If you’re having trouble getting your copywriter, account executive or client to understand that you don’t get the most for your radio advertising dollar by cramming as much “stuff” as you can into a commercial, perhaps showing them this video will help.
Note: Please pause the video at 0:58.
Question: What does DealerOn do? What problem does DealerOn solve for its customers?
Answer: Uh…Something about websites or leads, wasn’t it? And they won some awards for something?
They just had to brag about themselves as much as possible and list every element of their business they could think of.
How much of it do you remember? How much of it did you actually hear?
For any given audience, you need to stand for one thing, not many.
I don’t know what that one thing should be for DealerOn.
I do know what it shouldn’t be: their award winning website.
I guarantee that if I were to survey people in their industry who are familiar with the company, not one of them would say, “DealerOn? They’re known for their award winning website.”
But apparently their website won an award, so they’ve got to brag about it.
Now please resume watching the video and pause it at 2:30.
What do you now know about that speaker?
- He started in the auto business at age 23.
- In 2 years he was in the top 1% of car sales. (No explanation of what that actually means. The top 1% of car sales at a dealership? In a region? In the country?)
- He’s famous in the auto industry.
- He’s been talking about giving customers information, transparency and full disclosure long before “customer satisfaction” was even a term. (That is quite unlikely. Customer satisfaction surveys were being conducted as early as 1967. If he was using the term before then, it would have been before he was 9 years old.)
- His company was first to market the e-pencil (and here’s a mini-commercial for the e-pencil).
- He’s branching out into industries other than automotive.
- He’s a New York Times best selling author.
- He has a radio show.
- He’s executive producer of a TV show you never heard of, plus a new series that’s about…um, something.
- He’s worked with Morgan Stanley, Google, and the U.S. Army.
- “You can find out more about him and everything he’s up to” at his website.
At 2:13, the woman reading the introduction loses her place and begins to repeat “credits” she’s already read. Why? Because she has so much crap to read and is trying to rush through it before the audience gives up and leaves. She doesn’t actually know what she’s reading; she’s too busy trying to get through it all.
Who is he again?
What one thing, for this audience, does he stand for?
And….
Has no one told him that everyone knows he wrote that introduction?
Introducing a public speaker is an exercise in marketing. Successful marketing relies on delivering a single core message that the targeted audience grasps immediately.
I don’t know what one problem he can solve for that particular audience. But I guarantee very few of them woke up that morning with the problem of not knowing how to find out more him and everything he’s up to.
The lesson this video offers radio advertisers is:
Your commercial should have a single core message — the one thing you want the targeted consumer to hear, to understand, and remember.
I’m not familiar with DealerOn — and thanks to that verbose introduction I have no idea what they do — so I have no idea if they’re good at…y’know, at whatever it is they do.
I’m not familiar with Grant Cardone or his book, so I have no opinion about his expertise at all those things he’s so proud of, nor of his book.
Now you can watch the rest of the video. Who knows? Maybe you’ll love what you hear and buy his book.
The Following Has Nothing to Do with Marketing or Advertising.
But I Feel Obliged to Correct Two Misstatements in the Video.
1. When blackjack players who really know how to play win a hand, they don’t think, “I wish I had bet more.”
2. If you interview 800 people for a sales position, hire two of them, and keep only one of them, the problem isn’t that there are “too many average people.”
The problem is you don’t know how to attract, hire and keep great salespeople.
One solution is to order, listen to, and follow the steps laid out in HOW TO ATTRACT, HIRE & KEEP SALES SUPERSTARS.
