television advertising – Page 2 – Phil Bernstein's Advertising, Marketing, and Sales Training Blog

Should You Burn Your Media Kit?

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet. This information can be found at a website that is full of useless facts.

You know what else might be full of useless facts? Your station’s Media Kit.

Radio advertising sales tip: burn your media kit — PHOTO BY ILYA AKINSHIN/DPC

We tend to grab pages from the Media Kit without thinking much about the information we’re passing along. Before your next sales call, take a cold hard look at what’s in the folder. How much value is it really providing?

A few weeks ago, I was working with a television station sales department in a Midwest market. We’d had a great week of needs analysis calls, and I had finished the first drafts of all the proposals. It was up to the account executives to add the television and digital advertising plans, along with information about why their television station was the best choice for the client.

I opened a revision from salesperson, and in the “Why Our Station ” section was a page that said, “WXXX was recently chosen the Best Local TV Station by the readers of Springfield Magazine.” (Call letters and market name have been changed to protect the guilty).

I’m going to go out on a limb here and state that nobody cares what the readers of Springfield Magazine think of the TV station.

The viewers don’t care.

The employees of Springfield Magazine don’t care.

The customers weren’t going to care, either. This information was not going to move anyone any closer to spending money on the station.

And yet, there it was… in that proposal and four or five others from the same staff. It was in there because someone in the station marketing department had made that page and put in the media kit. The path of least resistance was to copy that page and paste it into the proposal.

HUGE MISTAKE

Slapping media kit pages into your presentation is the easiest thing to do, and it’s a huge mistake. Media kits are often written by somebody who’s never met your station’s clients, and has no idea what customers really want to know. Without major modification, media kit pages do not belong in your proposals.

Here are some common media kit subjects that your clients don’t care about:

· The “Award-Winning News Department.” News awards are like youth soccer trophies: everybody gets one. All of your competitors have “award winning news”, too.

· The station’s share of adults 25 to 54… when the client’s customers are all 55+.

· A pie chart showing that 56% of some survey’s respondents believe that your medium is “the most influential”.

Here’s what the clients will care about: bringing new customers to their businesses and making more money. Your clients and prospects care about themselves.

When it comes time to do an important presentation for major dollars, burn the media kit. Take the extra time to write each page from scratch — make it about your customer, not about you.

Before including any piece of information in the proposal, ask yourself: “If I were the client, would this information cause me to want to buy the plan we’re proposing?”

Be ruthless about this. If the answer is no, leave it out.

[reminder]Agree? Think I’m crazy?[/reminder]

How to Reach “The Right People” With Your Advertising

When you work on a marketing campaign, how can you make sure you’re targeting “the right people” with your message – the people who are most likely to do business with you?

Radio advertising sales tip: television reaches the right people, too. — Photo by creative soul/dpc

Advertising salespeople have access to a variety of research tools to make some educated decisions about the kind of people who are listening to, reading, watching, or logging onto their media. And a lot of time, effort and money are spent in trying to pick the vehicle that reaches The Right People.

Here’s a tip: the problem with this approach is that nobody has an exclusive on The Right People.

The Right People are watching television — a whole lot of television. They are on the Internet — sometimes on a laptop, often on a mobile devise. They listen to the radio. They see billboards. Some still read the newspaper on paper.

Any advertising medium you decide to use will reach some of your target customers, and will miss others.

Further complicating the picture is the fact that very few people make decisions by themselves. People talk to each other and influence each other’s choices. The end user may or may not be the person who decides what to buy.

In large companies, office equipment may be used primarily by administrative personnel. But the sales order may be issued by someone in the purchasing department. And orders over a certain size may need the blessing of the controller or even the CEO. All of those people may even seek advice from colleagues at other companies. When you’re marketing office equipment, what target do you choose?

A few years ago, a Wall Street Journal article revealed how the Phi Beta Kappa college honor society solicits members:

You get a letter during junior or senior year, with congratulations and a request to pay an initiation fee (generally $50 to $90). If you don’t respond, some chapters send a follow-up letter to your parents.”

Who makes the decision to enroll in Phi Beta Kappa – the student or the parents?

In 2013, the Obama Administration needed to convince adults under 35– the so-called “Young Invincibles” — to buy health insurance. They spent some time and effort targeting them directly, but they also went after their moms.

