Tag Archives: targets

Happy 2018!

Allan Waters, the founder of what was once one of Canada’s most successful broadcast empires said, “Our problem is not that we aim too high and miss our targets.  Our problem is that we aim too low and hit our targets.”

With all the ‘bad news’ facing broadcasters today, it’s easy to get sucked into a negative-thinking trap.

We hear about the enormous debt burdens resulting from broadcast consolidation, and radio that once was branded as ‘live and local’ is now often voice-tracked with little local content to appeal to consumers.

Advertising’s share of marketing budgets continues to shrink, as does traditional media’s share of that shrinking share. Online shopping is hurting many of our traditional retail advertisers, and broadcast radio is no longer the only audio media choice our advertisers have.

And misery appears to love company. When we see fellow broadcasters with flat or faltering sales, we tell ourselves it’s okay to aim low and hit our targets.

The list of problems we face goes on and on, but I’m still from the Allan Waters school of broadcasting…our problem is we aim too low!

It’s pretty easy to fall into a ‘woe is me’ way of thinking, but virtually every business and every media is experiencing disruption, fragmentation, low-price competition, and various other problems that could be described as a crisis.

I believe the Chinese understand how to manage and succeed during an alleged crisis. They spell crisis with these two symbols.
The symbol on the left stands for ‘danger’, and there is danger in every crisis. But what makes the difference when they spell crisis is the symbol on the right. It stands for ‘opportunity.’

You have probably heard the old cliché, “Problems were merely opportunities in disguise.” That attitude contributed to ENS Media having our most successful year ever during the 08-09 recession. Our Selling in Tough Times program helped many broadcasters experience revenue gains far above the ‘norm’.

As you plan for 2018, will your ‘tough times’ target become a self-fulfilling prophecy, or will you break from the fray and capture the opportunities brought about by disruption and change?

Do your sales people have the tools and training to open those new opportunities?

As you plan for 2018 and beyond, don’t let your stations make the same mistake as Luigi made in this tale of Luigi’s Hot Dog Stand.

Luigi worked hard at his road-side hot dog stand all his life so he could send his son to college.  He used only the finest ingredients, stayed open long hours, advertised consistently, and sold the greatest hot dogs for miles around. 

Business was booming. He had to buy a bigger oven, add to his parking lot, and increase his food orders to fill demand.

His hard work and investments paid off, and his son came home from college with a business degree.

“Father, haven’t you heard?” he said upon his return. “Times are getting tough. You are going to have to cut back on your expenses because there is a recession on the way” he said. “You’re going to have to buy cheaper ingredients, turn the power off on your sign earlier each evening, and cut your advertising to prepare for the weakening economy.”

Luigi thought, “Well, my son’s been to college. He ought to know. Maybe business is going to slow down”. 

So, Luigi started buying the cheapest ingredients he could find, he cut the power to his signs and cancelled all his advertising.  And alas, his son was right. Hot dog sales began to plummet almost overnight.  “You were right son,” Luigi said to the boy.  “We certainly are heading for a recession!”

Let’s aim higher, not lower, as we plan for 2018.

Click here to arrange an online meeting to discuss how we might be able to help you reach loftier goals.

When Did Broadcasting Become a Dirty Word?

There is an old story about the Jaguar salesperson who lost a sale to rocker ‘Rompin Ronnie Hawkins’ because he pre-qualified him.

The successful rockabilly singer did not want for cash, but didn’t look like a typical Jaguar customer when he entered the Toronto dealership with his long hair, a beard, and tattered jeans.

The legend goes that when Ronnie seated himself in a Jaguar on the showroom floor, a jaded salesperson asked him to leave.

Ronnie did leave, only to return with a shopping bag full of cash. He promptly marched into the sales manager’s office, dumped the cash on his desk, and said, “I’m buying that Jaguar on one condition….that salesperson gets no commission!”

Every seasoned salesperson knows the pain of losing a sale in their rookie days because they disqualified or pre-unqualified a prospect who later bought from a competitor. Advertisers who restrict their reach to pre-qualified targets are also missing sales.

New technologies and alleged ‘big data’ have made reaching the masses via  broadcasting or other mass media, dirty words in some circles.  Advertisers are being lured by the ability to narrowcast and to finely target their marketing.

The ability to ‘target’ more finely beyond the masses is appealing, particularly to those who cringe at the old Wannamaker quote, “I know half my advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which half.”

But fine tuning your targeting by geography, demographics, or psychographics, or any other pre-conceived qualifiers, ignores a few realities;

1.)  The market is not narrowly defined by geography, especially for big-ticket purchases. RV dealers know that customers will drive hundreds of miles to capture the motorhome they want. And a consumer who lives on one side of a market often works and shops on the other side of the market.

2.)  ‘Targeting’ end-users, buyers or decision-makers, ignores the role key influencers play in buying decisions. Millennials often ask the advice of their more experienced parents, and car dealers will tell you that husbands might sign the check, but they won’t do so without consulting their wives.

3.)  The market, and people, changes rapidly. New jobs, increases or decreases in incomes, changes in marital situations and many other factors can turn an unqualified prospect into a qualified prospect overnight. In fact, the average market population with deaths, divorces, career moves, marriages and births, turns over at the rate of 20% per annum.

4.)  Preaching to the converted will help advertisers maintain their customer base and today’s sales, but there will always be a certain amount of attrition that must be replaced.  Reaching beyond their current ‘target’ is where their longer term growth will come from.

In my own marketing, I publish a free weekly Ens on Sales tip targeted at broadcast sales managers, but I welcome broadcast account executives as well, because many of them who subscribed several years ago are now sales managers.

Roy Williams says the over-confidence in qualitative targeting is one of the causes of advertising failure.  Roy says “It’s amazing how many people become the right people when you are saying the right thing.”

            Let’s not let advertisers be blinded by the light of shiny new things, and sell them on the merits of reaching beyond those who are allegedly unqualified today, to reaching everyone who might be qualified tomorrow.