I’m going to make this quick as it’s the Friday going into a Labor Day weekend. Many folks are taking today off to get an extra long holiday in.
Others are mentally checked out even if they are working.
Then there is a group of folks who are trying to get everything done today since they won’t be working Monday but the workload of 5 days still needs to be done.
Here’s the reminder:
You will listen to the radio this weekend.
So will your customers.
Many will decide when they are in the car, what to buy and where to buy it.
Those businesses that advertise on the radio when we are deciding where to grab a burger, (like McDonald’s) get more business than those that don’t invite us at that moment of decision.
Have a great weekend and I’ll be here to help you invite more customers to spend their money with you via the radio when you return to work.
I’ve spent more than half my life earning a living in the radio business. From my early days as a teenager getting my licence from the Federal Communications Commission (3rd Class with a Broadcast endorsement) to today as a member of the WOWO advertising sales team, it’s been quite a ride.
Last month I saw this video which features some actual radio ads from 1965, 50 years ago:
Today in 2015, radio is the most listened to media, with 90% of all Americans listening every week.
That beats the number of people who do nearly anything else with media. Even Facebook, the King of Social Media doesn’t get used by 90% of Americans weekly.
Next week, I’ll share a conversation about a chart of radio listenership in Fort Wayne and WOWO that caught the attention of a new advertising partner of mine. Stay tuned…
Earlier this month I decided to take a week off from writing fresh articles. Some people would simply not publish and be silent. I dug through my ScLoHo archives from 2008 and found a few worth updating and sharing like this from Roy Williams.
Advertising salespeople are highly paid because rejection hurts. They told me to rub Zig Ziglar on it, but the sting and the ache stayed with me. I was 20 years old.
The smiley seminar speaker said, “Look in the mirror each morning and repeat these affirmations.”
Sorry, I’ve already got a religion and it makes me very uncomfortable with self-worship. I know there’s a God and it isn’t me.
My manager tried to teach me how to overcome objections but that only made me feel worse. People were rejecting me because they assumed I was a professional liar and now I was becoming one.
Everywhere I went I heard, “I tried advertising and it didn’t work.”
“Yeah, I know,” whispered the little voice inside me, “I see it not work every day.”
You would have fired me by now, right? I would have fired me, too. But Dennis Worden saw a spark in me that he believed he could fan into a flame. Lucky for both of us, he was right.
My career found wings the day I encountered an advertiser who had a message worth hearing. I delivered his message to my little audience and his business exploded. No question about it, my tiny audience was making him rich. Now I had a success story to tell my prospects. But a success story is a doubled-edged sword. Filled with names and dates and details and numbers, success stories cut through the doubt and make prospects say yes. But the second edge – the one that cuts the seller – is the implied promise, “The same thing will happen to you.”
But if that advertiser’s message is weak, you’ll soon be hearing, “I bought what you said and it didn’t work.” I had been groping blindly in a pitch-dark room when I flicked the light switch on the wall. Suddenly everything was clear: Message and copy are two different things.
“The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you’ve gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.” – Chuang-tzu, 350 BC
If Chuang-tzu had been in advertising, he would have said, “Copy exists because of message. Once you’ve gotten the message, you can forget the copy.”
That first successful client owned an auto body shop. He had an invisible location but a powerful message that had never been told. I was merely the guy who uncovered his shiny message and held it up in the light. That was 30 years ago, but I can still tell you the essence of Danny’s message:
1. No one ever plans to have a traffic accident.
2. You don’t really have to get 3 estimates from 3 different body shops.
3. You don’t even have to pay your $250 or $500 deductible.
4. Your insurance company will happily pay whatever their adjustor says is the right amount.
5. When you’ve been involved in a traffic accident, call me.
6. I’ll send out a wrecker to pick up you and your car.
7. I’ll give you a free loaner car to drive while I’m repairing your car.
8. I’ll notify your insurance company and meet with the adjustor.
9. I’ll fix your car for whatever amount the insurance adjustor agrees to pay.
10. You don’t even have to pay your deductible.
11. And since we’ve already got the paint in the gun, we’ll fix those little door dings and scratches on the other side of the car that were there before the accident. No extra charge.
12. You’ll get back a car that’s better than it was before the accident.
You don’t have to be a good copywriter to create a great ad from that message. You just have to make sure the advertiser understands:
1. They need to stay on the air long enough for people to hear them and remember their message. That’s when they’ll begin to see results.
2. Then they have to wait for the listener to need them.
3. The longer they stay on the air, the deeper the message goes into memory and the better it works.
I’ve never seen an advertiser fail because they were reaching the wrong people but I’ve seen thousands fail because they had a weak message. We create failure when we assume creative copy will compensate for the fact that an advertiser has nothing to say.
Are there exceptions to what I’ve told you? Of course.
1. The advertiser with a weak message, often repeated, will prevail over a competitor with an equally weak message less often heard. When weak vs. weak, frequency is a tiebreaker.
2. The advertiser with a weak message wrapped in cleverness and humor will prevail over a competitor with an equally weak message wrapped in a brown paper bag.
3. The advertiser with a weak message and a big ad budget will prevail over a competitor with a strong message that never gets heard.
