There has been a lot of discussion about investment in advertising during these times. I thought that I would share with you some insight and questions you may want to consider. If you think this is true, just google “advertising in a recession” and you will get more supporting documentation than you have copy paper to print. Answer this question, “If I cut my advertising, will my revenues go up?” Of course not. It is financial suicide to take a chance with your business and stop promoting to get new customers. Here are 6 guarantees if you cut back your ad budget now:

• you will lose customers
• you will lose market share
• your cash flow will go down
• your revenue will go down
• your competitors will move forward
• you will have drop in new customers

If you think it is bad now, wait until you stop advertising. The road to business failure is paved with businesses that had the shortsightedness to cut back their marketing efforts.

Typically most businesses have a 20-30% attrition in normal times but replace it with new business brought in with advertising and marketing. When advertising is dropped, the attrition continues and new business does not occur. It is a double-edged loss situation.

Would you cut back your #1 salesperson during these times? Well, that is what your advertising is. It is your #1 salesperson making lots of sales calls every day. You would not think of cutting sales staff and you should not cut back your mass sales efforts either.

During these times, it is wise to review your ad budget and make sure you are using it wisely. This is a good opportunity to possibly shorten commercials from 60’s to 30’s, or even 15’s. This is a good time to look at guys across the street; if you are using the #1 radio station, possibly their competitor can offer much more and at less dollars. If you are running 2 print ads a week, look at doing one and adding another medium to expand your reach. If you are running ads Monday through Sunday, look at Monday through Friday, or even Monday through Thursday. This is the time for review but not the time to stop. This is the time to concentrate o your top products, market your big volume items, big profit center items. Good time to reduce marginal profit items. You also can offer better price incentives on your bigger margin items which will increase traffic.

I would like to close with a quote from Wal-Mart who discussed radio advertising during these times, “radio is local, flexible, efficient use of ad dollars, and pricing is attractive.” Follow the lead. Call your radio rep today to get back to growing your business.

Click here for
Print Version

Every month, for the last 2 years, we have held an Ad Seminar open to new businesses, start-ups, and those just beginning to go to the next step with their marketing and advertising plans. We have had hundreds of business owners attend and based on our feedback, these sessions have been extremely helpful in expanding their understanding of advertising. As part of our newsletter you are now reading, we invite you to attend our next session on 12/9/08. The seminar is a quick-paced, information-packed 90-minute training meeting, which starts at 11:30 am and does include a free lunch.

The content of these presentations covers all media, newspaper, TV, cable, Internet, radio, outdoor, direct mail and more. We cover the basics, how to effectively use each, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. We offer overview into how to buy advertising within

each and how to effectively grow your business. There is a question and answer segment that even expands on the basics. This portion is not just for start-ups, but also for more sophisticated advertisers.

We will also cover the creative side, writing and producing ads, branding, building awareness, and direct impact ad campaigns. One of the better segments is on how to create a plan from campaign to execution.

In this new world of technology, one of the more requested areas is the Internet. We discuss the basics, such as building websites, search engine optimization, buying Internet ads and more. We had one session this year that showcased the Internet and we had 40 companies in attendance.

For more information on attending, please contact the writer at this e-mail, jimseemiller@aol.com.

Click here for
Print Version

Each week over 94% of all Americans listen to radio, and that holds true in most markets throughout the U.S. So, it is likely that whatever kinds of prospects you are looking for can be found on radio. Over 80% of all listening is done in their cars, which allows for a captured audience for your commercial message and over 30% listen at work utilizing the streaming avenue and those people are only one click from your website - how immediate of a medium.

Radio provides an ideal advertising approach for small to medium-sized companies. However to be effective, you must understand some basics of advertising. The only 4 rules of advertising, which applies to all advertising but especially radio and you will achieve success by analyzing your advertising against these 4 criteria:

REACH, FREQUENCY, SELECTIVITY, EFFICIENCY

For any ad campaign to work you must REACH enough people to make a difference in your business. The more prospects you reach the more successful your campaign will be. Keep in mind that this criterion is not the whole answer.

