Why Advertise?

Ever since John Wannamaker coined his famous phrase, “I know half my advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which half,” bewildered business owners have welcomed the message from vendors suggesting they can cut their advertising budgets.

The list of “anti-advertising” salespeople is longer than you might think.

Sales trainers, for example, are telling business owners they do not need more traffic or awareness, they need sales training to capture higher closing ratios from their existing traffic. And mall leasing managers claim it’s more efficient to capture their mall traffic than to try to draw traffic to a stand-alone location…. they’re all persuading advertisers to cut their advertising in favor of other marketing tools.

And then there is the CRM (customer relations management) software folks telling the story that “It costs 20 times as much to attract a new customer with advertising as it costs to keep an old customer coming back using our software.”

So here is the thing. Are you taking for granted that your prospects and clients truly value advertising’s role in the marketing mix? Do your salespeople know how to sell advertising in the marketing mix, or are they focused on selling your media as the best advertising media to prospects who are increasingly skeptical of advertising?

You should not allow a written presentation to leave your office if it does not have a customer-focused “Why advertise?” proposition. To not continuously sell advertising in every radio presentation is doing a huge disservice to our industry, our clients, and ourselves.

Have you considered using our local TOMA, Top-of-Mind Awareness, surveys to validate how advertising on radio drives more online traffic for our advertisers?

Click here to arrange a free online overview of what TOMA surveys can do for you.