So here I am in line at the book store, waiting to check out. Oh sure most books I buy these days go right onto my tablet so I can read them anywhere, but once in a while there is a book I just want to own, to have in my personal library and today was one of those days.
So what do you do when standing in line at the book store because someone out front cannot seem to find her discount card? You look left and you look right. To the left is the Pickle in a Bag. Think on this a second... a pickle in a bag. One day someone was standing in line at a checkout and said "you know what people need when they are standing in line? They need a Pickle in a Bag... for $1.49". I am sure that person now lives in some grand estate somewhere where the weather never turns cold. But here is was and right below it, "The Hot Pickle In a Bag".
I was also greeted by book marks, pocket flashlights, tiny "Dummies" books, NanoBots and a host of other items designed to liberate me from a few more dollars. None of them appealed. That is until I tendered my card for my book purchase, and right there...right below the card reader sat a box of Snickers Bars... with almonds.... JUMBO size.
After I reached the car and enjoyed my JUMBO Snickers bar with almonds, which indicated on the wrapper is was FOUR servings, I though about the buying opportunities presented me at the checkout. I actually went back to the store and looked over the merchandise presented for my view while I was in line at the checkout. I then counted everything that was within reach. Fifty Five items. Think about that a second. Fifty Five items presented to me to make one more buying decision before I left the store.
I wonder how many times any of us in sales make one more buying opportunity while we have the buyers attention. Maybe a sheet of paper with up-sale opportunities handed to them while we are filling out an order. Maybe a leave behind, or something with the bill or thank you note. But how many of us have ever offered fifty five separate buying opportunities just when they are ready to make a purchase? How much money have we all left on the table buy not exploring other opportunities to help their business?
Asking for a few more dollars can make a big difference in both the effectiveness of the campaign and your income. It really is a win win. Look back at the last 20 or 30 weeks and ask what would have happened to your income if you had just increased each order by $25. It becomes significant quickly.
I am not saying that asking for an extra few bucks is a silver bullet in sales. But it could be a Picke in a Bag!
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Friday, November 1, 2013
I think I was Over Served!
This week I tried my best to solve some I.T. problems at the radio station. That was mistake number one. But a few hours after it all ended and a few hours before a managers meeting I found that my efforts were not wasted.
The problem was that we were running out of IP addresses on our network even though we had hundreds to spare. (For us non technical types, this would be like the post office saying they are out of mail boxes even though you can see there are plenty left). Upon looking more deeply into the system we found that there appeared to be two DHCP servers battling it out on the same network.
A DHCP server (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is a program that runs on your network which assigns specific addresses to each piece of equipment attached to the networks so everything knows what everything else is. That's how files go between computers, print files go to printers etc.. It is the director of the orchestra on your network and keeps the work humming. BUT, put a SECOND DHCP server into the network and you have war. One server is sending things one way and the other DHCP server is sending things other ways and before you know it nothing is working.
What the heck does this have to do with radio you ask? Well this problem is not specific to Radio, it is a plague in every business. Too many people trying to control the flow of work and nothing gets done. For example, if my network has a problem and my document cannot get to the printer I get a message that says something like "I tried... see if you can figure out how to print this yourself!". The same thing happens in organizations where there are more than one person assigning duties or allocating resources.
There are two causes for this. The first is that multiple managers do not have a clear sense of who does what and second when someone in the chain decides to act outside of the chain of command, not knowing what someone is already doing for someone else. When multiple people assign duties to one person without knowing everything they may already be doing you can overload the person to the point where they drive their car through the front door some morning to announce that they have quit. Likewise when you don't know who is doing what you can end up with people who look busy, but are not really doing much of anything. Still worse is that employee with time and grade who goes behind your back to tell people how things "really work around here".
When I could not figure out what was going on with the network, I finally pulled all of the cables and all of the switches and started over. I found 12 connections that went nowhere. I also found one connection that, through a number of switches came right back into the switch it originated in...thus causing the apparent duplication of the DHCP server rendering the network slow and unreliable. In this afternoon's management meeting I am looking at our company to make sure that we are not servicing a bunch of dead ends, or we do not have more than one server serving up projects and duties to each member of staff.
