Category Archives: Uncategorized

Profits

After reading our ENS on Sales about the absurdity of patting ourselves on the back for achieving ‘record sales’, an astute client pointed out there is one ‘record’ worth pursuing… record profits.

We can’t feed our families with record ratings or record sales, although both can contribute to the result that can feed our families…profits!

The delicate balance between controlling costs but making investments that will pay off, is where the best managers shine.

To view the Record Sales article click here

P.S. We guarantee a return on your investment in our (TOMA) Top Of Mind Awareness surveys. Click here to arrange an online demo.

Hooray For Canadian Radio

It appears a new radio marketing bureau is on the horizon, called Radio Connects.

As someone who has always held the efforts of the Radio Marketing Bureau, and its predecessors the Radio Bureau of Canada and the Radio Sales Bureau, dear to my heart, I applaud the efforts of the CAB committee to get this initiative off the ground.

But now I’ll issue a few warnings in the hopes that my industry doesn’t shoot itself in the foot again;

1.) Don’t have unrealistic expectations of what your new marketing body can do for you. Radio Connects is starting from ground zero, with a limited budget and is mandated to promote radio in the midst of a digital frenzy.

2.) Don’t have unrealistic expectations of when you will see results. Even in radio best of times, we often took a back seat to TV, newspaper and digital, so Radio Connect has a huge battle ahead.

3.) Support the new Radio Connects with your time, expertise and funding. You may not agree with every strategy or initiative that evolves from this effort, but let’s not get bogged down with special interests and nay-sayers. Radio is the ONLY Canadian media without an industry marketing association, and that’s not right.

4.) Remember, Executive Director Sarah Garvie and her special advisor Paul Ski are serving a committee of your peers. Please empower them and give them the benefit of the doubt.

We’ve all heard the old joke about a camel being a horse that was designed by a committee. Radio Connect might not be perfect but it will be great!

Breaking Records

I’m not understanding why ‘breaking records’ is worn like a badge of honour.

A headline in Radio Ink’s headlines last week read “IAB Reports Record Ad Revenue.’

Having record revenue is not an exceptional feat; it’s the absolute necessity of a sustainable business.

Business costs, for everything from staff salaries to electric bills and office space, are also breaking records. And the number of advertisers vying for market share in every category from automobile manufacturing to fast food restaurants is also breaking records. Growth is as natural as breathing air. I predict next year the world population will “break an all-time record.” The number of shoes sold worldwide next year will probably also break a record.

The problem I have with sales managers bragging about ‘breaking all time records’ is that breaking records should not be considered an outstanding achievement, but rather it is what is required to build a sustainable business.

And when merely ‘breaking a record’ becomes ‘good enough’ we’re leaving money on the table.

Radio pioneer, Allan Waters, said “Our problem is not that we aim too high and miss our targets, but rather, that we aim too low and hit those targets.”

Let’s start shooting higher than the records that inflation, ratings, tenure, or any other natural phenomena will bring us. The alternative is to tighten your belt, and prepare for the worst. Read our SoundADvice; The Great Hot Dog Story before you prepare for a tough year.

As you plan for 2017, try shooting for the stars instead of the moon. Worst case scenario, you’ll miss the stars but at least hit the moon.

Every Dog Has Its’ Day

It seems the glimmer is already beginning to dim on the early front runners in digital media.

Once the fore-runner in ‘new’ media advertising, online display advertising’s share of digital ad spend is predicted to decline by 12.4% over the next four years, according to a January 2016 Ad Buyer Survey conducted by Cowan and Company.

And the runner up, Search, is forecast to post a .4% decline in digital spend share.

Both of these early digital stars are giving way to the latest ‘new’ media. Social media’s share of digital spend is forecast to grow by 14.9% and online video is predicted to increase their share by 11.2% over the same four year window.

‘New’ continues to be a powerful word in the media sales business. For advertisers not using radio, radio can be ‘new’. Positioning radio as a new way for local businesses to reach their prospects can be appealing. Radio as their ‘new media’ can be easier to buy and understand than the increasingly complicated and fragmented digital options.

Contact [email protected] to learn how our SoundADvice radio e-marketing system continues to educate our member-stations’ prospects and salespeople on the strategic role radio should play in the new media landscape.

WORDS THAT SELL

Our friends in digital media have been much more effective at harnessing the power of words than we have.

While we had ‘ratings’, they introduced ‘big data’ making our mere ratings seem pitifully small.

While we merely ‘reach’ people, our digital friends claimed to ‘engage’ them. Can you see the difference? I learned very early in my career that simply ‘reaching’ an audience did not necessarily mean you influenced that audience. ‘Engaging’ people just seems like such an endearing term compared to merely reaching them.

While we only had audiences, which the dictionary defines as spectators, listeners or viewers, they claimed to have ‘followers.’ The dictionary defines followers as ‘devotees or admirers of another person or a group.’

You have a myriad of sales tools available at your fingertips today, but in the end, all of those tools resort to the use of words; from PowerPoint to ratings, and from prospecting to presenting, it’s the effective and sometimes subtle use of words that ultimately make the sale.

Yet those of us in traditional communications are surprisingly ineffective at using the most relevant words when attempting to persuade, convince or sell.

At ENS Media, we critique hundreds of sales presentations every month to help our clients create more effective presentations, and we still see the careless or lazy use of words in most of those presentations.

For example, many presentations refer to ‘costs’ or paying a ‘price.’ The best presentations position your rates as “an investment” not a cost. Most entrepreneurs like to invest, while most are trying to reduce costs.

We still see presentations trying to sell ‘spots.’ Spots are something that have no perceived value, and in fact, we send our clothes to the cleaners to remove spots. There is much more perceived value in selling messages, commercials or announcements, than in spots.

And we still see way too much use of “we or I,” in presentations versus “you or your”. It’s much more effective to say “Your campaign will reach 100,000 of your prospects” than to say “we reach 100,000 listeners.”

ENS on Sales

All About Radio Sales