(By Rick Fink) How do you get advertisers to invest more money with you or renew it with a rate increase, and how do you get that hard-to-sell prospect to consider adding your station? Come up with and present a BIG Idea!
Every day, business owners and managers drive to and from work thinking, “How can I grow my business?”
They’re looking for IDEAS; small ideas, medium ideas, and BIG ideas. Ideas that make sense for their business. The bigger and better the idea, the more they will invest.
If we are asking for more dollars (increased frequency) or asking for a rate increase (just because it’s renewal time), your chances for pushback and resistance are greatly increased. However, with a well-thought-out “BIG IDEA” you’ll increase your chances tenfold.
Your BIG ideas can be a campaign ad strategy, a musical image, an audio signature, a promotion, a new positioning statement, or a slogan. It can be anything that benefits THEM, and not you or your radio station. Your summer car giveaway may be your station’s biggest promotion of the year, but it must be presented from the advertiser’s perspective to increase your chances of getting them to say yes.
We suggest you view every proposal before it goes out the door to ensure it has a customer-focused “IDEA”. Selling “radio” can be challenging, selling IDEAS is easier, and selling BIG ideas… easier yet! After all, business owners really only want IDEAS on “How to GROW their business.”
Rick Fink from ENS Media can be reached at 605-310-2062 or [email protected]. Read Rick’s Radio Ink archives here.