The problem was that we were running out of IP addresses on our network even though we had hundreds to spare. (For us non technical types, this would be like the post office saying they are out of mail boxes even though you can see there are plenty left). Upon looking more deeply into the system we found that there appeared to be two DHCP servers battling it out on the same network.
A DHCP server (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is a program that runs on your network which assigns specific addresses to each piece of equipment attached to the networks so everything knows what everything else is. That's how files go between computers, print files go to printers etc.. It is the director of the orchestra on your network and keeps the work humming. BUT, put a SECOND DHCP server into the network and you have war. One server is sending things one way and the other DHCP server is sending things other ways and before you know it nothing is working.
What the heck does this have to do with radio you ask? Well this problem is not specific to Radio, it is a plague in every business. Too many people trying to control the flow of work and nothing gets done. For example, if my network has a problem and my document cannot get to the printer I get a message that says something like "I tried... see if you can figure out how to print this yourself!". The same thing happens in organizations where there are more than one person assigning duties or allocating resources.
There are two causes for this. The first is that multiple managers do not have a clear sense of who does what and second when someone in the chain decides to act outside of the chain of command, not knowing what someone is already doing for someone else. When multiple people assign duties to one person without knowing everything they may already be doing you can overload the person to the point where they drive their car through the front door some morning to announce that they have quit. Likewise when you don't know who is doing what you can end up with people who look busy, but are not really doing much of anything. Still worse is that employee with time and grade who goes behind your back to tell people how things "really work around here".
When I could not figure out what was going on with the network, I finally pulled all of the cables and all of the switches and started over. I found 12 connections that went nowhere. I also found one connection that, through a number of switches came right back into the switch it originated in...thus causing the apparent duplication of the DHCP server rendering the network slow and unreliable. In this afternoon's management meeting I am looking at our company to make sure that we are not servicing a bunch of dead ends, or we do not have more than one server serving up projects and duties to each member of staff.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Marketing and the Death Penalty
This week I was exposed to a Ted Talk (www.Ted.com) about the Death Penalty in Texas. You are probably scratching your head asking what could the Death Penalty and executions in Texas possibly have to do with marketing? Read on and I will explain how my eyes have been opened to looking ahead by looking back.
In this talk it was explained that the basic process of a person arriving in the death chamber follows four basic steps. First there is a murder and an arrest. Following this there is the trial where the defendant is found guilty and sentenced to death. Following this is the automatic state appeal, followed by the Federal Appeal.
Texas is known for the number of executions it carries out. A lot compared to most states. That being said there were those who decided that they system needed to be looked into to figure out why.
The first thing that was noticed was that at the State Appeal level, the convicted killer was not represented by Legal Counsel. This was changed. What happened to the rates? Not much. It was then disclosed that the same thing happened at the Federal Appeal level. When this was corrected, nothing much happened to the number either. So as you look at the problem and the steps taken you have to ask yourself what more could have been done? Think on this a second before you read on….
Yes there are four steps that start with the murder which explains the high number of executions in Texas, But pull the lens back a bit. We now see that 79% of people who were executed for Murder in Texas were in the state's Juvenile correctional system. Pull back further and you see the number of Juveniles who left school before being introduced to the Juvenile system. Pull back further and see parents who may have been in trouble with the law, drug abusers, teen moms, missing fathers and so forth.
I am not writing this piece to pass judgment on social issues. I am talking about Marketing a business.
Those of us who sell advertising believe the process starts with the “Cold Call”. It is followed by research, creative, writing, production, schedule building, contracts, on air and renewal. Done correctly this model has about a 33% success rate. But what would happen if we pulled the camera back for a minute and looked deeper? What would we see?
