Creating a local advertising campaign is a lot like herding cats

It ought to be easy – especially when you know what you’re doing.  Creating a local advertising campaign that is a mixture of media SHOULD be easy.

Creating a local advertising campaign should be as easy as 1 – 2- 3.

Unfortunately, it’s a lot like herding cats!

There are three essential steps to creating a local advertising campaign.

1. Define your target audience. Who is your prospective customer?  In my book, Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results, I walk you through now only WHY you should tightly target your customer but HOW to create a laser focus in on who that customer is and why he or she would want to buy whatever it is you’re selling.

2. Craft a message that speaks to your target audience’s GDP.  We’re not studying economics here.  GDP in this case does not stand for gross domestic product but rather GDP is short for GOALS, DESIRES and PROBLEMS.    Your prospective customers have goals – they have desires- or they have problems.  Create a marketing message that addresses your prospective customers’ goals, desires or problems and you’ll have a sure fire WINNER when it comes to step 3.

3. Choose the media to deliver your message. Once you know WHO you want to talk to and WHAT you want to say to them, it’s simply a matter of choosing a media that already has your prospective customer’s attention.

When a client has a strong internet presence already, there is no better media to take the message “offline” than radio.  Radio advertising is a GREAT way to promote a well designed website.  (There is no great way to promote a poorly designed website!) It’s how Amazon promoted their obscure little retail shop in the early days and it remains a great cost effective way to promote a website today.

For example, I have a client who has done her research.  She knows EXACTLY who her prospective customer is, she knows what problem her product solves and so creating a compelling and selling marketing message has been quite easy.

Until recently, my client has been delivering this message and selling this product exclusively via the web. Now this client wants to explore reaching the 5 out of 6 people who aren’t currently searching the web for the answer to this common problem.

Radio advertising to the rescue!

So I began contacting radio stations in her local market for her.  Unfortunately, that is the reason for the title of this post:  “Creating a local advertising campaign is a lot like herding cats”.

My client is not comfortable dealing with media reps.  While she’s an old pro at PPC advertising, venturing into the “real” world of offline promotion makes her weak in the knees.  Thus the need for my services and I was happy to oblige.

I asked for a list of 10 local radio stations and she quickly sent them to me.  Fortunately, each station had it’s own website, and if I dug deep enough, I could find a way prospective advertisers to contact the station directly. I sent a request to each station asking for demogrpahic information and a local (net) rate card.

The information filtered in slowly – with only 5 out of the original 10 responding within 24 hours.  Of those 5, each and every station claimed to reach, “highly educated, upscale listeners”.

YAWN!

How many times can I read, “our station reaches “a highly educated, upscale listener” before my eyes start to glaze over and my head starts to nod.

Out of the 5 stations who responded quickly, only 3 actually sent a rate card.  The other 2 send power point presentations to serve as “proof” that they and only they reach this elusive ” highly educated, upscale listener.”

Great – but I asked for a rate card.  As a matter of fact, I can’t schedule a media buy without first knowing how much a spot costs on your station.

It’s almost as if these radio stations aren’t INTERESTED in selling advertising to my client.  I definitely get the impression that I’ve interrupted a really important game of solitaire or something along that line.

I’ll persevere on behalf of my client – because I’ve seen first hand what a POWERFUL and PERSUASIVE marketing tool radio advertising can be – especially in the age of Web 2.0.   If you’ve been “turned off” my an incompetent radio rep – I encourage you to persevere as well.  Unfortunately, bad reps work for great radio stations.  It’s too bad the whole process makes me think of herding cats!