© by Wayne Ens
In the last few weeks, I have had several media sales people call and ask me, “Wayne, how can I get my automotive business back?” Get over it! We’re NOT in recession; we’re in a new economy that isn’t going away.
Approximately 80% of the businesses in your market have never seen a radio rep.
Unfortunately many of the sales people wanting to know how to get old economy categories back on the air have not sold advertising or their media at all….they’ve only been skimming ‘share’ from clients who were already sold on using their media.
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s wake up and smell the coffee! We are not in a ‘recession’ we are in a badly-needed correction. In the new economy, we won’t be duped into thinking Bernie Madoff is making us rich. In the new economy, people with no money and no money down won’t get a $600,000 mortgage. “Tree huggers’ will no longer be the brunt of jokes as consumer priorities shift, and conspicuous consumption won’t be ‘cool’. And General Motors won’t be selling an Oldsmobile or Pontiac!
The problem in our industry today is that only a few account executives have been selling advertising for decades. Most have been fighting for share of existing ad budgets rather than generating bigger budgets or creating ad budgets from non-advertising business categories.
Advertising’s share of marketing budgets has suffered losses to everything from customer relations software to point of sale gimmicks and only professional advertising sales people can change that trend. As media’s share of marketing budgets declines, media share fighters won’t get us where we need to be in 2020.
But there is good news. The largest and fastest growing sector of our economy, the small business and service sectors need our help and expertise! The yellow pages people have been skimming these sectors and reaping more revenues than all broadcasters in your market combined have been able to sell to the traditional ‘big advertisers.’
No, I’m not talking about the little guys with small ads. I‘m talking about businesses spending tens of thousands, or in larger markets, hundreds of thousands a year.
In most markets, the businesses buying a full page in the yellow pages could have 20 spots a week every other week for a year on your station!
Do you want your team to quit fighting the other stations for share and build effective strategies to increase the over-all size of the advertising pie in your market? Contact [email protected] to learn how we can grow your revenues!