We see a person who has a business problem. In most cases that problem is not enough of the right kind of customers buying enough of the right things. But before that we see a business person opening a business, knowing that their concept is Unique enough for people to come bang down the doors! Word of mouth will make them a success! Or they were a successful business but a competitor came in and took part of their pie. Before that we had someone raising money from friends, borrowing from a bank and mortgaging everything they had to get into business. Before that we had someone working for someone else who had an idea.
Today take some time and think on this: How could I help earlier in the cycle? Would my contacts in Real Estate, Banking, City government and the like help this person with the idea? Would my knowledge of business and marketing give them a more realistic view up front, or help to keep them from making mistakes? And if I did intervene earlier, how would I be seen by this business person as compared to all of the other people who sell what I sell?
Today sit and ask yourself…. am I someone peddling marketing, or am I a resource for people who want to be in business?
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Inbound Marketing?
A good friend of mine sent me a link to a piece on Inbound Marketing and asked my opinion on what I read. The piece can be seen HERE. What follows is my response to anyone who believes that Inbound Marketing and Social Marketing can take the place of Mass Media in general and radio in particular.
Greetings:
I hope you will post my reply even if I question you on facts and assumptions:
I read your piece “Let your brain do the heavy lifting” and have to take exception with a few things in your piece:
While I agree that “inbound Marketing” the way you describe it can be a viable way to obtain new customers, I have to start with a rather obvious question: How do you get people to FIND you? According to Netcraft, there were some 644 million active web sites on the Internet as of 2012. Lets digest that a second… 644,000,000 web sites. Since many people use the “internet” as one of their primary home entertainment choices, you are looking at what would be a TV set with 644,000,000 channels!
So the question comes, how do you get people to find you? The initial answer WAS SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which was designed to use keywords and links to make you FIRST in a search engine return. Now however, everyone is using SEO and the player with the most money typically has the best SEO. Just ask Amazon. But SEO alone does not do the trick. This is why even huge companies like Apple, Google, the aforementioned Amazon and even Microsoft spend huge dollars to direct people to their web sites. How do they do it? With what you classify as “Money Marketing”.
Inbound marketing can help you find customers if you are a highly specialized business looking to reach a small and elusive market. This market is typically a highly educated market who uses the Internet for research. An inbound marketing campaign typically uses a combination of pertinent blogging, videos, ebooks, enewsletters, whitepapers, so-called “social Media Marketing” and other forms of targeted content marketing. However unlike mass marketing (Television, Newspaper, Radio etc.), inbound marketing does not provide REACH. In other words Inbound Marketing falls short when trying to connect to new people… people who may not even know about your product or service. Additionally, if you sell anything that is available from a larger company, you have to out-blog, out e-mail and out social media them.
Lest you think that just smaller companies make errors in Social Media campaigns and Inbound Marketing, take a look at the case of the Pepsi Refresh Project. There is an interesting white paper on this particular project here:http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2011/03/social-medias-massive-failure.html
Imagine being a company as big as Pepsi, able to hire the best people there are.. afford the best SEO out there and getting these results.
Can Mass Media build relationships? Ask anyone who ever listened to Paul Harvey. They never had a two way conversation with him yet they still went out and bought Wells Lamont gloves and Neutrogena Hand Cream by the carload. Tom Bodett sold us a low budget hotel room that was clean and comfortable, and he left the light on for us.
Cold Calling: Does it work? How would the average business person ever find out about something new were it not for the sales person who came in and introduced a product or service? In the book The IBM Way, the cover photo shows Kam Leung, one of IBMs first four employee in Hong Kong in 1957 ferrying an IBM typewriter across Victoria Harbor to a Norwegian ship at anchor, where he gave a demonstration. It was NOT an easy ride in a sampan, but that spirit of service to the customer is what make a sale. Taking the term “Cold Call” literally to man a phone call… well sales people who do their jobs in this day and age would die by using just the telephone, or by mass emailing. Makes you wonder if people have actually heard of spam filters doesn’t it? A cold calling sales person is a person with an idea. They are always worth giving a few minutes to.
