The Great Eraser of Advertising

The great eraser of advertising is SLEEP.
Image courtesy of “Maggie Smith” / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The great eraser of advertising…is sleep. And I’m going to give credit to my understanding of this…to Roy Williams at the Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas. When I went there for 3 days, years back…he literally changed how I looked at the world. And of course he also changed my understanding of how advertising works.

So, the great eraser of advertising is sleep. Every night we go to sleep, our brains purge all the junk out of our brains. It starts putting things like the hundreds of irrelevant marketing messages you were exposed to today into the proverbial trash bin. If it didn’t do this, our brains’ estimated 2500 terabytes of memory would fill up pretty fast. To put it another way, your brain has the potential to store about 2 trillion pictures of cats. Ha! But this is an estimate. Our brains are amazing and we’ll never truly understand how and why it does things.

So, how do we get a consumer’s brain to start remember the plumbing ads for Bob’s Plumbing? Or the mattress ads for the Princess Pea Mattress Factory?

For starters you need repetition to overcome the brain purging every night we sleep. You’ll need enough ads airing on the radio so that the average listener hears a certain radio ad 3 to 4 times per week. And after looking at radio listening habits across the nation, that equates to running 21 to 25 radio ads per week between 6am and 7pm. It’s the closest we can get to a formula when it comes to radio ad scheduling. Of course, there are other options regarding an ad schedule and the best use of your budget. And we can’t forget to take into account your competition and how much they’re advertising to the public.

This is how you get people to start remembering a business’ radio ads. Repetition is the first step towards branding. Just like Pavlov’s dogs, remember? The meat paste and the bell ringing and the drooling?

But getting the dogs to drool when they heard the bell wouldn’t have happened if Pavlov didn’t use meat. If he used lemon juice or Windex, he wouldn’t have got the results he did. In branding a business, there must be a message that’s pleasant and relevant shared with the radio listener that’s tied in with the business itself. You want to associate something good or something helpful with doing business with the particular advertiser who’s trying to get advertising results.

Otherwise…you’re just spouting words across the airwaves that nobody cares about – and will never have the chance to be remembered when people need what the advertiser offers. Amazing results from advertising will come when your ad is of the branding or relationship building nature that has a chance of making someone feel warm and fuzzy in a sense, when they hear it. And when you repeat those kinds of ads over and over, consistently, in a long-term plan, that’s when the “true branding” starts happening.

Then, your ads must also use words that aren’t boring us to death. They need to tell a story. They need to give us useful information. They need to “connect” with us and include a strong emotional element. We’re emotional beings. We like to do business with those we like and trust. Therefore, radio ads should always be increasing the listeners’ chances to like and trust an advertiser before they’ve ever even met them. Then, when the listener actually HAS a plumbing problem… when they’ve had enough of their sore back in the morning… they’ll definitely have Bob’s Plumbing and Princess Pea’s Mattress Factory among the top prospects or hopefully THE top choice for them to call.

Great advertising comes from the words you use…and the manner in which they’re used. I feel like I’m pretty darn good at that. Let me know if you’d like to talk about making your mark on Sioux Falls and the surrounding area. Thank you. Have a great day!

Duane Christensen

Results Radio Townsquare Media

Sioux Falls, SD

605-940-7984

duane.christensen@results-radio.com

http://duanechristensen.townsquareinteractive.com/

I’m going to give you parts to two different ads for plumbers. Then you be the judge on which you’d be more tempted to choose.

Plumber #1

We were at a restaurant, and my brother said, “We’re plumbers…why don’t we start our own company?” You see, at the time my brother and I were both plumbers working for different plumbing companies. We’d been doing it a while and always took note of things that we thought should be done better. Whether it was better employee policies, work ethic, or how our bosses never taught anyone to treat the customer really well. So, we were sitting at the restaurant and we started writing possible names of our new plumbing company down on a napkin. We had about 12 awful names written down when I thought, how about the name of the street we grew up on as kids?…..

And so on…you get the picture, right?

Plumber #2

At B & D Plumbing, we can take care of all your plumbing needs. You’ll have peace of mind knowing that we’ve been in business for 16 years. No matter if it’s a broken faucet or a toilet that needs replacing, you can call B & D Plumbing to get the best service in town. Our trained technicians will take care of you no matter your plumbing trouble. B & D Plumbing is proud to be your Sioux Falls plumbing leader for years to come…….

So, you obviously can see the difference in the two ads. The first one is telling you a story and you’re getting to know that company and what they stand for. The second ad is what you hear every day from almost every local business in Sioux Falls that tries to advertise with radio, TV, newspaper, or whatever. It’s what you get when you think all advertising is the same and choose your advertising based on your favorite radio station, price, or by doing what you think advertising is supposed to be.

Which plumber would you choose?

I’m guessing you’d pick the plumbers that told the story over the other. And I’m also going to tell you that if those radio ads were actually running on the radio, you wouldn’t have even heard Ad #2 because your brain would have said, “Who cares” about 8 seconds in…and directed your attention to something more interesting.

If you’d like some more tips and advice, please subscribe to this blog. Or don’t be afraid to email me any questions or comments you might have. I’m in this business to help small business owners attract new, profitable customers. If I can help you out, I’d love that. I’d be honored.

You can even check out the new book I wrote here… http://www.amazon.com/Bigger-Slice-Local-Advertising-ebook/dp/B008IAOZXC It took over a year to write and re-write and go back and forth deciding if I should actually publish it. Some of my biggest supporters told me to just go for it. So I did. And it feels good to have something out there that can help educate small businesses on a more effective way to advertise.

Have a great day!

Duane Christensen

Sioux Falls Radio Advertising blog