Category: Media

Recruiters Use Radio Advertising To Reach Passive Candidates

I’m working with a Portland insurance company on a radio-and-internet campaign that hit the airwaves this week. The recruiter needs salespeople, and this is what he told me:

  • Each year, he hires roughly 100 sales agents
  • 50 of those agents will be gone before the end of their first year 
  • Of the 50 who remain, 25 will leave the company before the end of Year 2. 
  • In other words, 75% of the people he hires don’t last two years

He doesn’t have any trouble filling his openings. But he has trouble filling them with people who are good enough to make it work. That’s where radio can help. 

Most of the traditional recruiting avenues – classified ads, job boards, etc – target people who are already actively searching for a job. They may already be unemployed, or failing at their current position.

There’s another, more desirable category of candidate – the person who has a job, isn’t thrilled with it, but would be open to another opportunity. Radio can reach that person in the car on the way to work, at their workstation, and in the car on the way home after a bad day.

The radio-and-internet campaign will give this recruiter access to people who may not have considered financial services as a career – and people who may have considered it, but may not be thinking about his company.

Does this mean that, as a human resources person or recruiter, you should stop all your traditional activity and do nothing but radio? No. You’ll still get some good people through those old methods. But if you’re not getting enough high-quality candidates with your current methods, it may be time to give radio a try.

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Need a New Ad in a Hurry? Try Radio

It was Monday afternoon, and the stock market had just closed. Down nearly 778 points. I was in my car, listening to one of my news/talk competitors, KXL Radio in Portland, Oregon. Within about 15 minutes of the closing bell, as everyone tried to figure out if the end of the world was upon us, Talk Show Host Lars Larson had to do a live spot for a mattress store.

He began the pitch this way (I’m paraphrasing here): “Now that the stock market’s just had the biggest one-day drop in its history, you could probably use a good night’s sleep. And you can get one, on a Sleep Number Bed By Select Comfort.”

I’m not much of a Lars Larson fan. And every advertising dollar that goes to KXL is a dollar that I didn’t get.

But sitting in the Starbucks parking lot, I had to applaud. Because Lars had beautifully illustrated an advantage radio advertising has over just about every other medium — the ability to quickly change the message to reflect changes in the marketplace.

Over the years, I’ve quickly come up with new creative when storms hit; when the product a retailer was advertising ran out; when concerts sold out; and when a representative of Oregon Department of Justice informed me that a car dealer’s offer was illegal. In each of these cases, a new commercial was on the air within hours — and sometimes within less than an hour — of the change that prompted it.

Newspaper can’t do that; neither can direct mail, or television. The Yellow Pages? Fuhgeddiboutit. Each of these media has advantages of its own. But if you need to change something in a hurry, you can’t beat radio.

My name is Phil Bernstein, and I approved this message.

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Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.

How to Handle a Bad Month

Ed Ridgway is a marketing consultant to the dental industry. Based in Pennsylvania, Ridgway consults with dental practices all over the country. He also publishes a blog called The Dental Marketer.

June was a rough month for many dentists. Some reacted by scaling back their marketing, and others stuck with the plan they had in place. Ridgway recently dealt with the issue on his blog. Although he is specifically addressing dentists, his advice applies to just about anyone reading this newsletter.

The efficient marketer realizes that ROI success and failure is measured over years, not just a month at a time. Your long term efforts are rewarded by an established position in the mind of the consumer. People still need dentistry, even if some are postponing purely cosmetic procedures. Don’t be the office that disappears. Be the practice that’s been around forever – the one everyone knows. You do that with consistency.

The dental practices who maintained or increased their marketing after the tough month of June rebounded with a strong July. This illustrates the wisdom of long-term planning, and confirms the efficiency of sticking to a plan. Yes we need to track, evaluate and adapt – and we don’t throw good money after bad being stubborn. But a good plan remains a good plan, and a bad month doesn’t change that.

You can read the complete post here.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

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A Little Irony

This doesn’t really have anything to do with advertising — at least not directly — but my wife just alerted me to the fact that the man who co-wrote the best-selling travel guide 100 Things To Do Before You Die has died at the age of 47.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.

Should You Click an Ad to “Support” a Blog?

Interesting discussion happening in the Comments field at TechSoapbox. It was prompted by a post on Seth Godin’s blog that reads, in part:

If every time you read a blog post or bit of online content you enjoyed you clicked on an ad to say thanks, the economics of the web would change immediately. You don’t have to buy anything (though it’s fine if you do). You just have to honor the writer by giving them a click.

Ahmed of Techsoapbox takes issue with Seth’s approach, calling it “cheating”. Seth doesn’t post comments on his blog, but Ahmed does — and it’s producing an often-thoughtful, sometimes-heated conversation.

For the record, I lean toward Ahmed’s side, but not strongly. The pay-per-click model only works for the advertiser if the clicks come from genuine prospects. If the advertiser has to pay for a bunch of extra clicks from folks who aren’t truly interested, the advertising will ultimately cease.

On the other hand, some of the “support clicks” could come from people who might need the product or service, but who would otherwise not have paid attention to the ad. So the support clicks might create a positive ROI after all.

The results of Seth’s approach will ultimately depend on how relevant the ad, and the offer, is to the lives of the readers. Which sounds a whole lot like every other form of advertising.

What do you think? Feel free to weigh in in the comments section below.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.