weeks on your radio station?
          And did you know that 86.2% of every ad dollar spent on print goes to paying for lumberjacks, chain saws, forest lots, trucking companies, unionized paper mills, printing presses, and delivery people or postal workers?  Those are all unnecessary costs in the new electronic media age.
          I hate hard-sell cliché’s like, “you must act now” or “once in a lifetime opportunity,” but sometimes it’s true.  When opportunity knocks, you have to answer before it leaves.  When it comes to halting the migration from old printed newspapers or Yellow Pages to their new on-line properties, we as an industry, must act now!
          Human beings can be stubborn animals, reluctant to change.  Die hard newspaperand yellow pages advertisers have historically been reluctant to switch to radio.  But out of necessity, the yellow pages and newspaper salespeople are now opening the door for their advertisers to switch media.  We must stick our foot in that open door now!
          Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, announced last week that Yellow Pages will no longer be delivered in Canada’s seven largest markets. Yellow Pages sales forces across North America have increased their staffs to persuade advertisers to switch their dollars to their digital products.
          It seems that Bill Gate’s prediction that yellow pages will soon go the way of the magneto crank telephone and party lines, is about to come true across North America.
          Newspapers are also witnessing the demise of printed newspapers and are opening the door to change by desperately trying to sell their alternative on-line products.
          The new Yellow Pages and newspaper salespeople are selling S.E.O , Search Engine Optimization, as the alleged science of getting your name to the top of a Google or Yahoo search.
          We have the research to prove to your prospects that a consistent radio campaign is the best and most cost effective Search Engine Optimization strategy on the planet!
          Our radio marketing system, called Selling in the Electronic Media Age, is proven to intercept the migration from printed media to their on line products.
          But we’re almost sold out, with only 20 open dates left between now and June 15, 2011. Click here to arrange your free on-line demo of our Selling in the Electronic Media Age. “but hurry, you must act now! ” J

Who’s the Boss?

Who’s the Boss?

           I hate the word ‘boss’.  The Webster’s dictionary says to ‘boss’ is “to order about in a domineering way”.
          I once presented a strategic plan to a large broadcast group in which I proposed their sales people would work for their clients and their management people would work for their employees.
          The president of the company asked, “If the salespeople work for our clients, and our managers work for our staff, who the heck is working for the company?” He just didn’t get it. His company would reach its goals if his managers helped their people reach their goals and their people in turn, helped their customers reach their goals.
          The most successful managers hire people who have a passion to do their jobs to the best of their ability…these people don’t need a boss. These managers realize their job is not to ‘boss’, but rather to give their people access to the tools, training, people, resources and environment that allows them to be more productive.
          So if you’re a manger, here’s an idea. Instead of giving your people a ‘to-do list’, ask them to give you a ‘to-do list’. What do they need you to do to help them be more productive?
          Zig Ziglar said, “You can get everything you want, as long as you are willing to help others get want they want.” It’s also been said that “You can be as successful as you want, if you are willing to let others take the credit.”
          Are you ready to quit being the boss, and to become the facilitator to your team’s success?

Do You Fear Great Creative?

Do You Fear Great Creative?

          Some misguided radio account executives fear counseling their key clients to pay for outsourced creative. They believe that every dollar invested in creative is a dollar they lose from their airtime budget.
          The opposite is true. Once clients have invested in great creative, creative that works, they invest MORE on radio, not less!
          Many radio stations do have excellent creative resources in house. The problem is the same writer is often saddled with writing commercials for four or five competing car dealerships or furniture stores.
          Couple that potential conflict of interest with the fact that same writer writes hundreds of commercials each month, and the likelihood that they’ll knock the ball out of the part every time is dramatically diminished.
          Great creative ultimately results in happier clients and bigger broadcast orders. The myth that radio advertisers should use ‘free’ creative has caused more advertisers to conclude “radio doesn’t work” more than any other factor.
          When presenting to local business owners, focusing on the creative instead of your station, achieves a number of objectives;
 
1.) Customer Focus Your media presentation is all about you, the commercial message is about the client….which do you think is more interesting to the client?
 
2.) Differentiation  Advertisers with increasing media choices and a growing list of competitors know they need a message that clearly differentiates them from those competitors.
 
3.) Results     Your prospects can buy spots and space anywhere, and most of them are weary of every media’s claim to be ‘number one’. They want results, and need help crafting messages that will create those results, regardless which media they buy.
          Are you looking for a proven creative outsource for your key accounts? We often work with, and recommend, Jeffrey Hedquist of Hedquist Productions. Jeffrey can be reached at  [email protected]