The real key in today's highly competitive ad arena is FREQUENCY. The more times a prospect hears your message, the more they become convinced to try your product or service. As an adjunct to this important

element, never sacrifice frequency for reach. It is much better to have 100,000 people hear your message 5 times than 500,000 people to hear it once.

You must hit your target audience; SELECTIVITY is making sure your ads are aimed at your prime prospects. Radio affords the perfect venue for doing just that. There are many facets of SELECTIVITY, not only age and sex, but income levels, education, disposable income, home ownership etc. In starting a campaign, write down as many aspects of your potential customer as you can, then align that with the advertising that you are buying or the radio station that delivers the most of these type prospects.

Of course, the element of price comes into play. Do not get confused by price versus EFFICIENCY. Being efficient means buying advertising that delivers more prospects per dollar. If a radio station has twice the audience of another, that is relevant but not the final factor, especially if the smaller one delivers more real prospects (SELECTIVITY) at a lower price (EFFICIENCY) and can run more ads or commercials (FREQUENCY).

Take a moment to look at your current ad plans through these criteria and if you are comfortable with what you plan, move forward for success.

Click here for
Print Version

When it comes time to develop your advertising plan, there are some things that you will need to consider. These are areas that one should think about before plunging into your campaign.

What is the objective of the campaign? To have a sale, develop awareness and branding, have customers come to your location or website or telephone for more information? Once you have determined this direction then you can get started with the creative and content of your ad.

What is the one key thing that you want to get across to the person who is exposed to the ad? This could be price, quality, specific items, inventory, terms etc. This is the major element of your ad and leads to the next point.

Always have a call to action in your ad, and, if you have determined the objective, use that as your basis and make sure it is a major part of the ad.

Prior to your campaign, describe to yourself, who is the

product's heavy user. This is not just age and sex; describe every characteristic that your customer has. The more in-depth this thought process is, the more defined you can make your media buy. Do your research, study competition, and know your customer to a tee.

Always have a look at your expectations in terms of results, number of units sold, website visits, etc. to determine what you are expecting.

If you do not have a positioning statement, create one. Advertising works a lot better when there is a foundation to the message and a positioning statement does that better than anything.

Are there any common consumer perceptions that need to be addressed which might affect your success? What is the tactical angle, or the specific offer being made to the target? Spending time before the campaign can help eliminate mistakes and make your marketing efforts pay off more.

Click here for
Print Version

You are just about to take the next step in growing your business and it is now time to get started. Well, the first thing that must be done is to determine a budget. This seems like an easy beginning but it is not; it takes careful thought and planning. The budget must be established with an understanding that you cannot back off later, alter or second-guess your expenditure. The money allocated for this is your growth plan and there must be enough to make it work, but not too much that it severely puts a strain on your company. The best way to create a workable budget is to analyze your estimated return on investment (ROI) and build the ad dollars backwards. Let's assume that you are looking for a 30% return on your money, which is quite aggressive in today's world of 5-6% returns in the conventional financial markets.

You now create a formula that shows your anticipated ad expense multiplied by 130% to show the actual dollars needed to give you the return. That number is your net return after ad expenses. Now you have to determine how many widgets (sales of your products) are needed to get that return. If you have an operating profit margin of 50%, then that number must be doubled to reflect the gross sales needed to get to the gross sales volume number. This puts you in a great position to now determine how many individual sales will be needed to get to this point. The last factor is your sales closing ratio which will allow you now to determine number of leads that you will need from your ad campaign to give you your projected return. So, if your closing ration is 33%, then multiply number of sales needed by 3 and you will have number of leads that will be required to hit your numbers.

