Category: Marketing

Your Clients’ Competitors Are Your Leads

Are you avoiding a great source of new business?
 

If you’re not talking to your clients’ competitors, you’re wasting a big opportunity.
 

Competitors are a great sales opportunity
Photo by Andy Dean

It’s One You May Have Created

About a year ago, a Midwest optometry practice started a television and digital advertising campaign, using a creative idea my company gave them. It worked really well — their practice grew by over 30% over the next year.
 
Where did that business come from?
 
Recently, I met with one of that practice’s rivals. As the meeting progressed, it became clear he was in pain — his business was down almost 40% over the same period .
 
He constantly saw his competition — our partner station’s client — on the air, taking money out of his pocket. He wanted to start his own television and digital campaign.
 

Your Customers’ Competitors
Are Great Sales Leads

 
When you put a new advertiser on the air, and the campaign works, it affects the rest of the market.
 
Advertising ripples through the water of the marketplace
Photo by Mark Ross
 
Sometimes advertising creates new demand for a product or service, but in many cases existing demand shifts from one vendor to another.
 
When your client gains revenue, some of that money would have otherwise gone to a competitor down the street. 
 
The guys down the street now need help. You can help them.
 
Should you call?
 
Yes.
 

Is It Ethical to Work With
Competing Businesses?

[shareable]If advertisers can work with your competitors, you can work with theirs. It’s only fair.[/shareable]

 
If you’re doing your job right, you’re building good relationships with your clients. They may share confidential business information with you. You get to know the office staff, and sometimes their families. 
 
Would it be right to start working with their enemies?
 
Yes, it would. Here’s why:
 
Every day, your customers are talking with your competitors.
 
They meet with radio reps, TV reps, billboard salespeople, advertising agencies — the people trying to take money out of your pocket.
 
Every day, your clients share their information with these people, and review proposals from them.
 
They have every right to do this. And here’s the corollary:
 
If they can work with your competitors, you can work with theirs. 
 
Fair is fair.
 

 

But You Have to Do It Ethically

 
Never lie about what you’re doing. There’s no need to volunteer the information, but if an auto dealer asks you if you’re working with any other auto dealers, answer honestly. If you lie, they’ll find out eventually.
 
Keep everything you learn confidential. Your customers trust you, and will share proprietary information with you — revenue figures, business challenges, promotional plans.
 
If they know that you’re working with the other guys, they may ask about the other guys’ plans. Never give that information up. The correct answer to the question is, “I’d never tell them anything about you, and I can’t tell you anything about them.”
 
Don’t give the same creative or promotional idea to both of them. If two competitors run identical ads on your station, it will not turn out well for you.
 
If one of them turns the idea down, feel free to bring it to the other one.  Before you do, give the first one a final chance with this line:
 
This is a great idea, and that’s why we gave you an exclusive first shot at it. Just so you know… now that you’ve turned it down, we’re going to be showing it to the competition. It’s too good to go to waste.”
  

Sometimes You Just Can’t

 
In the vast majority of cases, it’s your right and your responsibility — to your company and to your own bank account — to work with anyone you choose.
 
There are, however, a few exceptions:
 
  • When you’ve spent a great deal of time and energy on specific strategies to go after a particular competitor, it may not feel right to work with that company, too. 
  • When you’ve built an exceedingly close relationship with one major client, and that company represents a major part of your income, the opportunity may not be worth the risk.
 
If you just can’t bring yourself to call on the competitor, don’t let the opportunity evaporate. Pass the lead to a co-worker, along with any information you can ethically give them.
 
You’ll be making a deposit in the Karma Bank, and one of these days it’ll pay you back with interest.
 
[reminder]

That Most Important Line In Your Commercial

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

That’s how The Crow Road by Iain Banks opens. The narrator has returned home for a funeral; Chapter One begins in the chapel of a crematorium in Scotland.

Although this is from a novel and not a commercial, it’s a great example of an opening line that compels the reader — or listener, or viewer — to stick around to hear what you’ve got to say.

In a print ad, it’s the headline. In a radio or television commercial, it’s the first sentence of your ad. Copywriting guru Dan O’Day calls it the “commercial for the commercial.”

If your opening line is good enough, the viewer or listener will stay put to hear the rest of your sales message.

The opening line has to grab the your target’s attention, and give them a reason to continue to pay attention. You either need to surprise them, intrigue them, or offer them, up front, a significant benefit.

If all you’ve got to say is “Family owned and operated since 1991,” they’ll change the station.

advertising lesson: your opening line matters
Photo by SeanPavonePhoto

That’s Copywriting Lesson #1 of The Crow Road. The first line was so good that I absolutely had to keep reading until I found out exactly how Grandma blew up. It took 22 pages to get to the detonation. 

I was hoping for an epic blast, but the actual grandmother-explosion turned out to be a minor pop.