It might seem counterintuitive that adults, many of whom have left home and started their own families, would be convinced by their aging parents to buy health insurance. But research shows that today’s 20 and 30-somethings — sometimes referred to as “millennials” — are closer to their parents than were adults from earlier generations and still rely on them for important career and other decisions…

“They have just recently left their parents to go to college, they’ve just kind of left the nest, but they’re still very close to their parents and specifically moms,” Brown said. And, even more importantly, “many of these young people are still in some part financially dependent on their parents. That’s when especially the mom enters these decisions.”

You can spend a lot of time agonizing over the question. The beauty and the curse of marketing is that there’s no one right answer. The odds are pretty good that whatever media choice you make (“Elizabeth Warren for President” on Fox News being a possible exception), you’ll reach a significant number of The Right People, and you’ll miss some others.

Make sure that the people you do reach hear your message often – the more often you talk to someone, the better the chance he’ll give you a call when he has a need.

Then, using the time you saved by not agonizing over your media choice, agonize over your message. Make sure that your story matters to your prospects, that you tell it well, and that you tell it often.

[reminder]How do you decide who The Right People are for your business?[/reminder]

Why Isn’t Your Advertising Working? (Don’t Blame The Media)

Some reasons to ponder come courtesy of a Roy Williams’ Monday Morning Memo essay, from way back in 2008. Read the whole thing here. Every point he makes is still valid today. Here are a couple:

2. reputation.
Consider the people who don’t buy from you. Are they buying elsewhere because they haven’t heard about your company, or is it because they have? I’ve never met a business owner willing to believe their company had a bad reputation…

7. media myths.
Are you anxious to find a more effective media? If so, you’ve got really bad ads. I’ve never seen a company fail because they were using the wrong media or reaching the wrong people. But I’ve seen thousands fail because they were saying the wrong things. A powerful message will produce results in any media.

Photo by Aurelio/dpc

In my advertising sales/consulting practice, I meet with about 200 local businesses each year.

They hear from television advertising salespeople, telling them to get out of radio because radio doesn’t work.

They hear from radio advertising salespeople, telling them to get out of newspaper because newspaper doesn’t work.

They hear from social media “experts” telling them to get out of radio, newspaper and television because traditional media doesn’t work.

Here’s the dirty little secret I pass along to them:

There are plenty of potential customers who watch television, listen to the radio, read the newspaper, and consume media online every single day. When I hear that the advertising isn’t working, it’s generally one (or more) of three problems:

1. They didn’t get the message right. You’ve got to tell a story your audience cares about, and give them a good reason to do business with you.

2. They aren’t delivering the message often enough, or consistently enough. Customers will buy when they’re ready and not a moment before. You need to keep reminding them.

3. They don’t deliver on the promises their advertising makes, and the audience doesn’t believe them.

If you tackle the issues above, you’ll get the advertising to work. If you don’t, switching media isn’t going to help.

[reminder]

How To Grade a Website: Will It Flunk “The Mom Test”?

Have you ever gone to a client’s website and gotten lost? What did you do about it? If you’re a media advertising salesperson, it’s your responsibility.

Photo by iQoncept/dpc

I spent last week on the West Coast meeting with advertisers in partnership with a television station sales department. Preparing for the week, I spent time looking at each client’s website — 25 in all. Here’s what I found:

A lawyer’s site had the wrong address and phone number — she had moved to a different office.
A real estate agent’s site had no contact information at all.
A sporting good store’s site had drop-down menus for a variety of categories. “Baseball”, for example, had links for gloves, bats, balls, and helmets. But there was no information at any of the links.
A pet supply store’s website was down. That’s not the bad part. The bad part was that the station Account Executive had looked at it a week earlier, and it had been down then. The odds are good that it had been down for at least a week, and the client had no idea.

IN THIS NEXT PART, I AM BORROWING A CONCEPT FROM A RECENT ARTICLE AIMED AT BLOGGERS.
UNFORTUNATELY, I CAN’T REMEMBER WHO WROTE IT*

Pretend to be your mom — a generation older than you, able to use the Internet but not all that comfortable with it — and take a look at your blog. Could your mom find your subscription sign-up box? Would she know what to do?

If not, fix it. — Name Not Remembered

If you are an advertising salesperson — radio, television, newspaper, or any other media — you are now expected to have a good working knowledge of digital marketing. If you put together a program that drives traffic to your client’s website, and that traffic never turns into money, you have failed.

Don’t just shrug your shoulders and blame the advertiser. You are an Account Executive. Your job is to execute. If the campaign fails and the client cancels, it’s on you.

So give your client’s website The Mom Test.

