| Manager's Manual |
The 6 Steps to Ads That Stick ©
from the article Lessons From Teachers
A Reminder; the mission of SoundAdvice is to build credibility for your sales people, to get face to face appointments, and to encourage more 52-week campaigns.
Remind your sales people that if they get a client request for The Six Steps to Make Ads Stick, DO NOT email or fax them.
They should make an appointment to deliver and discuss them with their clients and prospects.
1.) Frequency
Numerous scientific studies have proven that consumers need to be exposed to a message two and a half 3 times in a given week to break through the clutter and to retain that message.
Even teachers know this important frequency of three formulas.
The teaching three-part formula is simple;
- Tell the kids what you are going to tell them.
- Then tell them.
- Then tell them what you told them.
They know that if their students do not get the message in this fashion, three times in a seven day window, they won’t retain what they’ve learned, and they’ll probably fail the test.
Based upon our knowledge of our audience turnover rates (how often and how long our audience tunes in and out of certain parts of our programming day), we can show you how to reach your target customer three times a week within any budget.
This is the perfect opportunity for your account executives to discuss with small budget advertisers ‘buying a station within a station.’
Discuss the danger of trying to reach too many people with too little frequency. There is always a way to reach a portion of your audience with a frequency of three, even with the smallest budget.
Some radio people fall into the trap of believing being ‘number one’ or having a huge reach is somehow important.
Often, while you’re talking about reaching 100,000 people, you are talking to a client who would be happy if you brought her three new customers a week.
Telling the reach versus frequency story will be very relevant to 80% of your prospects!
© ENSMedia Inc. 2007. All rights reserved
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Manager's Manual
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2.) Relevance
The teaching three-
To effectively reach and influence the hearts and minds of your prospects, your message must be relevant and meaningful to them. Consumers are exposed to more than 3,600 advertising messages a day, including everything from packaging to signage, and from radio to billboards. Their minds are now programmed to send messages with outrageous claims into their ‘junk mail’. Your ads must speak to them in their language, solve their problems, and offer clear and believable customer benefits.
This is an ideal opportunity to discuss your objectivity in helping them prepare relevant messages. Very often clients are too emotionally or professionally attached to their products and services to speak the customer’s language.
Offer to help them create ads that speak to customer’s needs and wants rather than ads that satisfy the seller.
3.) Influence
‘Reach’ is an outdated term in advertising today. A coupon envelop which ‘reaches’ your doorstep but is never opened, for example, is counted as a reach of one, but has absolutely no chance of influencing the recipient.
Only intrusive media, like radio or TV, have the opportunity to influence everyone they reach.
Intrusive media are those media that influence consumers whether they want to be influenced or not. They are the media which consumers do not have to stop what they are doing to absorb.
Passive media, like yellow pages, print, brochures or websites, can only influence those consumers who want to learn more about your company, products or services. They have to stop what they are doing and actively seek out passive messages.
The two advertising streams, intrusive and passive, work well together. Intrusive media can be used to create interest, credibility and awareness for your business before the prospects’ preferences and perceptions are created, and can be used to drive customers to more information and details on your passive media sites.
Use elections as an example of reach versus influence. Discuss with your clients the fallacy of thinking someone who didn’t like George Bush, would take time out of their busy schedule to read an ad or website designed to change their minds.
On the other hand, using intrusive media with relevant messages, the George Bush campaign at least has a chance to change perceptions or tell the Bush story. Presidents today are made with intrusive media.
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4.) Consistency
Mixed messages don’t stick! Is it believable to you that a company could consistently offer both the highest of quality, yet the lowest prices?
Your prospects and customers have difficulty believing and retaining that proposition as well. Be consistent with your selling message and you increase your odds of having your selling proposition remembered.
You might ask your creative people to attend the meeting with examples of commercials that send mixed messages. Play them for the staff and ask them, “Why should I drive past three of her competitors to get to her business?”
If the answer is not clear, do that client a favor and go back with a proposed re-write.
5.) Duration
Trust takes time. For your prospects to trust and believe you, you have to stick with the same message over time. In more than 50 years, for example, Coca Cola has only tried to tell us three basic things…It’s the Real Thing, Things Go Better With Coke, and Enjoy. And Coke’s budget is much bigger than yours.
Many advertisers get tired of their own messages just before the public starts to grasp them. Resist the temptation to change your message prematurely.
If possible, select some successful local radio clients who have remained true to their message. Use these examples in your discussions with clients who want to change copy too often.
Don’t be afraid to look prospects in the eye with a grin and say “You’re not normal.” Then explain that by virtue of being in business they listen to and read their ads and their competitor’s ads very carefully.
Consumers, on the other hand, are busy consumers and are not so focused on advertising. When it comes to media use, your clients are NOT normal and must be made to realize they tire of their ads long before normal media consumers do.
6.) Dominate
Share of voice equals share of mind. Even successful marketers like McDonald’s with their huge advertising budgets, know they can’t effectively have exposure on every media in town.
Never spread your budget too thin. Buy only as many media as you can effectively dominate. It is marketing suicide to get lost in the shuffle with clients investing more in a given media than you.
If you own a lumber store, for example, you probably cannot ‘out-flyer’ Lowes or Home Depot, but there is a media or a portion of a local media where you can have a stronger share of voice than the ‘big guys’.
Choose a media where you can have the dominant share of voice…share of voice equals share of mind, which in turn equals share of market.
Would you rather own the dominant share of a market of 5,000 people, or be a 5% player in a market of 10,000 people?
Compare advertising clutter with the logos on a car at the stock car races. Which is more effective, an oil company with a small logo buried among many competitors on every car, or the big red Budweiser bow-tie logo as the only logo on one car in the race?
The answer is clear, everyone recognizes the red Bud car.
© ENSMedia Inc. 2007. All rights reserved
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