For your convenience, we will go through a sample run through of a typical company (if we can use that term). Let's say we have a new store selling flat screen TV’s only. They have set up an ad budget of $10,000 a month for 3 months, which brings the total to $30,000. They are looking at 30% return so they must net almost $40,000 after all is computed. Their operating profit margin is only 25% so they will need to gross $160,000 in unit sales. Since every one of these units costs $2000, they must create 80 sales over the course of the next 3 months or an average of over 25 sales per month. Their closing ratio is only 25% so they need to generate traffic of 80 times 4, or 320 potential customers into the store. So, this campaign has to deliver over 100 prospects a month, converting to 25 sales a month. That is only 4 people per day and most ad campaigns will easily deliver that amount.

The budget is the most critical part of a campaign; too little and it will not work, too much and expectations might not be met. We suggest the ROI formula to set budget, manage your expectations and allow you a way to measure your ad success. Your return might be higher based on demand of your product, however unrealistic goals can tarnish what might have been a good campaign. After this run of ads, measure, measure, measure! Did you get the results, how many, what days, did it build or did it start high and fade.

For more information on budgeting, contact the writer, Jim Seemiller.

Click here for
Print Version

We hear from advertisers that this campaign did not work, or that it was not effective and not sure about the success of their marketing efforts. There are several factors that can stand in the way of your success and you may want to make sure that you do not commit these mistakes.

Attempting to reach more people than your budget will allow, always #1 on our list. Some companies try to use too many media outlets based on budget and end up being too thin to make an impact. Reach is an important part of a campaign but reaching 100,000 people 5 times is much more effective than reaching 500,000 people once. NEVER sacrifice frequency for reach.

Advertisers often claim to have what the customer wants, but fail to offer any evidence. A good strategy is to be able to prove what you say in every ad, unsubstantiated claims can put the brakes on any good campaign. When customers hear "highest quality at

lowest price" without any proof, they will not likely respond.

There is a desire for instant gratification; an ad that creates urgency to cause immediate response is also the ad most likely to be quickly forgotten. Establish an identity in the mind of the consumer and long-term results will be much better.

Assuming the owner knows best is one that we see all the time. The business owner is uniquely unqualified to see their company or product objectively. It's hard to read the label when you are inside the bottle. Let the marketing and advertising function be supervised by someone with that expertise.

Ever hear those funny or slick ads and you were not sure what they were selling or trying to do. Don't sacrifice the persuasive for the creative. Great production without great copy can be an ad killer, production that is highly creative is a poor substitute for informative, believable, and persuasive.

Click here for
Print Version

Jim Seemiller has been involved in the broadcasting business for over 25 years, mostly in top management positions. He has run major radio stations in Chicago, San Diego, Pittsburgh and Phoenix. During those times his stations have always hit record-breaking ratings and revenue levels. The highest award in radio is the Marconi award, given annually to the best radio stations in US. Jim has been nominated a record breaking 4 times and has also won this covetous award once. Before the age of 40, Jim also owned his own group of radio stations in Florida, Sarasota and Ft. Myers markets.

Besides radio, Jim owned and operated ATB Consulting, which guided and helped companies in the sales, marketing and advertising areas. Jim's expertise in marketing has helped many business owners grow their businesses and reach new heights in sales and profit levels. As part of his consulting background, Jim conducts advertising seminars each month for new

companies, start-ups and those just wanting to go to the next level. He has helped hundreds of companies with their advertising and marketing efforts at these seminars. The next seminar is scheduled for July 22nd, 2008. If you are interested in attending, please contact Jim for more details.

With the rise of the Internet, the demand for companies to learn more about how to use the Internet has become a special segment during these seminars. There have already been two seminars exclusively targeted at how to make the Internet work for you and a new one is scheduled for this FALL 2008.

We hope you enjoy your monthly newsletter, the articles, comments, and training segments. If you would like more info just contact Jim at
jimseemiller@aol.com
or go to newsletter site www.ad4successatseemiller.com.

Click here for
Print Version