Yesterday I heard a commercial for a small steel company in town and found myself wondering why they’d spend a few thousands on a radio campaign.  I think it’s simply that they don’t know.  They’re feeling the crunch just like the rest of us, and probably listen to that particular station.  So they put together an ad about how great they are, and paid the radio sales piper.

Reactive instead of proactive.

Reactive advertising (“sales are way down, we’d better advertise!”) rarely works well.  It’s done in haste, usually without really focusing on the target audience.  Reactive ads are easy to find – they mention ‘what they do’ and ‘heres our sale’.  They beg for immediate response and most often miss the target.  Wasted money.

And now they’re even further in the hole – no customers and their marketing budget is shot.

And it’s not just radio.  Other examples of what I term ‘shotgun advertising’ include billboards, newspaper ads and TV spots (especially these new local spots on shows like ‘Show Me St. Louis – very expensive and provide real short term results).  And I won’t even mention PPC (whoops).

Being Proactive in Good Times and Bad

Proactive advertising should actually be considered an investment instead of an expense.  Putting money and time into building your Facebook Business page is a good example.  Building a following on twitter will help you build your brand – if you do it right (consistently).

SEO falls in this bucket too – it’s a long term investment that doles out great benefits over a long period of time.  A smart SEO campaign will have a very nice ROI which only compounds over time.  Imagine if you ranked for ten great phrases this month. Then next month you ranked for twenty. Then thirty. The first ten are still bringing you customers, and now so are the others.  Keep your foot on the SEO gas and you’ll dominate the web.  And domination means revenue.  Your proactive investment is producing lots of fruit over several seasons.

If you’re business is in trouble now, or you’re starting to feel the economic crunch, do something proactive today that helps you climb out of that hole. Start blogging. Create content.  Read some blogs that give great advice. Attend meetups from business leaders in your community. Invest something and reap the benefits.  Then do another.

There are businesses that have seen record years in 2009 and 2010 because they invested in a long term approach back in 2008.  Had they put that money into a radio ad or TV spot back in 2008, would it still be producing results (and driving sales) today?

“The new YellowPages are here!”

Offices would theme the event around recycling, and how great they were that they were doing their part for the environment.  “Bring your old YP so we can recycle it and you’ll get a new 1988 version” was the going phrase.

Then, around 1992 or so, a company called LitePages was born.  From what I remember, Litepages was an offshoot of Southwestern Bell.  As a webmaster for a federal govt agency at the time, I received a letter in the mail from them explaining that we could have one of their new CD White Pages in exchange for signing a letter stating that we’d order x percent less phone books the next go-round.   It was a win-win for both sides.

We signed up and soon had the LitePages on our intranet, and people really liked it.  For several years we’d continue to decrease our YP order and we’d receive new CD updates to the “online” system.

But somewhere along the line, LitePages disappeared.  I can’t remember if they were bought out, or if the company just stopped producing their product.  Either way, we were about done with it.  The Internet had really kicked in, and people could find more than just a phone number on a business.  Google Maps and business websites brought about complete information. Phone numbers were just a small part of what we could now consume.

Fast forward to 2009.  For the past month, this has been sitting in the hallway of a local business.  It’s collecting dust. (Yeah I know, crappy picture)

That’s a lot of wasted money for YP, or AT&T, or whoever is printing these things.  And what’s worse, this is probably the scene at businesses all over the country.

Now I’m no demographics genius, but I can actually see a need for the YPs.  Not so much at a place of business, but at homes.  Homes of old people.  Homes of people with no Interwebs.

Those sort of people probably still have a need for the good old Yellow Pages.  And that’s the type of demographic (in my mind) that still use them.  So if you’ve got a business that sells to old or not-so-well-off people, this is still your domain.

I’ve advised my clients to trim down 90% of their YP advertising in most cases.  Most of them now simply put their name, phone number, and website.  That’s all you need.  Gone are the days of spending $10k, $20k or more to be in all the city-wide and metro versions of the YPs.  Spend that marketing budget on something more 2000-ish.

As for Yellow Pages, who wants those things?

Actually, I do.  I use them to start fires in our firepit.

As part of my promotion effort, I’m going to be doing a radio commercial on a local station that has a great demographic for the event.

Problem is, I’ve been so stressed about getting this all together, that I’m not feeling 100% creative at the moment.  So maybe you can help.

I need some ideas for a :60 second spot on the radio.  What do you suggest would work best, what ‘scenarios’ do you think would best resonate with my target audience (below), and what approach (two people talking/acting, one announcer, etc) do you think would work best?

Unfortunately, with the event coming up quickly, I’ve got to get a decent idea for a spot over to the radio station soon.  That means this post has a short expiration date, as in tomorrow.

Any ideas/suggestions that you have, just post below.  !

Information of Use

Seminar: Look at Me – Getting Your Business in Front of Online Customers
Target: Business owners, execs, maybe a few marketing managers, decision makers
Radio demographic: 76% male, educated, 75k+ yearly salary, ages 25-54
Summary of event: Getting targeted, buying traffic to your website
Longer explanation: Did you spend a bunch of money on a website that isn’t producing the ROI you expected? Or none at all? Are you frustrated with your competitors making so much online, but you don’t know how they’re doing it?  Hear professionals in Internet Marketing tell their secrets.

Let’s see how social media can really help create a fun and informative radio spot!

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Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.
- Antisthenes (Greek philosopher of Athens, disciple of Socrates, 445-365bc)

Have you heard the commercial on the radio for “FreeScore123.com“?

Many, many people are used to the newspaper, its information, and its consistence.  So its no wonder when I peruse through it each week that it’s full of ads from local companies.  The ads aren’t cheap, either.  $75 for a business card-sized ad, per week, with a 6 month agreement.

Not cheap, particularly for very local small businesses.  Yet with (what small business owners must consider) a modest circulation, they must believe that its worth it.  But I think there’s a problem.

Every week when I look through the paper to check out the ads, I’m amazed at the types of businesses that advertise in there.  Game stores, towing companies, payday loan companies and more.  I’d estimate that 60-75% of the ads are for businesses that should be targeting the 40 and under crowd.

Do you see the problem?