Author Archives: admin

I Was Wrong

 

I Was Wrong

 

          I’ve often criticised businesses for promoting their ‘anniversary’. Why? Because your anniversary is all about you, and marketing should be all about your customer’s felt needs, not you.

          This past month marked the tenth anniversary of ENS Media Inc and I’ve come to realize anniversaries ARE about the customer. We could not have enjoyed ten wonderful years of helping media companies build stronger more profitable customer relationships without our customers.

          So here is our tenth anniversary big ‘thank you’ !

          Thanks for the many friendships and partnerships we’ve been able to foster during the past ten years.

                    Thanks for your feed back and ideas for our free ENS on Sales management tips.

More importantly thanks to our customers; those who’ve invested in our sales training, our management consulting, our SoundADvice e-marketing system, our advertiser seminars, our revenue generating programs, our book, our sales workshops, and more!

           And most importantly, thanks for the satisfaction we receive every time we see you succeed using the tools and training we provide.

Treading Water

 

Stop Treading Water

According to a study by Forbes Insights called ‘Bringing 20/20 Foresight to Marketing,’ 52% of a group of 321 marketing and corporate managers cited customer retention as their top current priority, followed by customer acquisition and customer profitability.

The report goes on to say, “Marketers today need to view the customer with 20/20 foresight, but are caught in hindsight by focusing on what’s worked in the past, not what is working in the present or will work in the future”.

How important is customer retention in your business plan? Are you more focused on new customer acquisition than customer retention? While both are important, chasing new customers to replace customer attrition is merely treading water.

And with new media players from Groupon to Google and countless others developing more local sales forces, customer retention will be more difficult and more important to you in the future, than ever before.

If you are not content to stay focused on what worked in the past, and you want to seriously consider how to keep your clients in the future, you should consider our proven radio e-marketing system, SoundADvice.

 The SoundADvice system is branding, social media, e-marketing, sales training, blogging, customer retention AND customer acquisition all rolled into one guaranteed cost-effective system.

Right Demographic

 

The Right Demographic?

 

            What I’m about to say may go against the grain of everything you’ve been taught or have been doing. Please bear with me with an open mind.

            It’s time for local radio account executives to quit peddling ‘demographics’ as the reason advertisers should buy their stations.

            In his ground breaking Twelve Causes of Advertising Failure, Roy Williams says, “The importance of qualitative data has been grossly overestimated by many advertisers and media professionals. In reality, saying the wrong thing has killed far more ad campaigns than reaching the wrong people. It is amazing how many people become “the right people”, when you are saying the right thing.”

            ‘ Demographics’ focus largely on age, sex, and income as if the values, personalities, interests and lifestyles of a particular age or sex precludes them from being a prospect. 

            While that may have been true in the 50’s and 60’s, the demographic lifestyle differences have become increasingly blurred over the last few decades.

            For example, the 50’s mantra that the man was the breadwinner and mom was the primary homemaker is no longer true. In fact, the latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics reveal that fathers in the U.S. are the primary care givers for one out of every four pre-schoolers.

            And I’ll bet a minimum of 25% of your audience is a prospect for any local business in your market. Further more, I’ll bet that 25% of your reach is a huge number of prospects from any advertiser’s perspective. Add to that figure the fact that a substantial portion of your audience may act as key influencers for prospects, and there are very few ‘wrong’ people on any station.

            I talked to a marketer of heavy construction equipment last week. In the old days, they would have targeted very senior male construction company presidents. Today they say their customers cover the spectrum of men and women from 22 to 62 years of age….not much of a narrow demographic segmentation there.

            Another reason it’s time to quit selling demographics is we usually grasp at the demographics straw in an attempt to sell against other stations. At the last station-hosted advertiser seminar I facilitated, one advertiser asked, “which station has the right demo for me? They all claim to have the right demo”.

            These demographic claims are met with suspicion or create confusion for many of your prospects.