I have to take exception with you assessment that doing absolutely nothing is better than doing a little. Someone sees every ad and someone hears every ad. Will they respond? It depends upon YOUR offer. Imagine a scale where on one side is what you say, and on the other side is how many times you say it. If the message is strong, you don’t have to say it too many times. In my market there is a store called Dillards. They sell high quality clothing. Many of my shirts, pants and suits come from there. But WHEN do I shop? When they hold their seasonal clearance. This is when I buy $300 sport coats for $79. When I buy $99 designer dress shirts for $7.00 (that is not a typo) each… and I buy every one they have in my size. Do they advertise this sale? Yes… one quick ad campaign on the radio and the store is packed. The rest of the year they advertise like mad on Radio, TV and newspaper. Why? because their offer of full price merchandise is not as strong as the low price offer and requires more convincing to get people into the store.
Finally as to advertising expenditures decreasing, according to Kantar Media, spending among the ten largest advertisers in the US in Q2 2013, ad expenditures are up 15.7%. Among the top 100 marketers ad spending is up 10% while direct response spending during the same time was off some 13.1%.
To be fair: I operate a bunch of radio stations in Western Arizona. We have 20 some web sites and are software developers. We own a small billboard company. We own five retail businesses. I was educated in economics and accounting as well as business administration and I have been helping businesses with marketing solutions since 1976 which means either I have been and am getting results for businesses that use my radio stations, or I am the best con man in the business!
Chris Rolando
Greetings:
I hope you will post my reply even if I question you on facts and assumptions:
I read your piece “Let your brain do the heavy lifting” and have to take exception with a few things in your piece:
While I agree that “inbound Marketing” the way you describe it can be a viable way to obtain new customers, I have to start with a rather obvious question: How do you get people to FIND you? According to Netcraft, there were some 644 million active web sites on the Internet as of 2012. Lets digest that a second… 644,000,000 web sites. Since many people use the “internet” as one of their primary home entertainment choices, you are looking at what would be a TV set with 644,000,000 channels!
So the question comes, how do you get people to find you? The initial answer WAS SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which was designed to use keywords and links to make you FIRST in a search engine return. Now however, everyone is using SEO and the player with the most money typically has the best SEO. Just ask Amazon. But SEO alone does not do the trick. This is why even huge companies like Apple, Google, the aforementioned Amazon and even Microsoft spend huge dollars to direct people to their web sites. How do they do it? With what you classify as “Money Marketing”.
Inbound marketing can help you find customers if you are a highly specialized business looking to reach a small and elusive market. This market is typically a highly educated market who uses the Internet for research. An inbound marketing campaign typically uses a combination of pertinent blogging, videos, ebooks, enewsletters, whitepapers, so-called “social Media Marketing” and other forms of targeted content marketing. However unlike mass marketing (Television, Newspaper, Radio etc.), inbound marketing does not provide REACH. In other words Inbound Marketing falls short when trying to connect to new people… people who may not even know about your product or service. Additionally, if you sell anything that is available from a larger company, you have to out-blog, out e-mail and out social media them.
Lest you think that just smaller companies make errors in Social Media campaigns and Inbound Marketing, take a look at the case of the Pepsi Refresh Project. There is an interesting white paper on this particular project here:http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2011/03/social-medias-massive-failure.html
Imagine being a company as big as Pepsi, able to hire the best people there are.. afford the best SEO out there and getting these results.
Can Mass Media build relationships? Ask anyone who ever listened to Paul Harvey. They never had a two way conversation with him yet they still went out and bought Wells Lamont gloves and Neutrogena Hand Cream by the carload. Tom Bodett sold us a low budget hotel room that was clean and comfortable, and he left the light on for us.
Cold Calling: Does it work? How would the average business person ever find out about something new were it not for the sales person who came in and introduced a product or service? In the book The IBM Way, the cover photo shows Kam Leung, one of IBMs first four employee in Hong Kong in 1957 ferrying an IBM typewriter across Victoria Harbor to a Norwegian ship at anchor, where he gave a demonstration. It was NOT an easy ride in a sampan, but that spirit of service to the customer is what make a sale. Taking the term “Cold Call” literally to man a phone call… well sales people who do their jobs in this day and age would die by using just the telephone, or by mass emailing. Makes you wonder if people have actually heard of spam filters doesn’t it? A cold calling sales person is a person with an idea. They are always worth giving a few minutes to.
