Tag Archives: holiday
Be a Part of the Solution, Not the Problem!
Starting this Friday (now Thursday), the biggest shopping days of the year begin and your clients, particularly your retail clients, are scared to death. It’s not J.C. Penny, Best Buy or Walmart that scares them. Today, it’s Amazon and the many thousands of other online minions that are trying to gobble up their customers and rain on their holiday shopping parade.
Is there anything you can do about it? Yes, in fact, there is!
First, DO NOT buy on-line yourself, unless you cannot buy it at a “brick and mortar” store. Lead by example and share this with your team. We should never tell our employees where to buy, but you can encourage them and show them the impact it can and will cause. In advertising sales, we rely on the “brick and mortar” stores to make our living. If we personally don’t “walk the talk” and support them, how can we honestly ask those clients to spend with us?
Secondly, one of the most powerful things I have ever heard came from my lifelong mentor, Don Jacobs. Don ran what he referred to as TOMA Branding Ads for his group of radio stations which covered topics on advertising, business, and life. The most powerful one he ever wrote was titled “Buy Local”, and he ran it during the holiday shopping period. In a nutshell, the ad asked the listeners of his stations to buy local instead of buying online. He outlined why it’s important to our community and our local businesses.
Do you think the local business owners appreciated him and his stations for this message? They didn’t just appreciate it…they absolutely LOVED it! Finally, someone (this group of radio stations) was standing up for them and asking people NOT to buy online, but instead, support their local businesses.
It’s not too late to write and produce this powerful message and run it in your market. Like Don, you too will be a Hero!
Don has graciously offered to give you a free sample of one of his “Buy Local” ads. If you’d like to take advantage of this, click here and we’ll get you a copy ASAP.
Your Most Valuable Radio Sales Lesson
This is a first! We don’t usually publish an ENS on Sales this time of year because of the low open rates during the holiday period. We’ve made an exception this week for two reasons:
1.) Roy Williams’ last Monday Morning Memo just before Christmas was so profound we wanted to bring it to your attention, and
2.) We’re assuming those who are picking up their emails during the holiday period are the industry’s movers and shakers.
So here is what Roy wrote in his final Monday Morning Memo just before Christmas:
“The thing that makes me look at the ground, shake my head and sigh is the dangerous myth of the Zero Moment of Truth. But then again, Google is the new Yellow Pages, so it shouldn’t surprise us that they’ve repackaged and renamed the old Yellow Pages scare tactic.The fundamental premise of the Zero Moment of Truth is that the customer is going to go online when they’re ready to purchase what you sell.I have no argument with that.But the dangerous, underlying assumption is that all contenders are equal during the Zero Moment of Truth. But that simply isn’t true.The company most likely to get the click, the call, and the sale is the company the customer has heard of and has good feelings about.The tortoise patiently wins the hearts of the people long before the race is begun. He says he’s ‘bonding with tomorrow’s customers’.‘Stupid tortoise,’ says the rabbit, ‘he still believes in branding.’Have you heard how that race turned out?
‘Knowledge is power’ is another dangerous myth.
It doesn’t matter what you know.
What matters is what you do with what you know.
So what are you going to do?”
-Roy Williams, Monday Morning Memo, December 18, 2017
You know Roy’s words of wisdom are true, but what are you doing to prove it to your local advertisers?
Our local TOMA, Top-of-Mind Awareness, surveys prove what you know to be true, and they open new advertisers’ doors and minds every week. Roy 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.”
Your local TOMA survey will:
1.) Prove your listeners prefer to click on the businesses they’ve heard of when they do their online search
2.) Prove the link between share of voice, share of mind and share of market
3.) Give your salespeople a powerful tool to capture new business appointments
But wait…there’s more! Click here to arrange an online demo of what our TOMA and SoundADvice radio e-marketing systems can do to increase your sales in the New Year.