Tag Archives: Radio

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.

When Advertising Does Not Work

We open every advertiser workshop and seminar with this statement; “Advertising can’t make a bad business a good business.”

You can begin more realistic advertiser relationships the same way. While every other advertising vendor out there is claiming advertising can solve all of a business’ problems, your credibility will jump to the head of the pack when you start your conversation honestly…advertising cannot make a bad business a good business.

It’s a simple matter to define “a good business” that will benefit from advertising. The Litmus test of a good advertising prospect is to ask, “Do you already get repeat and referral business?” If the answer is “no”, there is something inherently wrong with the business that advertising can’t fix.

But, once your prospect says they’re proud of their repeat business and word-of-mouth track record, you know you can accelerate the success of that business with great radio advertising and build a mutually-beneficial long-term advertiser relationship.

Internet marketing guru Seth Godin explains it this way:

In a competitive business like the local taco shop, here’s how it’s supposed to work:

Keep the place clean. Hire friendly staff. Make better tacos. Offer a fun, connected, even memorable experience.

What often happens instead is that you coin some clever slogans, worry about coupons, cut corners on ingredients and expand as fast as you can. What happens is that you build a moat around your business, get defensive about the status quo and race to the bottom. You’re generic now, and you fight the price-battles that being generic forces you to fight.

When in doubt, make better tacos and offer a fun and memorable experience worth advertising.

 

Your mission as a radio marketing consultant is to uncover businesses that you know are worthy of your time and can benefit from your advertising.

WOW! A Must-Read for 2018!

We have all seen the data from radio vested-interest groups like Nielsen or RAB about radio’s continued importance in the new media landscape and that’s great stuff.

That story is even more powerful when it comes from our competitors.

Yesterday’s ‘eMarketer Daily’ newsletter, described as “a daily briefing on digital marketing and media trends,” told two powerful stories for radio;

1.Consumers spend more time with non-digital radio than they do with social networks

2.They suggest that ad budgets should be allocated proportionate to time spent with media.

You have to copy, read and present their pro-radio stance from this link;

https://www.emarketer.com/content/six-surprising-facts-about-the-way-we-spend-our-time-with-media?ecid=NL1001

What I learned About Sales from a Programming Consultant

George Johns, a programming consultant I worked with a number of years ago, told me he could always tell how a station’s ratings would fare in the next book by asking the local program director one simple two-word question.

George maintained that he could call any program director and ask, “What’s new?” If the answer was a ho-hum “We’re doing the same thing we did last year”, he could predict a ho-hum book…. or worse!

On the other hand, if the program director’s enthusiastic response talked about all of the new initiatives and promotions they were launching, George could accurately predict a great book.

You know that ‘new’ is one of the five most powerful words in marketing. But did you know your salespeople need something new to talk about on the street to keep their enthusiasm and passion at a fever pitch?

Ever since George passed that powerful bellwether on to me, I’ve used it successfully in sales. I make a point of having something ‘new’ to engage salespeople at every sales meeting, every week.

Our local TOMA (Top-of-Mind-Awareness) surveys and SoundADvice radio e-marketing system could be the something new necessary to revitalize your sales force in 2018 and beyond.

Click here to arrange an online overview of these proven radio sales systems.

The Two Most Powerful Radio Sales Tools  

Believe it or not, Google Analytics can be one of your most powerful radio sales tools.

We have all encountered advertisers who ‘surveyed’ their customers to learn how the customers found them, and we have been told very few credited radio with that discovery. The credit, more often than not, goes to the internet.

But here’s the solution; When that happens to you simply invite the advertiser to use Google Analytics to find out the most common words or phrases customers use to find them online. In spite of any investments they might have made in keywords or other SEO tactics, invariably the most common search words customers use to find a business is the NAME of the business if their advertising has been effective.

How can prospects search for a business by name if they have never heard of that business? Creating a pre-search name awareness and preference for their business has to be every advertisers’ primary goal.

As internet guru, Seth Godin proclaims, “It is better to be SOUGHT online than to be found.” If an advertiser is found online by accident, you can also bet that same search revealed all of their competitors too.

The other most powerful radio sales tool is our TOMA (Top-of-Mind-Awareness) surveys and sales training.

These local surveys consistently prove that proactive broadcast advertising is the best way to create pre-search name awareness. These surveys also prove how important top-of-mind-awareness is, and they uncover hundreds of new prospects for you to call on in your market.

The TOMA training we provide also provides a simple six-step process to use TOMA as a powerful radio sales tool.
Click here to arrange a free online demo of our TOMA research survey and training system.