Before you spend any money on Advertising...

Along with the paid work I do, I also consult a couple of non-profits in the area of marketing and advertising. I've discovered that there is a tendency to look at the advertising options being offered without having a strategy in place.

By a strategy, I mean things like, determine where your future growth is going to come from, picking a target market that needs what you have to offer, and also decide what makes you unique in the eyes of your customers and clients.

(On that last one, it must be stronger than, "we care and we provide good prices and service".)

Then, once you are armed with a direction to go in, you can look at the advertising options that you have been presented and see which ones fit.

Anything else is like hopping on the highway without having a clue as to where you are going. You can drive real fast (spend lots of money), but never reach your destination. If you need help, contact me at scott@scloho.net.

One of the Worst Forms of Advertising

Simply put, the Phone Book.

The church I belong to has 2400 members. Plus a school. And they were completely left out of the phone book a couple of years ago. Two years in a row. Not a single listing in the white pages, yellow pages, any pages.

It's not a new church, it's over 40 years old. We did not move, change phone numbers, nothing. But according to the publisher of our local phone book, we did not exist.

Since it is published once every 12 months, we were stuck.

The phone book people are trying to get us to try their online service. Is it any better? One of the features of the internet is that it is easy to update and keep current.

So today I tried it. I put in Radio Stations. The results are a joke. Except it isn't funny. It's stupid. The information is so outdated and incorrect. It's worthless. It cannot be trusted.

Here's what ended up with when I entered Radio Stations in the search box on YellowPages.com for Fort Wayne, Indiana (Click here):

• 45 listings
• Page 1: Listing for WHWD. Station has been gone for 10 years.
• Page 2: Listing for Sunny 106. Station has been gone for over 4 years.
• Page 3: 2 listings for WFCV, one with the wrong street address.
• Page 3: Listing for WFJZ. Station has been gone for at least 3 years.
• Page 3: Listing for WJFX. Wrong Address.
• Page 4: 2 Listings for WSHI. Station has been gone for over 4 years.
• Page 4: Listing for Allen County Public Library?
• Page 4: Listing for Comcast Spotlight?
• Page 4: Listing for WANE-TV
• Page 4: 2 listings for WFFT-TV
• Page 4: Listing for WFWA-PBS 39 (Another Television Station)
• Page 5: All 5 listings are for WISE-TV, WPTA-TV.

That's 17 incorrect out of 45.

Also important is what is missing: No listing for WGL, WKJG, WBTU, WNUY, WLYV, WNHT, WVBB. These missing stations have nearly 40% of the audience according to the Arbitron Audience Survey for Spring 2008.

I do not trust the phone book and now you know why.

How Much Advertising is Too Much?

Every once in a while, someone would tell me that the advertising schedule I wanted to run for a client was too much. Not too much money, but too many ads.

To which I would point out that in the radio business, most of our commercials are 60 seconds long and if I want to schedule one or two minutes an hour, that leaves 58 minutes that our listeners are not hearing my clients advertising message.

Face it, we are living in an age of commercialization that has never been seen before. From Football Stadiums, to Concert Tickets to, well you name it, and someone will try and sell it.

This discussion however goes beyond scheduling radio commercials, it is a broader discussion on how much advertising is needed to accomplish the objective. And the answer is as individual as the specific objective of each campaign. There is no one right answer.

But there is a better question. It is the right question you should ask before placing any advertising anywhere.

The question:
What is the best message possible to connect with the people who are going to want or need to buy my product or service?

Too many times, the message doesn't connect with the buyer. You have to step into the shoes of your buyer and design your marketing from their perspective. Because they don't care that you are family owned, or have been in business for 8 years, etc. They need to know that you can help them, and how and why.

So start by asking the right question and go from there.

Oh, one more pet peeve. Please stop putting your street address in your radio commercials. Nobody knows where 4211 Harrison Street is. Instead use landmarks, such as on Harrison across from the Post Office. Thanks.

Your REAL Competition

Most business owners have a limited view of who their competition is.

Take a dentist for example. Is a grocery store competition? Could be.

See your competition when money is tight, is any and everything your clients, customers, and patients are spending their money on that they could be spending with you and your business.

So, do you want some ideas on how to make your competition, your ally?

Partner with a non-competing business and offer a deal for people that do business with both of you. For example, the dentist partners with a grocery store.

1. Spend $50 on groceries, bring your reciept to the dentist and get $25 off your bill, (or the co-pay).
2. Get your teeth cleaned at the dentist and get $25 off selected dental care items at the grocery.

It's that simple. (And this kind of alliance sets the dentist apart from other dentists, and the grocer apart from other grocers.)

Advertising Stepping Stones

Recently I met with a client and noticed on his desk a list of 7 individual advertising efforts that he had paid for and been involved with. Most of them were one-shot deals and he was wondering what to do.

The truth is almost anything can work if you do it correctly, but to try and maintain seven advertising outreach programs, you can either go broke, or toss up your hands in frustration and conclude that nothing works.

I have a more sensible solution that I have seen work repeatedly over the past 20 years.

Focus on building relationships with your advertising and marketing.

Instead of seven paid forms of advertising, pick one or two and work with them. Invest in them, develop a relationship with the people that see or hear your advertising message.

Let's start with radio. Where I live there are about 15 local radio stations and all of them have loyal listeners. The ones with the most listeners usually charge the most to air advertising.

But you don't need the "biggest audience", you need to form a relationship with the listeners of a radio station that you can afford to advertise with consistently for the next 52 weeks or more.

Who buys what you have to sell?
Do you know your customers?
What type of radio station do they listen to?
There are often more than one or two, but you only need one (or two if you can afford it.)

The first advertising step is to reach the same group of listeners every day or every week.
Run your commercials in a specific "day-part", say 10 am to 3pm, every day on one radio station.
Air between 10 to 15, up to 25 commercials a week during the same time every day.

This builds a relationship, name awareness, branding, top-of-mind awareness with those listeners and over time, you will get business directly from those listeners and their friends and family, because you have formed an advertising relationship with them.

In most cases, I advice my clients to expand when they can afford to grow more, but do not stop or move the original schedule to another time of day, or worse yet another radio station or advertising venue.

Take the next step when you can, but add to what you are doing, or else you risk losing the relationship with those potential customers that may want to buy from you in the near and distant future.

Take it one step at a time.