I have to take exception with you assessment that doing absolutely nothing is better than doing a little. Someone sees every ad and someone hears every ad. Will they respond? It depends upon YOUR offer. Imagine a scale where on one side is what you say, and on the other side is how many times you say it. If the message is strong, you don’t have to say it too many times. In my market there is a store called Dillards. They sell high quality clothing. Many of my shirts, pants and suits come from there. But WHEN do I shop? When they hold their seasonal clearance. This is when I buy $300 sport coats for $79. When I buy $99 designer dress shirts for $7.00 (that is not a typo) each… and I buy every one they have in my size. Do they advertise this sale? Yes… one quick ad campaign on the radio and the store is packed. The rest of the year they advertise like mad on Radio, TV and newspaper. Why? because their offer of full price merchandise is not as strong as the low price offer and requires more convincing to get people into the store.
Finally as to advertising expenditures decreasing, according to Kantar Media, spending among the ten largest advertisers in the US in Q2 2013, ad expenditures are up 15.7%. Among the top 100 marketers ad spending is up 10% while direct response spending during the same time was off some 13.1%.
To be fair: I operate a bunch of radio stations in Western Arizona. We have 20 some web sites and are software developers. We own a small billboard company. We own five retail businesses. I was educated in economics and accounting as well as business administration and I have been helping businesses with marketing solutions since 1976 which means either I have been and am getting results for businesses that use my radio stations, or I am the best con man in the business!
Chris Rolando
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Does your bologna have a first name?
This is a piece written by a good friend and one of the best branding people I know. Thought I would share:
The
Power of Music!
By Bill Turpen, CEO, Advanced Concepts, Inc.
The
real goal of advertising is to have your ad’s be remembered long
after they have been seen or heard. The chances that someone will
drop everything they are doing to act on your ad immediately are
unrealistic, so being remembered after the ad’s are over is
critical. Some advertisers yell at the top of their lungs to try to
get your attention, some use lavish graphics, crazy voices, chicken
suits, sound effects, special offers, some even try to copy
successful national ad’s. But one of the best ways to make sure
your message is remembered is by using music. In the advertising
world it’s called a JINGLE! Having a good jingle for your business
can virtually guarantee listeners will be singing your song which
helps them remember you when they need what you offer.
The
beauty of utilizing a jingle for your business is not only the memory
component, but the ability to incorporate a jingle in all aspects of
a company’s marketing efforts from TV and radio ads to telephone
on-hold systems to website usage to ringtones on mobile devices and
more, basically anywhere audio can be used. A jingle even translates
into print media giving those ads more pop! For example, McDonald’s
utilizes billboards with nothing but the golden arches logo and the
words “I’m Lovin’ It!” It works and helps reinforce the
marketing campaign because we’ve all heard the “I’m Lovin’
It!” jingle thousands of times.
The
bottom line is that listeners will learn your jingle regardless of
whether they are interested in your business, your products, your
offer, etc. We naturally learn music and remember music without any
effort or choice. Did you really mean to learn and remember how to
spell bologna? Yes, Oscar Meyer has a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A!
Bill Turpen
Advanced Concepts, Inc.
P.O. Box 594
Bedford, IN 47421
Mobile: (812) 272-1925
Office: (812) 278-8178
Fax: (812) 278-8648
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
How are you advertising YOU?
We in advertising sales expect everyone to understand that someone who is selling anything to anyone needs to advertise it. We talk over and over again about the need to have people know you before they need you. So how do we advertise ourselves? Use that company business card? Maybe a few disorganized thoughts on a one-sheet or a couple of wrinkled letters of recommendation? Okay lets take a look at what we could be doing and SHOULD be doing.