Before I got to Page 50, I put the book down. I never opened it again.

This brings us to Copywriting Lesson #2: Your opening line is a promise, and you’d better deliver on it.

As you read this article, somebody is watching television somewhere in the United States. The show they’re watching has just gone into a commercial break. In the next five seconds, they will decide to either

1. Pay attention to the first ad,

or

2. Tune the whole thing out and update their Facebook status.

If it’s your commercial they’re watching… how strong is your opening line?

[reminder]What’s the best opening line you’ve ever seen or heard?[/reminder]

Should You Promote Prevention Or The Cure?

Why isn’t my service contract campaign working?”

The question came from a television station AE in the Southeast.

His customer was an HVAC contractor who wanted to sell more maintenance service agreements. The TV ad had been on the air for about three months. There had been little response.

Many heating and air dealers and auto repair shops I’ve worked with have are big fans of service plans — they are an excellent source of steady, ongoing revenue.

But the most successful ones have told me new customers aren’t particularly interested in a service agreement. The best candidates for these plans are existing repair customers.

Why?

Perry Marshall, author of 80/20 Sales & Marketing, has this explanation:

People don’t buy prevention, they buy a cure for their existing problem. If you want to sell it, it’s much easier to sell it as part of a cure than trying to convince someone who’s never had the problem in the first place.”

Advertising should sell the cure
Photo by Rasulov

The principle applies to many categories:

  • When are we most likely to sign up for automated computer backup? Right after our laptop crashes.
  • Many of us don’t make the effort to exercise or eat right… but we’ll pay thousands for the crash diet plan to shed the weight we gained through poor nutrition and inactivity.
  • This fall, hundreds of thousands of Americans won’t bother to get a flu shot… but they’ll head right to the doctor and demand antibiotics once they get sick.

As we discussed strategy for the HVAC campaign, I gave the Account Executive some advice a very smart heating-and-air guy once gave me: 

The most reliable trigger for a service contract purchase is an emergency repair.

 The best time to sell a service contract is when we’re in the customer’s home, working on their broken air conditioner.”

Advertise for emergency repair customers, and the service contracts will almost sell themselves.

Promote the cure.

[reminder]

Why You Might Want to Think Twice Before Advertising On Yelp

A couple of Indian restaurants in my hometown of Portland are paying to advertise on Yelp. Here’s what appeared on one smartphone over the weekend:

Photo by Tyler Bernstein

 

The little “Ad” icon next to each review makes it clear — these restaurants paid for this to appear.

If you can’t control the copy, there is danger.

[reminder]

What a Mattress Guy Taught Me About Advertising In the Dead Times

This conversation happened nearly 20 years ago, but it fits 2016 just fine. It’s a radio story but it applies perfectly to television advertising… or newspaper advertising… or transit advertising… or digital advertising.

Mattress advertising sells mattresses all year long
Photo by Pavel Losevsky/dpc

 

There is a large mattress chain on the West Coast called Sleep Train, founded in Sacramento by Dale Carlsen. They were a customer of mine when I worked in Portland radio.

When Sleep Train first came to Portland — probably in the mid to late 90’s —  Dale used to buy the media himself. Once a year he would fly from Sacramento to Portland and meet with every station in town. He would choose the stations he wanted to work with and negotiate a 52-week contract with each one.

You either got 52 weeks or nothing. I always got 52 weeks. As a commissioned salesperson, I liked this arrangement a great deal.

It took me two years to work up the nerve to ask him a question. He was in town and we were having lunch.

I asked him what the store’s worst month of the year was.

He answered, “December. We can’t compete with Santa Claus – December’s always horrible.”

I screwed up my courage and plunged ahead. “You’re going to be on the air every week in December, just like the rest of the year. Why do you do it if customers aren’t buying mattresses then?”

His reply has stuck with me for nearly two decades:

“Our research shows that people buy mattresses every 7 to 10 years. They’re usually ‘in the market’ for three days. They wake up one day and their back hurts… out of town visitors are coming and they need a bed for the guest room… they are moving into a new home.

“Whatever the reason, they’re going to buy a mattress from someone within three days. If it’s not my store, I have to wait another 7 to 10 years to have another shot at them. I want to talk to them every single week, so whenever they decide to shop for a mattress their car drives to Sleep Train by itself.”

That’s the value of advertising of advertising “out of season” – advertising makes an impact even if people are not in the market right that second.

I’ve long since lost touch with Dale Carlsen, but last year I read that he’d sold Sleep Train for $425 million. Not bad for what started as a single store in Sacramento, with Carlsen delivering mattresses in his pickup truck.

Not everyone has the money to do 52 weeks the way Sleep Train did, but many can be on the air consistently, 12 months a year. You just need to give them a good reason to do it.

Making a car drive by itself just might be that reason.