Last week I flew from Los Angeles to Honolulu.
Delta Airlines graciously offered us passengers a small bag of pretzels.
Very special pretzels.
Tiny pretzels.
A radio station owner/manager once told me it’s stupid to invest in training for the people who actually create the radio commercials because, in her words:
“Radio is a sales-driven business.”
And that’s the problem: For her — and for many like her — the business of radio is all about selling commercials.
And if you continue to see radio as a sales-driven business, you’ll continue to fight each other for your share of that pathetic six or eight cents of the advertising dollar.
But if you see radio as a results-driven business, your entire model changes. If you focus on delivering measurable, profitable results for your clients, you’ll get more than 6% – 8% of the business.
If you see radio as a sales-driven business, then you pour all of your resources into putting as many salespeople on the street as possible. And if your station invests in training, it invests only in sales training: prospecting, cold-calling, getting past the gatekeeper, overcoming objections, closing techniques, etc.
But let’s do the math:
You’ve got more salespeople on the street, so you should be making more sales than you used to.
And you give them all sorts of sales training: You send them to seminars & conferences, you buy them books and CDS and DVDs and online training to help them sell better.
So….More salespeople, selling more because of the continuing sales training you give them.
So you must have an ever-growing client base, right? I mean, all these salespeople out there on the street every day, using their finely honed sales skills….Your active client base must be bursting at the seams.
I assume you’re 100% sold out, the Law of Supply & Demand has practically forced you to keep raising your rates, and you don’t have room for any new clients….Right?
Oh.
Why not?
Attrition. Yesterday’s clients who are not today’s clients. Today’s clients who will not be tomorrow’s clients. Why?
Because they’re not getting the results they need to justify the expense of advertising with you.
Because for too many of them, advertising is an expense, rather than an investment.
What’s the difference between an expense and an investment?
An expense is money out the door.
An investment is money out the door that comes back later…and brings some new friends along.
(Fifth in a series)
A Loyal Reader Asks:
“How can you teach young jocks to ‘be real’ — to break out of the ‘I’m a DJ’ persona and become communicators?”
Schedule regular feedback sessions.
Come prepared with one of the jock’s recent airchecks — to which you already have listened and from which you already have made some notes.
The #1 complaint from radio personalities around the world is, “I never get any feedback from my program director.”
When you schedule aircheck sessions and show up for them actually prepared (having already listened to the jock’s aircheck), you send a message that indicates you think the jock’s show is important.
(Fourth in a series)
A Loyal Reader Asks:
“How can you teach young jocks to ‘be real’ — to break out of the ‘I’m a DJ’ persona and become communicators?”
Have them identify what they want to accomplish before they begin each break.
“To read the contest promo” is not a goal that fosters communication.
“To entice people to listen a few minutes longer in the hopes of winning this great prize” is a specific, positive goal.
While one is eating a shrimp burrito at Eduardo’s Border Grill, one will read pretty much anything.
On this day, the only reading material was a thick advertising book filled with ads for housing in southern California.
I’m sure the full-color ads are expensive, and I found myself agog at the consistently terrible copywriting — no doubt written either by the advertiser (sound familiar?) or by some underpaid publication employee who has no real education in ad copywriting (sound familiar?).
The front of the book was devoted to “senior living.”
I’ll omit the name of this advertiser. But I noticed the identical boiler plate copy was used in at least one other ad by the same company.
There actually was some good stuff in this ad. But it was overshadowed by the bad stuff.
The Bad Stuff
“This is your personal invitation to experience X’s many services and accommodations.”
Well, no, it’s not a personal invitation. It’s an impersonal magazine ad. And that ad promotes your “services and accommodations”?? Ooh, irresistible.
“At X, hospitality abounds with good taste and quality appointments throughout.”
Hospitality abounds? Was this written in some other language and then run through Google Translates?
If you say your place has “good taste,” of course I believe you. Even though your taste and mine might be very, very different. (Oddly, I didn’t see a single ad that described the property as being in bad taste.)
“Quality appointments” — Okay, c’mon, you’re kidding me, right?
In The History Of The World, These Words Never Have Been Spoken
“Marge, you’ve got to come over and see my new apartment. You won’t believe the quality appointments!”
“We continually raise the standard of excellence for retirement living.”
Oh. Uh-huh. Sure. And aren’t you special?
“…our outstanding, caring staff…”
I admit that does contrast with the other ads that declared, “Our mediocre staff really couldn’t care less.”
“X, where your lifestyle deserves truly special living opportunities.”
Which is more stupid? The supposition that a lifestyle “deserves” something? Or the term “living opportunities”? (I suppose if the ad were for a hospice, that might possibly be appropriate…)
The Good Stuff
The few readers who hadn’t already moved on to the next ad might finally have noticed, toward the bottom of the page, these features:
“Gourmet meals, maid service, planned activities, and chauffeured transportation”
“Planned activities” isn’t especially compelling (albeit, perhaps, reassuring to the prospect’s adult children). But gourmet meals? Maid service? The availability of chauffeured transportation? Those have genuine appeal to affluent retirement community dwellersl
The one really good thing in this ad — which, alas, is easy to overlook due to the page layout — is a large, black & white photograph, appearing to be circa 1943: a smiling man in uniform lovingly embracing and gazing into the face of a radiant, attractive young woman.
While I suppose it could be an especially grateful patron expressing her thanks to the postal carrier for having delivered the gift wrapped package she holds in one hand, it looks very much like a young couple reuniting after the husband has returned home from the war.
Why is that a brilliant touch? Because it gives meaning to the otherwise corny (and almost meaningless) title of this ad: “Celebrate Your Life.”
Most of the “senior living” ads feature photographs of…senior citizens. Which only makes sense.
But this ad presents an image not of their prospects as they are today, with the aches and pains and physical “conditions” they’ve earned over a lifetime. It presents the couple at perhaps the happiest time of their lives.
That is the life this advertisement claims to be celebrating. Too bad the rest of the ad celebrates nothing but cold, lifeless, dumb dumb dumb writing.
