Tag Archives: Advertisers

Love at First Sight – Who Get’s the Credit?

Is there such a thing as love at first sight? Sure there is, but in most cases, it’s a process. The question is… Who gets the credit for closing the deal?

Here’s a real-life example of the point I’m trying to make.

Through a mutual friend, I introduce Gary to Bonnie. I then arrange, through another mutual friend, to provide Bonnie’s phone number to Gary.

Shortly after, they go on their first date and have a good time. After several dates that include dinners at nice restaurants, movies, and even some flowers, she invites Gary to meet her family. They begin dating more seriously on a regular basis. Then, Bonnie’s dad, being an avid hunter like Gary, invites Gary on a bear hunting excursion.

Ultimately, one nervous night, under a romantic full moon, Gary gets up the nerve to ask Bonnie to marry him. She says, “Yes”, accepts his ring, and the sale is made.

Who gets credit for the sale? Me, the friend who introduced them? The restaurants, movie theatres, or flower shops? Bonnie’s dad? The months of dating and getting to know each other? The ring? Or how about the full moon?

Human behavior, including perceptions, attitudes, relationships, and buying decisions is seldom based upon one singular event, but rather on a series of events, experiences, and influences.

Advertising is no different. Many advertisers give all the credit of the sale to the “moon”, or the last touchpoint. Years ago, it was the newspaper or yellow pages. Today, it’s Google and social analytics that now provide a “Last Interaction Attribution Model” and give 100% of the credit for a sale, which they call a “conversion”, to the clicks that immediately precede the sale.

And… advertisers, hungry to measure the ROI (Return on Investment) of every expenditure, eat it up!

The “Last Interaction Attribution Model” would leave out me, the friend who introduced Gary to Bonnie, the countless dates, good times, the hunting trip, and give all the credit for the marriage to the “moon”.

Are you and your people trained to understand the Purchasing Funnel and the Targeting Pyramid? Are you able to explain, articulate, and sell radio’s role in the entire “conversion” process from introduction, to building a relationship, branding, and asking for the order?

Digital media and last-touch clicks shouldn’t get all the credit. All exposures play a role in what those in search of ROI call “conversion”. In reality, there is no single source that can take credit for the sale and no single source that can make the sale without the influence of other touchpoints along the path to conversion.

 P.S. Gary and Bonnie have been happily married for almost 25 years, and like radio’s role in the Purchasing Funnel, I’m proud to take my fair share of the credit!!

Click here to inquire about facilitating a workshop for your annual sales conference or broadcast association to train local radio account executives on how to sell Radio’s ROI.

An Ounce of Prevention

So one of your biggest accounts has just announced they intend to cut some of their traditional media in favor of digital. They currently use outdoor, radio, newspaper and TV in their traditional media portfolio. How much time and effort will you invest to present your stations to avoid becoming one of the victims of the pending cuts?

Allow me to share a hidden truth in pending cuts… long before that cut-back announcement was made, the client was already forming hard to change perceptions on which media they should cut.

“Preventive maintenance” is always more effective, and less costly, than “damage control”.

Do you have a preventive maintenance program or does all of your energy go into making the sale, looking for new business, and damage control?

A well-planned system of regularly thanking your customers, a continuous education system like our SoundADvice highlighting broadcasts’ relevance, and regular post-campaign analysis and wrap up reports can put you in the driver’s seat when advertisers hungry for change begin to wield their cut-back knives.

If you’re surprised by a cancellation or cutback, it’s probably because you didn’t have a preventive maintenance program.

The Biggest SEO Mistake

We were consulting one of our station’s advertisers, a veterinarian, who proclaimed they had just made a considerable investment in SEO…Search Engine Optimization, to get them to or near the top of an online search.

We immediately went online and searched for veterinarians in that market. They were nowhere near the top of the search engine page despite their investment.

The veterinarian was both amazed and disappointed, responding with “We were near the top last week”!

