Monthly Archives: October 2017

BEING ‘COOL’ CAN LEAVE YOUR CUSTOMERS COLD

I read a headline in one of the numerous marketing newsletters I read each day that said ‘The 5 KPI’s Marketers Need to Measure’.

I thought to myself, “Wow, I must be out of touch because I don’t even know what a KPI is.”

I felt a little better after talking to five high-profile marketing types who also did not know what a KPI is.

Your clients and prospects are wary of lazy short-form applications (you might call them SFA’s…lol) written to make the writer feel trendy, and the reader feel obsolete.

By the way, the author apparently wanted KPI to mean ‘key performance indicators’.

I went online and found a site that listed over 100 three letter ‘marketing terms’.

I stopped at the C’s:

CPM, cost per thousand

CTA, call to action

CMO, chief marketing officer

CAC, customer acquisition cost

CRM, customer relations manager

COS, content operating system

CPC, cost per click

CPV, cost per view

CCO, chief creative officer

CPP, cost per point

CBS, creative brief summary

CSI, customer satisfaction index

CPL, cost per lead

There are 26 letters in the alphabet, meaning there are 17,576 possible
three-letter combinations. I have no intentions of learning them all and neither do your customers.

Using trendy marketing terms might make you feel important, but you’ll never lose points by saying what you mean rather than using trendy or misunderstood short forms.

Would You Qualify?

If I had to identify the top three challenges radio stations face today, I’d have to say, in order;

1.) Recruiting great salespeople

2.) Capturing qualified leads and new business appointments

3.) Educating salespeople and advertisers about radio’s strategic fit with digital media

Recruiting, of course, is number one because, without the right people on board, you’re fighting a losing battle.

I would not have qualified for most of the radio sales positions I see or hear advertised when I first got into this wonderful business.

Most of the ads suggest candidates must have a university degree in marketing, a proven track record in sales, experience in advertising, and more.

Prior to my first advertising sales job, I was an apprentice carpenter with a twelfth-grade education, no sales experience, and I knew nothing about marketing and advertising. But I happened to meet a sales manager who saw something in my attitude.

When he hired me, I became their number one biller within six months, selling more than well-educated reps with 6 to 14 years experience.

Take a look at your recruiting ads. Would you have qualified for a position on your sales team based upon the criteria outlined in your recruitment ads prior to your first sales position? Does your recruiting preclude a Wayne Ens, with a great attitude but no advertising or sales knowledge, from considering joining you?

I’m going to suggest that one of the reasons some stations have trouble finding great sales talent is because they’re looking for education or experience and under-valuing attitude.

You can train new recruits with the right attitude to compensate for the lack of education and experience. You can not train attitude, especially if your educated experienced candidate believes there is no room for improvement in their performance.

Digital Vs Traditional

You’ve probably heard that ‘figures don’t lie, but liars sure can figure’.

Whenever I’m reviewing figures or ‘research’, I always look first at the source.

With all due respect, research from any source has its built-in biases. Research conducted by RAB, for example, will have a pro-radio slant, while research from The Association of Magazine Media will show magazines in a favorable light.

So, when I see figures from eMarketer, the biased digital marketing and media research firm, that says consumers spend less than half their media time with digital media and slightly over half of their media time with traditional media, they’ve got my attention.

Wow!  Despite all the noise about digital, traditional media still rock!

But here is what the eMarketer report doesn’t tell you. Digital, be it mobile or laptop, is a www, worldwide web, media. As of October 2017, the time spent with digital media consumption is apportioned over 1.24 billion websites, 2.8 billion social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and more, plus emails, YouTube, Skype and more.

So, let’s look at my admittedly radio-biased ‘research’. Radio is not a www media…it’s local. While there might be dozens of stations in a market, most people are only exposed to two or three stations each week. So, while ‘www dot digital’ might be great for worldwide marketers like Ford Motor Company or McDonalds, it’s far too fragmented for local businesses to use effectively.

And radio’s two or three favorite stations also stand out in a 350 channel TV universe.

Of course, it’s a must that local businesses have their own web and social media sites. But their reactive digital media traffic, reacting to a need, must be driven by proactive local radio, creating a pre-need/pre-search awareness and preference for their business.

Click here to arrange an online overview of how our local TOMA (Top-of-Mind awareness) Research and SoundADvice Radio e-Marketing System can persuade local businesses to use more radio and TV in their media mix.

Disruptors Fill a Void

Technology by itself is not the real disruptor.

Not being customer-focused is the biggest threat to any business. Technology only fills the void left by poor performance and high costs.

Robots didn’t kill assembly line jobs:  High wages, careless quality control and the pursuit of profits did.

Uber isn’t killing the taxi industry:  Limited access, poor service, and poorly maintained cabs left an opening for Uber.

Apple didn’t kill the music industry:  High prices and being forced to buy full-length albums drove customers to purchase only the songs they wanted.

Ariel Durant, author of, ‘The Story of Civilization’, said, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

Is your company providing enough value to your listeners and your advertisers to circumvent the appeal of new technologies and platforms?

We have room to conduct one more Local TOMA Survey in your market this year to jump start your sales next year.  Contact [email protected].  These surveys consistently prove local radio’s effectiveness, and help radio account executives to close more new business.