Picking the competions pockets

These days, advertising budgets are tighter than ever. Sometimes it is impossible to get a customer to invest one cent more into marketing their business. If they are advertising with a competitor, all may not be lost. Look at their current program and think about ways to cut back the advertiser's program without making a major impact on their representation. Think about going to a smaller ad or cutting out editions in secondary areas. Another possibility is using a reverse to get attention without using color. You may even want to design and spec an ad for the competitor's product. The money they save can be reinvested with you. This is a much easier approach to take rather than trying to get them to drop the competitor and move 100% of their budget to you. Prospects are reluctant to do this because of the natural fear of loss. The plan above allows them to "have their cake and eat it too." You can open the call with something like "Mr./Ms. Customer, if you give me a few minutes of your time I can show you a way to expand your reach without increasing your advertising budget by one red cent."

Keep Smiling, Keep Selling!

Thanks

Jim Busch

"There ain't room enough for both of us in this town pardner"

The title of this blog posting reflects the way a lot of sales people look at their competition. Like most good sales people I am very competitive. I want to get every nickel of my customer's advertising budget. Unfortunately this is both unrealistic and unfair to my customers. I have competitors and though I believe my product is superior in many ways, I know they have readers and offer value to their customers.

Sometimes our competitive spirit gets in the way of making a sale. By giving the customer an either/or choice we sometimes force them to put all their eggs in the competition's basket. If some consumers are reading the daily paper and others are reading your shopper, it makes sense for the advertisers to split their budget between the two publications. When making a proposal I talk to the customer about allocating their budget between me and my competitor. This tells them that I am being honest with them and that I have their best interests in mind. It also gets them to think about the wisdom of giving their entire budget to the competitor. Most people are reluctant to change, they are more likely to buy if you don't recommend completely dropping their current program and making a 180 degree turn to buy from you. Advertising is not a zero sum game, advertisers should invest in any product which produces sales in excess of the money spent to advertise.

Keep Smiling, Keep Selling!

Thanks

Jim Busch

The Groupon Challenge

Last week when I was at the AFCP conference, a number of people asked me to share my thoughts on Groupon. They were nervous about this new competitor and what it means to our industry. At this point I don't see Groupon as much of a threat. By design, Groupon only makes one offer per day in any area. Their strength lies in keeping things simple, they know if they bombard people with offers consumers will tune out. Their "pay only for response" model is very interesting. They can do this because they control the entire process which gives them an accurate accounting of the response to their ads. To ensure a good response Groupon requires their customers to offer at least 50% off. I registered with Groupon to see what local businesses are using their service. Thus far, I have seen only a few of our advertisers on Groupon. They attract mostly upscale non traditional advertisers. I believe we can learn several things from Groupon:

• The power of simplicity. Keep your advertising simple with one offer to create impact.


• The power of a good offer. Groupon gets great results because they offer consumers significant savings


• Think out of the box, Groupon proves that many "Non-advertisers" will promote themselves if you can offer them something unique.

Keep Smiling, Keep Selling!

Thanks

Jim Busch

Lessons from Groupon

Over the weekend I listened to an interview with Andrew Mason, the founder of Groupon. He had some very nasty things to say about print advertising. We are squarely in Groupon's sights and he is coming after our business. He is very proud of the results his "model" is producing for small local businesses. He credits their proactive method of sending offers to customers for generating large responses. Later in the interview he talked about the importance of his people. His people are trained to convince advertisers to offer deep discounts to Groupon members. I believe these highly motivating offers are the key to Groupon's success and that if businesses made the same offer in print that the response would be even greater. The take away here is that we need to push clients to make compelling offers in their ads.

Keep Smiling, Keep Selling!

Thanks Jim Busch

Let your fingers do the walking to more sales

The local Yellow Pages is a great tool for sales people, I always carry one in my car. The phone book has a lot of information about potential advertisers. You can get copy points and a feel for the style of the advertiser. You can also see who their competitors are. Don't forget that Yellow Page advertising is very expensive. Find out when your local directory closes for the year. If you help the customer reduce his/her yellow page program, you can free up a lot of money for advertising in your paper.

Keep Smiling, Keep Selling!

Thanks Jim Busch

The answer may be a question

When a prospect compares your publication unfavorably to a competitive product the best way to handle them might be a question. For instance if someone says "I can get that same ad for half as much in the XYZ paper" your best response might be to ask them "How do you think they can afford to do that?" After you ask the question, be quiet and wait for the customer to respond. Your customers are business people and they understand that you get what you pay for. If they say they don't know, you can probe further. you can ask them if they think it might be because of their smaller circulation, or the quality of their product. Your goal is to reframe the conversation away from price and on to the relative value of your product. If you can get the customer thinking value you are much more likely to move beyond the objection and close the sale.

Keep Smiling, Keep Selling!

Thanks Jim Busch