There-in lies the problem. While she was paying to enter the race to the top, her competitors kept upping the ante to win that race…it’s a never-ending race to the top that can change at a moment’s notice.

The only way an advertiser can be assured they’ll be found online is when their prospects search for them by NAME!

But, the problem is even more complex than winning the SEO race to the top.

Internet Guru Seth Godin says, “it is better to be sought online than to be found”.

In other words, the business that has created a pre-need, pre-search brand and preference for their business will always win that race, in two ways:

1.)  They will be sought and subsequently found.

2.)  The best marketers will have built their brands before the search so that when their competitors are listed, their prospects will prefer to click on them.

3.)  Our local TOMA (Top-Of-Mind Awareness) studies consistently reveal:

A.)  Proactive broadcast media will always be more effective than reactive print or digital efforts in creating TOMA

B.)  Over 80% of the population in every market prefers to click on a site for a business they have heard of, rather than to go to a site of a business they are not familiar with.

Have your account executives been effective in helping advertisers understand why broadcast is the most powerful platform by which to create Top-Of-Mind Awareness and generate more web traffic?

If not, we should talk about initiating a TOMA survey in your market.

Roy Williams says, “I’ve long suggested that radio stations fund a TOMA study every two years. Few things are as valuable in the eyes of advertisers as these revealing market snapshots”.

Click here to arrange an online overview of how our TOMA Surveys and Training can help increase your local-direct sales.

Your Internal Marketing Plan

The radio station marketing model is unique in that we serve three distinctly different target customers. Most other businesses only target those who can spend money with them.

 But in radio, we have three target groups that affect that “spend” and we need a strategic marketing plan for each of those target customers.

 One, of course, is our audience. Most stations do have promotional and marketing plans to attract and maintain audiences.

 Our second target group is our paying customers…our advertisers. Most stations are fairly effective at reaching and influencing this group as well.

 It is important to calculate the per capita value of each of your target customers. If a station has annual revenue of $2 million with a listening audience of 50,000 people, then each listener is worth $40. Using that same revenue base and a total of 250 advertisers, each advertiser is worth an average of $8,000.

 But it is our third target that is by far the most valuable per capita and yet we often have no marketing plan to attract, motivate, and keep these customers.

 The third target is our internal customers; our staffs. If that same $2 million station has a staff of 20 who sell, create, administer and invoice the $2 million in revenue, then each staff member is worth an average of $100,000.

 When the lights go off, your biggest assets go home! 

Do you have a marketing budget and plan to attract and create customer satisfaction for your most valuable customers…your internal customers?

 

 

Quit Calling It “Direct Mail”

You’ve probably seen the latest BIA Kelsey data that radio is the sixth-highest used advertising platform today, with “direct mail” being the number one advertising platform in terms of advertising expenditures.

In telling radio’s story, we have to educate advertisers about the miss-use of the term “direct mail”.

Direct mail is mail that is addressed and sent “directly” to a known person’s address.

The advertising that is delivered to households indiscriminately is better defined as “mass mail” or is commonly referred to as “junk mail”.

The reasons radio account executives need to make that distinction are many.

First, your advertisers and prospects are hearing at their trade conferences and reading in their trade magazines about the “success” of direct mail. And it’s true, direct mail by nature works because it’s sent directly to a prequalified known prospect.  Smart radio account executives encourage their clients to use real direct mail in the media mix because today, it’s FREE.

In the old days, advertisers had to compensate printing shops, paper mills, delivery trucks or the post office to produce and deliver their direct mail.

Today, direct mail is literally free via permission-based email….no envelopes, no printing presses, no postage stamps.

Don’t let your advertisers return from their conferences all hyped up about direct mail only to end up sending what’s really junk mail…sent via indiscriminate household “flooding”.

Click here to arrange an on-line demo of how our local TOMA surveys and SoundADvice radio e-marketing system are helping radio station account executives prove the ineffectiveness of junk mail, and the effectiveness of a broadcast and permission-based e-mail campaign.