We usually go through a number of steps with every new customer. We start with a Customer Needs Analysis followed by research into the problems uncovered, misconceptions and goals as well as a complete rundown on all competitors and how they do in the same categories. From there we use some national research to help us come up with the key points that will move the prospective customer of that business into a buying cycle. Finally we put together a presentation complete with an advertising schedule, SPEC ads and an explanation of what is needed to accomplish the goal. This brings the question: Since we do that for people trying to grow their businesses, shouldn't we be doing it for ourselves too?
So, lets start with a SELF CNA. Want to know how to do one? You'll find it HERE. Dig in and get to know yourself, your goals and the misconceptions that exist about you and your profession out there. Write down a complete list of all of your competitors, their advantages over you and visa versa.
You can see where this is going so we will skip the next steps which are the standard steps you would follow for assembling a presentation. But you must STILL DO all of the steps. You are assembling a package about YOU. This will also come in handy when you are presenting yourself to others. So on to the ads.
You have by now uncovered what the misconceptions are about you as a sales person, the needs of your prospects and your competitive advantages. You know what the first objections will be so make sure that is in there. So it is time to start writing SPEC ads. Have you ever noticed how well endorsement ads work for products? Well if you will consider yourself a product, then why not record a few people telling stories about what you have helped them do? Not your stations... YOU. The recording app on your cell phone will do a bang up job for this and the background noise makes it more real.
The schedule? Well what kind of schedule would you suggest for a stock broker? Write yourself that same schedule. Copy change? Yep, every week if it was up to me. What will you talk about? The research you have done. The new things happening. The customer who you just did a home run with. The person who benefited from the PSA schedule and ads you worked on. There is always something to talk about... so use your radio station to do it!
Sell YOU!
We usually go through a number of steps with every new customer. We start with a Customer Needs Analysis followed by research into the problems uncovered, misconceptions and goals as well as a complete rundown on all competitors and how they do in the same categories. From there we use some national research to help us come up with the key points that will move the prospective customer of that business into a buying cycle. Finally we put together a presentation complete with an advertising schedule, SPEC ads and an explanation of what is needed to accomplish the goal. This brings the question: Since we do that for people trying to grow their businesses, shouldn't we be doing it for ourselves too?
So, lets start with a SELF CNA. Want to know how to do one? You'll find it HERE. Dig in and get to know yourself, your goals and the misconceptions that exist about you and your profession out there. Write down a complete list of all of your competitors, their advantages over you and visa versa.
You can see where this is going so we will skip the next steps which are the standard steps you would follow for assembling a presentation. But you must STILL DO all of the steps. You are assembling a package about YOU. This will also come in handy when you are presenting yourself to others. So on to the ads.
You have by now uncovered what the misconceptions are about you as a sales person, the needs of your prospects and your competitive advantages. You know what the first objections will be so make sure that is in there. So it is time to start writing SPEC ads. Have you ever noticed how well endorsement ads work for products? Well if you will consider yourself a product, then why not record a few people telling stories about what you have helped them do? Not your stations... YOU. The recording app on your cell phone will do a bang up job for this and the background noise makes it more real.
The schedule? Well what kind of schedule would you suggest for a stock broker? Write yourself that same schedule. Copy change? Yep, every week if it was up to me. What will you talk about? The research you have done. The new things happening. The customer who you just did a home run with. The person who benefited from the PSA schedule and ads you worked on. There is always something to talk about... so use your radio station to do it!
Sell YOU!
Friday, September 20, 2013
What's old is new yet again
Greetings all!
The name of the game in selling is the same as it has ever been: Meet Someone. Assess their needs. See if you have a solution to their problem. Convince them that something they have, that you want or need (money in today's culture) is worth giving to you. This blog will try to present information needed by the Radio Professional to be that go between between business and broadcast. Hope you will check back often!
-chris rolando
The name of the game in selling is the same as it has ever been: Meet Someone. Assess their needs. See if you have a solution to their problem. Convince them that something they have, that you want or need (money in today's culture) is worth giving to you. This blog will try to present information needed by the Radio Professional to be that go between between business and broadcast. Hope you will check back often!
-chris rolando
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