If your mom — a generation older than you, and not all that comfortable with the Internet — saw a television commercial, or heard a radio promotion, or read a newspaper ad, or clicked on a banner, and the ad took her to your client’s website, would she know what to do next? Could she figure it out quickly?

If Mom couldn’t figure out how to give your client her money, the website is a barrier that is driving money away from your client. You need to show your client how to fix it. Now.

Fortunately, your company has developed some great digital tools to help you do that. It’s time to find out what they are.

Three Ways An Advertising Salesperson Can Apply This This Today

1. Pull up the websites of every client you’ll be meeting with in the next couple of days. Give each one The Mom Test. If any of them flunk, show the sites to the head of your digital department, and develop a strategy to fix it. Attach a price tag to the strategy and build a proposal.

2. Bring the proposal to the client. Explain The Mom Test. Show the client exactly what happened when “Mom” went to the website. Demonstrate how your strategy will fix the problem. Get a signature.

3. Share this post on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. You can find the Share buttons at the top and at the bottom of the post. So can Mom.

* This, or something like it, was in somebody’s content marketing blog within the past month. I could have sworn that I’d saved the quote, but it’s not in my records. I thought it was from Ann Handley, but I searched her blog and couldn’t find it. If you know where it came from, let me know and credit will be willingly and cheerfully given.

5 Great Books Every Advertising Salesperson Must Read (Or Re-read) in 2017

We work in the persuasion industry. As advertising sellers, first we must persuade a prospect to meet with us… and then consider our proposal… and then buy. Then we must design a campaign that persuades our client’s prospects to take action.

Here are five books that will help you develop the sales skills to persuade… and sell.

The Accidental Salesperson by Chris Lytle: I read the original version of this book more than a decade ago. It was early in my selling career. I was looking for anything that could teach me the sales skills I needed. This book taught me enormous amount. When the new edition came out, I took it out of the library — being a cheapskate, I didn’t feel like paying for it a second time. Two chapters in, I returned the library copy and bought my own. I wanted to read it and highlight the hell out if it. For example, this:

If you work on straight commission, you prospect for free. You do a customer needs analysis for free. You do the research for free. Then you write the proposal for free… At least you don’t have to pay to make your presentation to the prospect.

What if you did have to pay to make your presentation? You obviously would put more time and thought into it. You probably would even rehearse it a few times…”

I’ve gone from being a salesperson to a combination salesperson/sales trainer role. I have read that passage repeatedly to groups of radio and television advertising sellers all over the country. It gets through.

Slow Down, Sell Faster! by Kevin Davis: This is one of the rare sales skills books that has actually given me a new perspective on the process of selling. The author’s contention is that we spend so much time focusing on our needs and our timetable that we forget what’s important to the client. He sums it up this way:”Every sales leader wants fast sales; the trouble is, there aren’t many fast buyers…They are unlikely to change their buying process to match your selling process, so your only option is to be the one who switches.”

Influence: The Science of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini A classic in the field — enough science to demonstrate that the author knows what he’s talking about, but accessibly written for salespeople (like yours truly) who didn’t pay attention in science class. Cialdini, who holds professorships in Marketing and Psychology at Arizona State University. The principles he teaches in this book will help you do a better job convincing clients to buy, and can also help make you a better marketer and copywriter.

Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich by David Garfinkel: Although this book is aimed at those who sell with the written word — direct mail, print publications, and web pages — the techniques can help marketers in any medium. However your prospects see or hears your sales message, you have a very short window in which to convince them to pay attention. The headline in a print ad, or the opening five seconds of a radio or TV commercial, will cause your target to either pay attention to the rest of the message or tune you out. Garfinkel gives you a series of headline templates that have worked for selling a wide range of products and services, discusses why each one has been effective, and lists several variations on each headlines. When I’ve hit a wall while writing copy, I’ve gone to this book to help get unstuck.

Dan O’Day’s Guaranteed 5-Step System For Creating 30-Second Radio Commercials That Get Results: Another good cure for (copy)writer’s block, and an excellent companion to the Garfinkel book. I bought this when I was working in radio; now that my primary platforms are television and digital, I still use it regularly. Like Garfinkel, O’Day teaches a headline-based approach to designing a campaign. Besides the headlines, the true benefit of O’Day’s system is in the exercise of settling on a Unique Selling Proposition before starting the script. It’s not a long book, but it’s a powerful one.

[reminder]What’s the best advertising, marketing, or sales book you’ve read in the past 12 months?[/reminder]