Advertising 101

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A class in how to advertise your business

The following is a lesson in advertising for you, the business owner. Paw Prints decided to do this for one main reason, nobody did it for us. We learned by the seat of our pants and probably wasted more money in advertising than most small businesses spend.

The lessons will involve all types of media, not just Paw Prints The Magazine or PawPrintsTheMagazine.Com or Paw Prints Live. This tutorial is not meant to make you advertise with us, however the more you know about advertising the easier it is for us to talk to you about advertising. We have a very simple take on advertising with Paw Prints. If you have a gap, lag or problem in your business, for example you see 25 clients per day and you would like to see 100 clients per day. Its simple math, the gap is 75 clients. If one of our products can help fill that gap you should advertise with us. Sounds simple right?

I wish it were. People have been “taken” by so many different advertising opportunities over the years that it makes it difficult for the legitimate and respectable advertising opportunities to help.

I also run into so many people that feel they know how to advertise and aren’t afraid to tell me I don’t know what I am doing. Advertising is my profession. If it weren’t I would become a dog walker, carpenter, trainer or some other career. I can probably give you advice on how to train your dog, but I am not a professional dog trainer. My advice may be correct, but I couldn’t train your dog. Small business owners are quick to believe they know how to advertise. It is always funny when they tell me advertising here or there doesn’t work. Evidently advertising only doesn’t work for them. Without all of the other businesses advertising there would be no mediums left. No TV, Radio, Newspapers, Magazines, and even no internet. It must be working for someone.

Show me an ad campaign that didn’t work and I can show you close to a dozen or more mistakes the business owner made.

Let the experts help you with your advertising. There are questions to ask that are pertinent questions and if the sales rep can’t answer them, you may want to think twice about advertising there.

I was asked the other day buy an employee of a doggie daycare, (after he told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and he did), What was the geographic reach of the radio station I was on.

Good or bad question? Answer: HORRIBLE question. This doggie daycare is located in a suburb of Kansas City, Mo called Lee’s Summit. What purpose did the question serve? A radio signal will reach the entire metro of a city. So what was the answer they were looking for. Unless they were wanting customers from the 125 mile and out range, the question was idiotic. The question should have been “who is listening”? And “Is your listener a customer I would want to reach?”

There are two reasons we started Paw Prints The Magazine.

1) Our Readers.
We wanted to create a product that was a public service for the pet owning community. That’s the reason the magazine is free to businesses to distribute and free to the public to pick up and read. Our focus was to create a product that not only kept pet owners entertained but also informed and a little better educated on subjects they may not be familiar with.

2) Our Advertisers.
You the advertiser is what allows Paw Prints The Magazine to remain in business. We wanted to give the pet industry a reasonably priced and effective way to reach a target audience, PET OWNERS.

We have of thousands of loyal Paw Print readers/listeners that notice our advertiser’ ads every time they log on to pawprintsthemagazine.com or tune into to listen to Paw Prints Live. The one thing we can’t control is how effective an ad will be.

If I had a penny for every time I heard the phrase, “advertising doesn’t work for me.” or “every body knows me.” How about “word of mouth works best”. My favorite is always “I didn’t get a good enough response.” These are just a few of the hundreds of phrases that advertisers use on a daily basis.

The response to ads depends on several things; most of which you will read in later pages. The most important way to get a big response from an ad is for YOU, the business, owner to take charge and get involved in your advertising! Don’t hand the sales rep your business card and say “put this in there.” A BUSINESS CARD IS NOT ADVERTISING! Stop asking sales reps “How much is an ad?” That’s like calling Home Depot and asking “How much is a nut and bolt.” As a business owner you have to have a plan.

I have heard so many times “Well we’re just starting and can’t afford any ads right now”. The SBA and venture capital groups look at hundreds upon thousands of business plans from hopeful entrepreneurs every day. The very first applicants denied are those without enough budgeted for advertising. Why do you think that is? They feel if they are going to be the bank and invest thousands or even millions in your idea, they want to make sure your business has enough customers so you can pay them back. If advertising weren’t important they would just say “sure here’s a few hundred thousand to play with, I hope you do well so you can pay me back.”

Business owners need to be proactive with their advertising and to do that YOU MUST HAVE A PLAN. If you don’t have a plan you really don’t have a business, you have a hobby.

Advertising planning is one of the hardest things to do as a small business. I promise if you do not have a plan, YOU WILL FAIL! Don’t take my word for it; call the SBA or a Venture Capital company.

To create a plan in advertising, you must first set company goals, objectives, and identify gaps or problems in your business that you want to fill or fix. Until you do this, creating an ad plan would be useless. It would be like mapping out a trip without having a destination.

