A Successful Business Built Using Radio

Shawn Matian is a man with a compelling life story. A son of an immigrant family who fled political and religious persecution in their home country and came to the United States with a dream. Matian is the first-born son and wanted to set a benchmark for his siblings and extended family to be proud of. Matian has become a successful litigating attorney, criminal defense expert, immigration activist, legal consultant to the stars, and founder of the Los Angeles-based law firm The Matian Firm, APC. And a big reason for his success is the fact he used radio to build his business. Another big reason for Matian’s success is Lou Petracci, who sold radio successfully before launching his own advertising company called 711 Media. We spoke to both Shawn (pictured left) and Lou about the power of radio and how it helped Matian become as successful as he has.

Radio Ink:Tell us about your business?
Shawn Matian: We are a pretty big law firm that caters to the Hispanic community in California. We handle multiple fields of law including criminal defense, immigration, and bankruptcy. Our objective is to bring a very high level of legal service at a very low cost to this community that really needs the legal help probably more than any other community in California right now. That’s our mission.

Radio Ink: How long have you been in business?
Shawn: I started this firm when I became a lawyer 12 years ago. I took about two years off of my legal practice to work with Universal Records Entertainment. At Universal I was tasked with solidifying subsidiary companies and represented a lot of successful musicians and athletes. I was quite successful but my heart was always in law and the courtroom, so I wrapped up my work at Universal and reopened my law firm.

Radio Ink: How many attorneys do you have?
Shawn: As we speak, we have 16 in-house, full-time associate attorneys. We also service cases state wide, so we have an additional 40 contract attorneys who primarily focus outside of Los Angeles. In addition to our stable of wonderful lawyers we have a support staff of over 50 people. We are currently under construction of our new 10,000-square-foot state of the art office in Los Angeles. We recently had the grand opening of our new office in San Jose early in January. As you can tell, we’re growing at a fast pace.

Radio Ink: When you first started what was your marketing plan? How did you get the word out?
Shawn: While at Universal I was overseeing record labels as part of my duties, I was able to learn how labels advertise, and how they went about selling tickets, music, merchandise and more. When I jumped back in law I realized no matter how good of a lawyer I am, unless people know about me and my service, my phones won’t ring and I won’t be successful.

The advertising mission was simple, target your demo, and my demo was the Hispanic community. Now, when I started running ads I didn’t have any sort of advertising budget. I had enough to have a modestly nice office, but definitely didn’t have a conventional overall budget. Now on to step number two of the mission, pick a radio station that fits your demo. I was drawn to radio because I listen to radio, I understand radio. I knew radio was a great way to cut through the nonsense and the noise in a way to get right to the demographic I wanted. With radio I could speak to my demo and explain to them who I was and why they needed my service. I started with one station and I stayed with that station for about a year.

Radio Ink: Did you see success right away?
Shawn: I was seeing some success right away, after all radio is direct response so there must be direct success. With that being said, success is an interesting word because it is so subjective. Considering my position at the time, I thought it was successful based on my modest environment at the time. Although the early response was positive, you can’t sit back and run the same spot over and over again. You must be evolving, you must stay fresh, be open to change even if that change is uncomfortable.

We are constantly transforming, developing, and adjusting. When I first started, like anyone, I was paranoid. You get your spot times and you literally tune into the radio station to hear your own ad. If I had a spot running at 11:15 a.m., I would literally run downstairs to my car at 11:00 a.m. and turn on the radio. I would tune in and listen while staring at my phone hoping it would ring. When it wouldn’t ring, I went through all the natural, amateurish emotions: upset, sad, angry. But I realized the phone won’t ring at every time a spot would run. It is about consistency and staying the course, allowing the brand to build and the trust to spread.

Radio Ink: After your ran on the first station, did you expand to other stations?Shawn: Well, before expanding to other stations I got a random cold call from Lou who was working for a LBI, a Spanish broadcasting company, at the time and we developed a great relationship. He did a great job of learning about me and my business while teaching me about media. With Lou’s guidance, we decided it was the right time to add our second station. Lou sold me on moving towards more of a Hispanic target demo, first with radio then potentially TV. We started by adding a very affordable station on the Hispanic side, that station was called La Ranchera (which doesn’t exist anymore) — that was the next snowball that rolled us into what we have today.

Lou Petracci: We are a 52-week advertiser and that’s important; like Shawn said it is about being consistent. Currently we are on every single week about 30 different radio stations throughout California. In LA we are in about fourteen.

Radio Ink: Lou, tell us about that first meeting when you decided to call Shawn and pitch him.
Lou: At that time I came from English radio and had just jumped to Spanish. In LA you need to do Spanish. My goal, when I first started at the company, was to always go after English clients and teach them about Hispanic radio and why they need to cater and advertise to them in this market. My first meeting with Shawn was mostly an education process for myself and Shawn. I asked him a lot of questions and really wanted to learn about his target audience and what his goals were. I also needed to understand the brand he developed, and tried to explain to him that he was doing an amazing job but the Spanish population in LA was 50% so we should try to reach them with their music of origin. Mostly it’s about educating people in the beginning, teaching them to have patience. This is a marathon….not a sprint….stick with it and be consistent and it will work.

