Prepare for Battle – Support Your Local Retailers

I can hear it now, the battle cry inside the walls of Amazon, Wayfair, and all the other e-commerce companies sounds something like this, “Let’s take another BRICK out of the Brick N Mortars”.

What’s up for grabs this holiday shopping season? $1,000,000,000,000 – That’s ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!

The e-commerce companies are licking their chops. With six fewer shopping days this year, they are looking to make an even bigger impact than in previous years.

If you are in charge of the inventory at your radio or TV station, you have a choice. You can ignore it and let the e-commerce companies whittle away at your lifeblood (Local Direct Clients), or you can stand up and fight for them. It’s not just the retail business owners you are supporting, it’s your local communities, it’s citizens, and all the other non-retail businesses you’re fighting for.

Why fight back against Amazon and the e-commerce enterprises? It’s simple! In most cases, they don’t support your communities. They pay little to no taxes; they don’t sponsor the local clubs, ball teams, non-profits or local events; they provide zero employment, and they hurt your retail businesses. If that’s not enough reason, I don’t know what would be.

We’ll even make it easy for you. We have written two new radio scripts that promote your listeners to buy local this holiday season. One can run for the entire shopping season and the other is to promote “Small Business Saturday” (Nov 30th).

If you would like a free copy of these scripts, simply click here and request.

Your local business owners will think you are a hero for airing these messages and if they aren’t already, they may be more apt to advertise with you in the future. It’s called Psychological Reciprocation!

You have a choice – I hope you choose to “Stand Up and Fight” for your local retailers and communities!

The Game of Search and Click

We have all had clients tell us they “surveyed” their customers about how they found them. In today’s New Media World, digital tends to garner the majority of the credit.

To a degree, this is a justified response. After all, in many cases, digital was the last medium the customer may have used. But, WHY did they click on the chosen business name?

When you receive this reply from your client, ask them to look at their google analytics and see what “words” are most often used to search their business. Without fail, the #1 word(s) used to search for their business will be the NAME of their business. This is despite all the fancy and creative keywords or SEO tactics they may have paid for.

ENS Media’s TOMA surveys prove that people will click on a name they are familiar with 72% of the time, even when it’s lower on the page. This is compared to clicking on an unfamiliar name at the top of the page only 4% of the time. Search Engine Journal confirmed this in their study stating, “nearly 70 percent of U.S. consumers said they look for a ‘known retailer’ when deciding what search results to click on”. They also stated, “Branding is our only hope for conducting better SEO”.

No advertising can brand a business name better than Radio.

Being known before being needed is paramount in the game of “Search and Click”. In today’s New Media World, TOMA is more important than ever!

The ENS Media local TOMA surveys prove to business owners that intrusive broadcast advertising is the best way to create pre-search name awareness.

Our TOMA surveys and seminars also uncover hundreds of new prospects, and train media reps six simple ways to use TOMA as a powerful radio sales tool.

Click here to arrange a free online demo of our TOMA research training system.

How Do You Reply?

It happens nearly every day. You meet someone for the first time and the common question asked is, “What do you do for a living?”

How do you reply?

Do you offer the common boring response, “I sell advertising”, or, “I sell advertising for (your station/group name)”? Or, do you give a much more profound, creative, and exciting answer?

We are in a creative profession so start with a creative response to this mundane question. While this little reply (your “elevator speech”) isn’t necessarily going to make or break you, it can mean the world of difference in how the person asking perceives you.  We only get so many chances to tell the world what we do, and this is one of those opportunities. Be prepared to take advantage of it!

So, what do you do?

As a media rep, I would say, “I work with small to medium-sized businesses helping them create strategies and ideas so they get a better return on their advertising dollar”.

As a manager, it would be something like, “I manage a group of media reps and help train them, give them ideas, and keep them motivated so they can, in turn, help their clients get a better return on their advertising dollar”.

As a media and sales consultant, I say, “We work with small to medium-sized media markets, mostly radio, helping train their managers and media reps so they can help their clients get a better return on their advertising dollar. In return, they ultimately generate more local revenue”.

Each of these statements is just the beginning of the conversation and hopefully it leads to more discussion.