Take a look at the following pages, read through them. They are here for you to use. This will be a course in advertising that most people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for, either through higher education or being trained by the best companies in the world. Trust me when I say, “we didn’t make this stuff up.” This information comes from over 25 years experience in school and from companies we worked for. Very successful companies I might add. I saw no need in reinventing the wheel. We just decided to make the wheel available to you.

5 best marketing ideas

1. Focus Your Advertising On Your Most Profitable Clients.

How valuable are each of your customers? Many companies are surprised to find that a small percentage of their clients represent the majority of their profits. The top 5 percent of your customers may bring in 50% of your profits, or more. Customers at the bottom may actually be costing you money.

The key is to find which clients or type of clients are the most profitable, and to use your company’s advertising budget to go after them. Don’t spend your time, effort, and money to bring in unprofitable clients.

You want to allocate your company’s advertising budget according to how profitable each group of customers is. If one group represents 50% of your profits, then you should be spending 50% of your company’s advertising budget on them.

2. Make High Quality Presentations To The Most Profitable Clients – Repeatedly.

Once you know what group of customers or prospects are the most profitable, direct your advertising to them on a regular basis. The key to success with your advertising is to build recognition and trust over time. Identify the profitable prospects, and stay in contact with them.

3. To Win Business From A Very Strong Competitor, Position Your Company As The Logical, Second Choice To That Competitor.

When a customer is happy with their current service provider, [and you believe that you can’t win the business], position your company as the second choice in the market. While your other competitors are making big promises and saying negative things about the strong competitor, you are praising them. After all, the client is happy.

When a consumer needs a backup or a replacement, you are perfectly positioned to take the business. The way to win the big jobs is to win the small ones first, and do great work.

And – stay in contact. Don’t leave the field because they didn’t give you the business. This is a long-term marketing strategy, and it works.

4. Keep Your Existing Clients Happy. Aim Your Advertising At Them. Ask For Feedback And Referrals. Follow Up And Stay In Contact.

Your existing customers are your best prospects. They are loyal, and they know how you do business. They buy more, and they cost you less. Customer retention is the most important thing any business can do. Advertise to your existing customers first.

5. Consistent Advertising = Familiarity = Trust = Customers. Be Consistent.

People will only do business with you if they trust you. Remember this: trust takes time. Create a strong company advertising program within a sustainable budget and stick to it. Your company’s name will become familiar to the prospect, and you will get the business. There are no shortcuts to building trust.

Radio Advertising Tips

Radio advertising, like any other form of advertising, can work extremely well if it is properly planned, created and executed. But like all other forms, you MUST HAVE A PLAN! Otherwise you are just throwing your money away.

So how do you know what to do to make your radio campaign success? Like any advertising you have to have realistic expectations. Believe it or not, most business owners DO NOT have expectations that are realistic. That is one reason so many advertisements fall short.

There are many ways to succeed in advertising. There are far more ways to fail. Show me an ad campaign that didn’t succeed and I’ll be happy to point out what the causes of the failure were.

Here are some guidelines to follow to help you come up with a radio ad campaign that will work:

The first question I always get asked and the last question that should be asked is:

How Much?

The Radio is all about reach and frequency. The question a business owner should ask is

“How many people can I afford to reach with my message enough times so it will be noticed and take hold with my target audience?”

Here is the honest answer to how much? As low as $5.00 per spot and as high as $2000.00 or more per spot. Why the variance? The short answer is audience. Radio is priced no differently than any other medium. The bigger the audience, the bigger the price tag. For example, to advertise on a radio show on Saturday or Sunday is going to be very inexpensive in comparison to advertising during the week between 5:00 am and 8:00 pm. Radio’s primetime hours are Monday – Friday 5AM to 8PM.

The larger the audience a station or a particular show has, the higher the price per minute. A less popular station or show will be priced accordingly. Just as if you were purchasing an ad in print. Ads in a magazine with a circulation of 100,000 will cost more than the same ad size in a magazine with a circulation of 10,000.

How Many Spots should I run?

Radio is a frequency driven medium. I have had a veterinary practice run 1 x 15 second spot on 1 show every week for 13 weeks and complain that the ad didn’t work because the station’s listeners weren’t their demographic. The ad didn’t work because:

A) The ad wasn’t run with enough frequency. (imagine trying to remember something you heard last week for only 15 seconds)

B) The ad had no call to action. One ad they ran said “Happy Holidays”, and the other ad said, “We would like to welcome Dr. Jane Smith to our practice”.

C) A 15 second ad is not enough time to get a complete message out to an audience.

There are scientific formulas that calculate how many times the human brain must hear a message before it registers hearing that message. In radio, the rule of thumb is a three frequency. This is the minimum number of times the average radio listener needs to be exposed to your businesses message before they can be expected to remember hearing the message. If we have to hear something three times before it registers, imagine the number of times we have to be exposed to the message before we make a decision to take action.