Radio Ink: Shawn tell us why you use radio?
Shawn: I think radio, more than any other form of advertising, really cuts to what the listener wants to hear. You have 60 seconds to make a connection with your future client. You’re given that time to sell them on what your service is and why they need your service. What Lou did so great, was he was able to take my 60-second ads and turn them into creative productions.

Lou infused sponsorships through special talent and DJs, he helped brand me, provided me ideas on tag lines and more. He also placed my media in ways where I could save money.
When the radio is on, people are tuned in. I find radio to be far more interactive that any form of advertising. The listener is reacting to the DJs, calling in to win prizes, responding to questions, and of course jamming out to the songs. Radio also gives me an opportunity to be creative at a lower price point than TV, which is a huge plus. I can go all the way down to a 5-second quick sponsorship for a cheap price. I can do 10’s, 15’s, all the way up to 120 seconds if I want to buy two commercials back to back. It’s great to have such flexibility. More than anything, I think radio gives me the direct response that no other form of advertising has given me. Even if someone doesn’t need my service today, if they trust my brand, they’ll tell their friends, family, and co-workers. No other form of advertising has shown me the impact that radio has. With radio you can create that frequency that you can’t create on other platforms of advertising. That’s why I started with radio and no matter how much I invest in other fields of advertising my bread and butter is radio.

Radio Ink: What made you decide to stick with it. A big objection is “I tried it and it didn’t work.” You stayed on for a year, which is proof that if you do that it can work. What made you not panic at the beginning?
Shawn: I did panic when I didn’t get calls. It was a very worrisome time. At the end of day, what calmed my worries was this: there were 1.3 or 1.4 million people listening to this Hispanic station. There’s no other mechanism where I can reach this many people in the key demographic who need my specific forms of service, thus it must work. It’s like the Vegas gambling theory, if you sit at a blackjack table and maybe you’ll go on a rush, win 80-85% of your hands, but if you sit long enough Vegas will win it all back and more. The odds are in the casino’s favor. The way I see it, if you advertise long enough on radio, the odds will be in the advertisers favor, assuming of course the advertiser is processing the leads properly. Stay patient, time is on my side, time is not my enemy when it comes to radio.

Radio Ink: What advice do you have for other advertisers across the country that are on the fence or afraid to try or account executives that are having a hard time getting people to sign on the dotted line?
Shawn: The first thing I would tell somebody who is getting into radio is nothing is going to happen overnight. You are not going to be wealthy overnight. You are not going to get an abundant amount of calls overnight. Sit back and be as patient as you can and budget yourself for a six-month process. Realize this is a marathon and not a sprint.

Additionally, and people don’t talk about this nearly enough, your account representative or agent has the potential to make or break you. They can be your biggest asset if you elect wisely. They are the gatekeepers between your success and your failure. They know the internal politics, the rates, what formats work, how to integrate your ads, how to get you first into break, which sponsorships to go after and more. They have an inside look into their companies, so if they are the right rep they will open doors for you that you never knew existed.

Your media rep should be 100% on your side. The rep needs to genuinely understand that this client is giving you their hard-earned money and they know very little to nothing about media. An account executive’s job is to be everything to the client: their biggest fan, their confidante, their shrink, their friend. Reps should be on call 24/7 to share your worries, fears and successes. More than anything, reps need to start acting like their client’s business is their business. Reps need to buy in mentally. I know this interview is for the advertisers not account executives but I think it is something just as important.

Radio Ink: Obviously you feel you are getting a good return on your investment with radio. How do you know for sure that radio is driving your business and making it bigger?
Lou: We utilize different phone numbers on every station and we follow the first time someone calls all the way to when they become a customer. Radio consistently drives a lower cost-per-call than any other medium. We know this because of the amount of tracking that we do. Media has changed over the years…there are so many options for people to tune into on either their phone, tablet, radio, or TV. We know it is not as instantaneous as it used to be…people used to hear an ad and call the number in the ad….now they hear an ad on radio…pick up their phone and start researching you online. But radio is the original influencer. The number that is on the website is the number we consistently receive the most calls on…but people wouldn’t go there without radio.
Shawn: Develop a website and monitor how many calls you get. Then run an ad on a radio station driving people to your website. I guarantee you, you’ll get more calls through your site then you ever did. The reason is the “Engine Theory.” The engine in your car enables the entire car to move properly. It’s the heartbeat that allows everything to function. You need a similar catalyst in media, you need an engine. That engine is radio, radio helps drive calls not only through the radio ad but it also pushes people to your website and social media pages. It helps brand and solidify what you may be doing on TV, it creates high rate impressions that are impactful. The ultimate goal is to have a diverse portfolio of media, a good mix of platforms. But there can only be one engine, and to me that’s radio.

Do you have a sales success story you’re proud of? Help us help the industry tell the storyabout the tremendous power of radio. We’d love to write about your success story in thenext issue of Radio Ink magazine. Send all the details to [email protected]