I made my fortune searching out little businesses with strong messages that had never been heard. Everyone thought I was a great copywriter, but they were wrong. I was a great message-finder.
When I finally wrapped my head around the fact that success wasn’t determined by the “rightness” of my audience, the loyalty of my audience, the size of my audience or the cleverness of my copy, I began to sell everyone I met. I knew all I had to do was dig until I found a message worth sharing. And if the advertiser didn’t have a message worth telling, I had to convince them to create one or prepare them for a life of mediocrity.
What I said to them made sense. My prospects were sold on me long before I was sold on them.
I knew I could grow the business if the business owner would only let me. When prospects didn’t want to meet with me, I no longer felt rejection. I felt pity for them. And if they were so unfortunate as to hurt my feelings I would track down their smallest competitor and make that competitor their worst nightmare.
People say I have a big ego. But in truth I’m shy and easily wounded. I learned how to make advertising work because I was unable to face my clients when it didn’t.
An advertising post today. On a topic that I hear from potential advertising partners. The concept is Media Fragmentation.
First let’s define it.
40 years ago, there were fewer media options for us as consumers.
The same with businesses and advertising options. A business in Fort Wayne had 2 newspapers, a phone book 3 or 4 tv stations and maybe 8 radio stations that served our city.
Now, with the advent of F.C.C. rule changes we have 20+ radio stations. With cable TV, hundreds of channels. The newspapers are hanging on for now, but they have only survived by operating under a joint advertising agreement and the number of readers is at an all time low based on their share of the market.
That’s the correlation that is most often used when describing fragmentation, share of the market. We can step back in time just 10 years and see how the internet really started decreasing everyone’s share of the market, not just in media but all aspects of life.
Actually for awhile there was a contraction in choices for consumers. Look at the small towns that had a Walmart come in and soon the small specialty stores that had been around for decades were shutting down. Walmart was big and shiny and had low prices (and a Made in America pledge).
But now with so many options for consumers to get their news, entertainment and information, how does a business advertise with all of this media fragmentation and decreasing market share of each media?
The reality is that some advertising media options have had very little change in the last several years while others are growing and shrinking big time.
Instead of looking at the numbers as a whole for each option, look at the smaller increments.
So, instead of looking at Broadcast TV, look at how many people watch the 6pm news on channel X. Look at the trends for the past couple of years and decide if that is a good place to place your advertising message.
My radio station, WOWO in Fort Wayne which I joined a couple years ago, has consistently had over 100,000 listeners every week for as long as I have data. This makes it consistently the station with the most listeners in the Fort Wayne area. Half the other stations in town have changed formats since 2013. But most businesses would have difficulty if just 1% of our listeners became new customers every week. So I’ll offer a smaller increment.
Instead of placing your ads anywhere during the 168 hours in a week, I’ll suggest 15 hours a week. That’s 3 hours Monday through Friday on one of our talk shows. With that kind of self imposed fragmenting, I can still tell 50,000 of our listeners (or more) each week about your business.
Before we leave this subject of market share and fragmentation, a quick story from 10 years ago:
I was meeting with a cranky old guy who owns a few auto repair places about advertising on our radio station. “Hank” commented that there are too many radio stations, in Fort Wayne etc. I asked him for his copy of the yellow pages.
I found the page listing radio stations and ripped it out and handed it to him. Before he could say anything about my tearing up his phone book, I flipped to the Auto Repair section and found 20 pages filed with his competitors. Again I tore all 20 pages out and then asked him how he is able to survive?
He was speechless for a moment over the gall I had to tear up his phone book until I handed him a new book. And he also understood that his industry was more more fragmented and why he was losing market share each year unless he started inviting more people to do business at his shops.
When I started in the advertising side of radio in Detroit, my radio station had two things we could sell to our advertisers:
Commercials
Live Remotes
Commercials were 30 or 60 seconds long and the live remotes were when we would send a radio personality to your business to do live commercials from your store. That was about it for quite a long time in the radio business.
Now it’s 2015 and I have been with WOWO Radio for close to 2 years and the ways we can help you invite our listeners to your business is staggering.
This week I mentioned a couple of commercial options we have with WOWO, and yes the “Live Remote” has not gone away.
But look at this list of additional ways we can connect our listeners with you and your business:
Facebook posts
Twitter updates
Text Club
Email
Contesting
Special events, (we have nearly a dozen planned over the next 12 months with WOWO and our sister stations).
YouTube
Weblinks and sponsorships on WOWO.com
The WOWO NewsTracker Video
Ads and links on the WOWO streaming service
Podcasts
Product placement during our TV simulcast.
and a few others that I’m not at liberty to discuss publicly, yet.
These are just some of the ways we can help you connect with our 100,000 + faithful WOWO listeners in addition to the advertising messages that come out of your radio speakers. Our job together is to see which of these options is the best for you and your business.
Oh, there’s more too that is independent of all of this that I’ll be sharing with you later this month. It is a whole collection of digital marketing solutions that continues to grow from our Federated Digital Solutions division of Federated Media, the parent company of WOWO. And it is amazing.