Whether a sales rep or a manager, draft a short, creative statement that you are comfortable with, that will make the person asking the question say, “Wow, that’s interesting!”

Write it down, memorize it, and be prepared to use it the next time someone asks, “What do you do?”

One Time a Year

Whether you are a media rep or in management, we appreciate you reading ENS on Sales each week. We hope that you find the articles helpful.

From our years in management, we know this is the time of year that you start making plans for 2020. With that in mind, one time a year we take the opportunity to present to you a complete lineup of ENS Media’s products and services. This is that week.

If you’re considering any outside training, revenue-generating programs, or workshops, give me a call anytime. Of course, no obligation. We can simply visit about your situation and what you’d like to accomplish.

Here is a line-up of our products and services. Click here to read some of our testimonials.

TOMA Surveys and Seminars: These local market surveys and seminars provide your clients and prospects, along with your sales team, valuable knowledge on the power of radio combined with the new digital media. Following the seminar, Rick stays in the market and meets 1-on-1 with clients and reps. This entire program is designed to generate new annual revenue and provide your media reps with hundreds of new prospects and information on how to sell in the new media world.

SoundADvice: Our 4-part weekly E-marketing system is designed to brand your media reps and stations as the advertising “experts” in your market. This completely self-sufficient system keeps your media reps in weekly contact with clients and prospects by providing valuable bits of information on running a business. Every true marketing professional should use SoundADvice. It is market exclusive when purchased as a group, but is also offered on an individual rep basis.

Recruitment Advertising Seminars: New in 2020. These 45-minute mini-seminars (suggest 3-4 per market visit) will conquer 3 things: 1) Answer and provide a solution to your clients’ and prospects’ biggest concern… how to attract, hire, and retain “good” employees 2) Increase your sales and revenue with this proven system 3) Train your reps to sell more Recruitment Advertising in the future and further position them as true advertising experts with their prospects and clients.

Workshops and Presentations*: We create and conduct workshops that cover nearly every area of the radio sales cycle. Here are individual topics on which we do 1 or 2-hour presentations/workshops, or combined, ½ day or full-day workshops:

·      Prospecting / Cold Calling: Main Street is Shrinking

·      1st Meeting / CNA: Ask Better Questions to Get Better Answers

·      Creating Presentations/Proposals

·      How to Create Strategies and Why Strategy Wins!

·      20 Tips for Creating Better Ads

·      Customer Lifetime Value

·      Selling Radio vs Digital (How to embrace digital)

·      How to Sell Radio “MORE Better”

·      7-Criteria for Effective Advertising

·      How to Create TOMA (Top of Mind Awareness)

·      Marketing Funnel: Passive Media vs Intrusive Media

*We can and will create specific workshops to match your unique needs.

If you would like to talk, contact me and provide the best day and time to call, or, simply call me anytime at the number below.

Again, thank you for reading ENS on Sales, and thank you for allowing me to present our company.

A Different Route… to Prospecting

Prospecting is a never-ending process in sales and it’s the one step, for several reasons, that it often gets moved to the back-burner.

Here is an easy way to make prospecting part of your daily commute to and from the office… Simply take a different route!

If you are like most, the route you take to work is the same, day after day, week after week. It’s easy, you know exactly how long it will take, and unless a new business sprouts up, the view is the same.

Starting this week, dedicate yourself to finding a few different routes to or from work and take these routes once a week now through the end of the year. Travel it in both directions. You’ll see things differently.

On your new journey, you’ll potentially see a variety of things that may land you a new suspect or prospect. You’ll see businesses that you may have never heard of before. In addition, you may notice things like Grand-Openings, Going Out of Business signs, Open to the Public on Saturdays, Factory Liquidation, New Store Hours, Special Events, Help Wanted, etc.

As Robert Frost so eloquently wrote, “Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference”.

By taking a “different route” to the office, and to your prospecting, you may just stumble onto someone who has passion for their business, and it could make all the difference!

If you’re planning on taking a different direction to achieving success in 2020 and beyond, we would like to visit with you about our revenue-generating programs and services that will brand your stations and your media reps as “THE” advertising professionals in your market.

Contact me to arrange a time to visit.