When you decide to advertise… you want to see something happen FAST!
But I’m here to tell you to “Calm down, bro.” When you “do advertising” the right way, your results will come slower than you want them to. And then in 12 months, you’ll be thinking, “Holy crap! This is pretty dang awesome!”
Since, I’m an amateur farmer who helps his old man out with the crops every Spring and Fall… let me put it to you in terms of farming. When you start advertising on the radio, your ad message is a seed.
You can have low-grade seeds that will yield very little, skip the fertilizer, ignore the weeds, and you won’t make any money. Especially, if you’re in a hurry and want to harvest after only having your seed in the ground for 3 weeks. This is representative of not putting the right effort into your advertising messages and not giving your advertising plan enough time to mature in the minds of consumers.
The alternative is to have a high-yield potential seed, prepare your soil with the right nutrients, make sure the weeds stay away, and then harvest after the seed has grown and matured. This is representative of a radio campaign that is developed properly. One that cares about the message that is created and one that allows enough time for those ad messages to really sink in to consumers’ minds.
The best things in life come with time. Just like a good harvest.
Each radio ad is a seed that’s getting planted in a mind. Will someone drop what they’re doing and buy from you the first time they hear your ad? Of course not. But what if you keep saying really great things that they care about? Consistently. Again and again. What if you start getting people to trust you because of the stories, helpful information, and entertainment you keep sharing in your radio ads? Over and over. Consistently. Over time. Hmmmm?
Those seeds begin to take root and grow. Those ads start to do their job. They’re sinking in. They’re sticking in brains. Then what?
Then, over time… as radio listeners live their lives… they’ll eventually need what you sell. And who do you think they’ll think of when they need the product or service you sell? Who do you think that they’ll feel best about? Who do you feel they will have the most confidence in ? ? ? ? ?
YOU. Your business. Your people. They’ve come to trust you before they’ve even met you because you were being patient with them. You were educating them slowly and effectively about why they should do business with you instead of someone else. But you didn’t ever “hard sell” them. You went through the process of making friends with them through your radio ads that did NOT sound like typical radio ads.
Your seeds were the good ones. And you watered and fertilized. And nurtured those seeds. You had patience. You slowed down, gave your advertising campaign some real thought before you started it, then you let it go to work. Nature ran its course and gave you a harvest that you never thought possible.
Slow down… and do advertising right. It takes a lot of thought and planning at the beginning. When you set a marketing budget… and focus that budget on a big group of people (a couple radio stations is a great start!), then that big group of people will start to be won over by your sincere advertising messages.
Warning: Don’t scatter your seeds to the wind. Don’t glitter-blast them into the atmosphere and hope that the marketing gods catch them and turn them into Thousand-Dollar Bills. That’s the “spray and pray” method. It doesn’t work. If you want the full-blown explanation of WHY that doesn’t work, give me a call.
RADIO is one of the most fertile soils you can find to plant your seeds. The power of sound is amazing when it comes to branding. We can recite the lyrics to songs we never intended to remember. We can remember tons of details when those details are wrapped into a good story.
Sound. Radio. Good soil.
Are you ready to plant some seeds for one heck of a nice harvest, year after year?
Let’s talk about that.
Duane Christensen
Results Radio Townsquare Media – Sioux Falls
605-940-7984
duane.christensen@results-radio.com