There are a lot of factors that are in play before someone will take action. First and foremost they have to want or need your product or service. Many people get frustrated because they don’t feel their ads are working because no one is saying I heard your ad on XYZ radio show or their phones aren’t ringing, or no one came in and bought anything. The reaction of a consumer is only as good as the product/service, offer or message. For instance, we all don’t need to purchase clothing for our dog. Unlike dog food, dog clothing is not an item that we must purchase for a dog to thrive. Thus one will get lower response advertising dog clothing than dog food.

Can I run ads off Primetime?

Off-prime or non-prime includes nights, weekends and overnights. Depending on the station these time periods may be more or less opportune for your business to capitalize.

Some stations price their weekends nearly the same as their primetime. Some have evening programs that advertisers fill up faster than that same station’s primetime schedule. Each radio station is going to have its unique set of non-prime programming and advertising circumstances.

The cost of advertising during non-prime hours on a Tier 3 station is… basically losing your advertising investment dollars. Why? Because 95% of the time there’s not a large enough audience to successfully advertise solely during non-prime hours on a Tier 3 station. Many Tier 3 stations reserve their non-prime hours for block programming – a specialty vehicle for radio programming / infomercials. If you are looking at Tier 3 level station, look at Primetime shows that are not infomercials. There are block programming variety shows, although very few, that can be very affordable and, depending on programming, can give you a target audience.

I don’t listen to AM, neither does my family or friends, so I should advertise on FM right?

Each radio station, whether AM or FM has a demographic profile of primary listeners that an advertiser ought to direct their attention. It’s not so much the type of music being played or the topics being discussed but the listeners who are attracted to that programming. How many people are listening? Are they male or female? How old are they? What’s their average income? How are they employed? Etc.

However, audiences listen to music and talk stations differently. And since Talk Radio is generally found on the AM dial and Music Radio is generally found on the FM dial, we’ll divide and conquer those two topics below.

Talk Radio

Talk radio is more intimate and demands an active foreground listenership. When taking Aunt Gertrude to the grocery store it’s hard to hold a conversation with her about her dentures while also listening to talk radio. There are too many voices talking and not enough attention span to go around. This makes talk radio a one-on-one proposition.

Talk radio’s programming… well, talks! Talk radio’s commercials… well, they talk too! Therefore, the audience often times doesn’t differentiate between programming and commercial content.

So, when talk radio the programming talks and the commercials talk too… the audience listens and is more likely to respond immediately to a commercial.

This makes talk radio outstanding for DR advertising – i.e. direct response. (Pick up the phone or go to this website and buy our products and services.)

The talk radio audience doesn’t necessarily stay on the same station during the day. They may listen to show A. on one station, and when it ends they will listen to show B on a different station. It is “appointment radio”, much like appointment TV. Listeners will tune in to the shows they are interested in no matter the station.

Music

Music stations are less intimate and more often have a passive background listenership. It’s easy to talk dentures with Aunt Gertrude with music playing in the background… you just tune out Auntie Gertrude… kidding, of course! You tune out the music and hang on every word about Aunt Gertie’s false teeth! You get the picture – right?

When listening to music radio without Aunt Gertrude it is a one-on-one proposition as well. But often times when the music stops and commercials begin listeners jump to the next music station for more tunes. After all, no one listens to radio for the commercials they listen for programming content.

However, savvy programming directors are paid big bucks to stay ahead of that curve and work diligently to get listeners to stay tuned.

Nevertheless, music stations are typically better at branding than they are at making phones ring. That’s not to say music stations cannot make phones ring. There are caveats to much in radio – but you’re beginning to get that, aren’t you

Endorsements

An endorsement is when a station’s personality or someone of notoriety, like Michael Jordan, vocalizes their support of your product or service. Endorsements are the mother of all advertising regardless of the medium. (No one EVER spent $100+ on gym shoes until Michael Jordan became a basketball god.)

There’s nothing like a Bill Handel, John Kobylt or Ken Chiampou endorsement on KFI-AM 640, or a Ryan Seacrest endorsement on KIIS-FM 102.7.

Station personality endorsements, budget providing, are the way to go in radio advertising. Why? Because it’s the personality audiences have tuned in to listen to lending their good name and credibility to your business. When a station’s personality reads (usually live) your businesses commercial that announcement becomes part of the stations programming – thus implying that the station endorses your products and services too.

Endorsements come at a higher price per spot, generally carry a long-term commitment, plus a talent fee and require station as well as the talent approval… but their oh, so worth it!

Can’t afford a station personality endorsement but want something other than a voice-over actor in your spot? Voice it yourself. Other than a station personality you, the business owner, are the next best person to sell your products and services. This works providing you sound good on-air. And “good” doesn’t mean polished, it means believable and credible.

Creative – disclaimer – please take no offense!