           In a rapidly changing media landscape, it makes far more sense to focus on messages targeting psychographics rather than demographics. Centering your presentation on the advertiser’s message is congruent with a customer-focused selling approach, while demographics resort to a station-focused sales pitch.

            Your message should talk to psychographics (personality, values, interests, lifestyles) rather than demographics.    

Selling to Franchises

Selling to Franchises

 

            Many media sales executives under estimate the power of local franchisees in national franchisor advertising decisions.

            A few points to consider in your franchise selling strategy;

1.) The franchisor’s customer is NOT the end user (i.e. the consumer) it is the franchisee.

2.) Franchisors respect and consider the opinions of their customers; i.e. their franchisees.

3.) The advertising fees local franchisees pay to franchisors belong to the franchisee, and are only administered by the franchisor.

4.) Your local franchisee may sit on the franchisor’s advertising advisory board, or be asked their opinion about your media by the franchisor.

5.) Local franchisees have a strong vested interest in where and how their advertising investment is spent.

            I know many franchisees will tell you “We don’t advertise, our head office looks after that”. But here is the bottom line. A combination push and pull strategy works best when selling franchises; pushing your campaign to achieve buy-in at the local level and pulling it through the regional or national level where franchisors aim to keep their franchisees happy.

            By the way, have you considered what franchisees receive for their franchise fees and royalty payments? They get a recognised brand, a protected territory, proven systems and processes, training, continuous product improvement and new product development, management guidance, advertising and promotion and more.

            As a media account executive you too represent a recognized brand, have a protected account list, proven internal systems, training, continuous format improvements and new products to sell, management assistance, and lots of in-market and on-air promotion…..think of it as your FREE franchise!

            But here’s what’s important to you. I once conducted a study to determine the differences between the most profitable franchisees and the less successful franchisees within the same organization. The less successful franchisees always blamed external factors like location, the market etc.

            But much to my surprise, I discovered the single most important differentiating attribute of the most successful franchisees was how they embraced the initiatives and systems of the franchisor and went above and beyond their minimal requirements or standards!

            When your franchisor, that is your station management, launches a new initiative, they do so with one singular intent; to make you and your station more successful.

 

Analyst or Entrepreneur

Analyst or Entrepreneur?

          Ted Turner was told by the analysts that an all-news cable channel would not succeed. His bold plunge forward with CNN is a huge success story. Online designers predicted Craigslist was too cumbersome, with too many links and was not slick enough or trustworthy enough to succeed. Last year Craigslist generated more than $125 million in revenue, of which nearly $100 million was profit!
          Are you an analyst or an entrepreneur? Analysts investigate what has been done in the past to design systems or processes with minimal risk and a certain security or safety of return.

          Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are in possession of a new unproven enterprise, venture or idea, and are accountable for the inherent risk and results created by that idea or venture.

          The route taken by analysts seldom produces extraordinary results, although conversely, they seldom fail. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, often fail, but occasionally stumble upon amazing results.

          In the pre-consolidation age of broadcasting, many of the eccentric entrepreneurs who had broadcasting licenses were admittedly poor business people or analysts. But they succeeded, and failed, because they had a passion for trying new ideas. And they had fun!

          There’s an old adage that says “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”.

         If you take a walk on a beaten path in a public park, you can logically predict your destination. Scaling the rugged cliffs of Mount Everest, while not nearly as predictable a journey, is certainly more exhilarating, rewarding and extraordinary than walking the beaten path.   

          Most shareholders want analysts at the helm of their investments. But these same analysts can limit extraordinary success in favor of moderate returns.

          I think it’s time to create a hybrid broadcast company…..one that has a ‘safe’ predictable business plan, accentuated by a few risky ventures, one of which just might be the next CNN or Craigslist….nothing ventured, nothing gained.

 

Randy’s What If: What if you challenged each of your sales people to launch an unproven idea to generate more sales and they all failed but one? And that one created a huge annually sustainable success?