Let’s say… I am a business owner and I sell widgets. I just started this business and I don’t have a rich family (I am now regretting the fact that I didn’t throw more game at that incredibly average chick in my college math class, her family was loaded). I just have enough capital to start this business, hire a few employees, get into a physical location, and start building my big dream. I wear a lot of hats. I am the CEO, CFO, Sales Manager and in charge of all of the marketing. I really understand one thing well and that’s widgets. Everything else I try to learn as I go. I read books, talk to friends and other business owners to try and get a grasp on everything.

My business begins to grow and we are now actually making money…

Let’s look at where this business is and why it now is starting to make sense that I hire a full service advertising agency:

• because marketing is more important now then ever and this is not your area of expertise
• because you see the need for someone else to fill the marketing position in you business and you know that a dedicated employee is going to cost you between 35,000k-60,000k annually and this person still cant touch what you would get from us. Not to mention that you aren’t hiring just one person from our firm, you are getting an entire team of marketing professionals.
• because you see that it makes sense for you to spend time on other areas of your business instead of dabbling in the unknowns of marketing
• because you are tired of every newspaper, radio, tv, direct mail sales rep telling you that they are the perfect fit for advertising your business. You begin to realize that you have been listening to these reps for years and at the end of the day, all they want is for you to spend your marketing budget with them (thinking…why did I ever look to them for marketing advice in the first place…)
• because you want to improve your companies image with better creative and design work
• because you want to take advantage of the sale and marketing experience that we have gathered over many years, working with businesses across the country
• because you have always wanted to hire a utah advertising agency that is fun to work with and that gets the job done
• because we don’t have contracts and we earn our business month after month, knowing that you need to see an acceptable return our your investment with us
• Because you know that an agency will do a better job handling your marketing, you just need to weigh the increase and costs associated vs. continuing to do it yourself.

The crazy thing is that a lot of businesses just need to get one or two more patients/sales each month as a result of our marketing to more then cover our services. Take a few minutes to evaluate where your business is and if you can connect with some of the things that we listed above. Marketing is our passion, it’s our expertise, it’s what we do better than anyone else… ask my mom.

I would like to address something that the Chiropractic community has been exposed to for years, and that is Chiropractors that have turned into marketing consultants. They find an ad that has given them some amount of success and then they sell it to a slew of struggling practices. We run into their work all over the country.  Some are so bold as to ask for a % of your revenue just to run their Ad, while others demand a 5 year contract. Don’t get me wrong, if they have something that they can sell, then great for them.

I only bring this up because it is important that business owners know the difference between what we do and what others are doing. Let me give you an example of one of our clients in the mid-west, let’s call him Dr Smith.

When we met Dr Smith he was spending 20,000/mo in marketing, he was buying a newspaper ad from one guy and  buying an infomercial from another guy. Dr Smith was referred to us by another client of ours and after a conversation or two he hired us. Yeah, he was paying 3 different people for marketing consulting…

Dr Smith wanted to see if we could actually out perform his other ads and we were up for the challenge… easy because we knew who we were up against. We implemented a tracking system that tracked the phone calls separate from each other to see which ads pulled the best cost per lead (CPL). At his request, we tracked this information for several month to see how everybody stacked up. The results are in and we came out on top with the lowest cost per lead (by a substantial margin). And that’s not all, we also have the best customer service, and we handle all of  the marketing for his practice. Not to mention now he doesn’t have to pay $6500/mo in  consulting/licensing fees from the other 2 companies.

What I am tying to point out is that we are a full marketing solution for your practice. Our fees our minimal and the results you will see make it a win win situation. No Contracts! We are a professional marketing agency that completely understands sales and marketing strategies. We are capable of give your practice what it needs to succeed.  Don’t try and “piece meal” a bunch of constants together when in the end,  you just need us for you marketing.

Too many business owners and office managers are making poor decisions about which radio stations they should be advertising with. They think that they should be on the stations that they listen to, or they should be on the most or highest rated station in the market. They even (as crazy as it sounds) end up buying from the station rep that they like the most and don’t really consider much else. But why would they look any further? One of their reps has brought with them studies that show that their station is the “perfect fit for their demographic”… Sound ridiculous… it’s true.

Here’s the thing, business owners, office managers, or administrators really don’t know any better. After all, they are not marketing professionals and they do the best they can with what they have.

Let me help shed a little on media buying (radio):

After you have decided that radio is the right advertising medium that your business is interested in doing, the next step is to contact an account executive at each one of the 40 or so radio station in your market area and begin your research. You will be given station rates, ratings, and demographic information (age, gender, income, etc) about each one.

First you will want to determine which stations best fit your demographic and give them special attention.

Then take the rates and ratings (which represent a certain number of people) and determine what the cost per rating point is. This help “level the playing field” and gives you a very accurate cost for reaching the same amount of people on each station.

You will also need to consider if your product/services cater to a group of people that may heavily sku to a specific type of music genre and factor that in. Example: I sell sporting good and hunting equipment… a country music formatted station may be more saturated with more of my consumers then other genres.

Finally,  after you have narrowed it down to a few of the top candidates you will want to begin negotiating those stations to get more aggressive rates.

There you have it… almost. There are many other variables that can factor into making a decision about where to spend your radio budget but i am out of time…