Now hear this! You, Mr. Business Owner, cannot see the forest through the trees! Unless you are one in a million… and maybe you are… but probably, you are not. Please take no offense. It’s common. Your business is your baby. Who else could possibly come up with a better story about how great your baby is than you?

Here’s the thing, consumers these days don’t care how great you are! For the most part they don’t care where you are located. While they don’t want an idiot helping them they also don’t care how friendly, knowledgeable and courteous your staff is – even though your staff should be anyway. Your prospective customers are probably not overly concerned about your selection. They don’t care about the awards your business has amassed. And why should they?

It’s their hard earned money that they are considering giving to you. But, what’s in it for them? Why should they choose your business as the benefactor of their earnings?

Creative, or the content of your commercial, is about the unique position you place your business in the minds of your prospective customers. Creative is really big, very vital, no kidding, seriously important! (I’m trying to make a point here.)

In the Los Angeles market, once up and running, a business can expect to spend six-figures in radio advertising easily. If you promise to be the “buy today use tonight” big screen store and cannot or do not follow through with that promise operationally, you’re wasting a lot of money.

Just think, spending all kinds of money, time and energy on a campaign that succeeds in getting customers to buy from you but then fails to deliver on the ultimate promise?

Think that customer would come back?

Nope.

Think that customer is going to share the unpleasant story?

Yep.

In that analogy, like many other situations, creative is directly tied to your businesses operations. And you were just wondering how much a spot costs…

If you haven’t already figured it out, we’re talking about a long-term partnership here… partnership in a very literal sense.

How long does it take, I don’t have unlimited resources?

Getting a radio campaign going can be compared to getting an idle battleship, in the middle of ocean and with a sleeping crew, ready for combat.

The officers first must wake the crew, get them to their stations, fire up the engines and put the ship in forward motion. When the propellers first start rotating the ship doesn’t immediately take off. It takes time for momentum to build.

Once the ship is cruising along it can be maneuvered much more easily and with greater accuracy.

So, how long does it take to get a campaign up and running? That depends greatly on the message, business, market, economy and lots of other elements…

If we’re targeting a relational customer or one who will patronize your business because of reputation and regardless of price… then 3-months is a fair amount of time to expect to begin seeing a return on investment.

If we’re targeting a transactional customer, or one who is out for the lowest price and best deal… then a week or two… heck, maybe just a couple days with super high-frequency.

Be careful when deciding which type of customer to pursue! The near-term sales volume and immediate gratification of the transactional customer can be appealing. But sales volume and better margins come from the relational customer who you’ve pursued for the long-haul, have invested in and own an area of their mind.

WHY MARKETING FAILS

Marketing is a process that every business must conduct. But if management lacks the necessary commitment to the marketing plan, it is sure to fail.

If clear objectives and goals are not set, and a sustainable company advertising budget is not committed, marketing will fail. Unrealistic expectations will doom your efforts. Poor research, planning, and targeting will kill your marketing. And if management thinks that marketing [and selling] are unimportant or undignified, the program is destined to fall short of success.

So to learn some advertising basics just follow the links below or if you would like to advertise to our hundreds of thousands of readers, just go to our advertise with us page. If you have questions that you want us to answer, send us an email.

Recently we have been in many debates with many so-called internet advertising consultants over pay-per-click advertising versus traditional display advertising. Many consultants believe that the pay per click, pay for performance or what ever you would like to call it is the only way to advertise a business because that is the only way you can truly track where your sales come from etc, etc, etc.

My theory is that it has never been the job of an advertising medium to make people click, call, email or come in to a store. The advertising medium’s JOB is to put a businesses advertising message in front of that medium’s audience. One can not hold a TV or radio station, newspaper or magazine, billboard company, or Internet site responsible for the actions of a consumer. There are hundreds of reasons ads don’t work! The two most common reasons are 1.) NO ONE WANTS OR NEEDS YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE, or 2.) YOUR AD STINKS!

Internet advertising consultants argue that point with me on a daily basis. I have always said that consumer actions do not change habits just because the ad they see in a banner ad on an internet site.

comScore, Inc. Prepared the following for: Empirical Generalizations in Advertising Conference for Industry and Academia. December 4-5, 2008 The Wharton School, Philadelphia, PA.

They call the this HOW ONLINE ADVERTISING WORKS:
WHITHER THE CLICK? We call it, Pay for Performance, the Emperor’s New Clothes.

How To Make My Internet AD Work

Does Advertising Work In FREE Publications

Building a Successful Advertising Plan

4 Deadly Marketing Mistakes

10 Reasons Why Businesses Fail

The Advertising Secret: The Power Of A Well Done Coupon

THE KING of Advertising

Integrating Your Marketing: How To Increase Your Return On Advertising Investment

The Advertising Calendar

How & Why Follow Up Works

Testing & Tracking Your Ads: Advertising Is A Science