Wizard of Ads Partners

By Roy H. Williams

(Uh-oh, am I about to light an email fire I can't put out?)

Hear the memo, read by the Wizard himself. 

Here is where the ad money goes in Australia. 

Take a look at the chart at the top of this page and you’ll see that the total, combined ad revenues for
(1.) the internet with all its banners, pop-ups, co-registration schemes and Google Adwords accounts, plus
(2.) the ad revenues from all the billboards sprinkled across the 3.54 million square miles of these United States, plus
(3.) the combined revenues of all of America’s radio stations
is less than the combined ad revenues of America’s few hundred newspapers.

I hid a big surprise for you in last week’s rabbit hole. Did you see it?

Let me summarize for you what it said:

If you
(1.) make exactly the same offer on radio as in the newspaper, and
(2.) spend exactly the same amount of money with each media,
(3.) across precisely the same span of time,
radio outperforms newspaper nearly 14 to 1.

As I explained in the detailed report, we fell into our discovery by accident.  Our original plan was to buy newspaper ads since we assumed the newspaper would reach a larger percentage of our target than any other media.

Our assumptions were based on a faulty perception. That’s traditional wisdom for you.

When our test indicated that radio was outperforming newspaper nearly 14 to 1, I began to wonder, “With all the billions of dollars spent in media each year, why has no one ever comparison-tested the media in a series of controlled experiments?”

There I go, assuming again. A bit of research led me to uncover a study conducted 37 years ago (1971) by the Research Committee of the National Advisory Council on Radio in Education. On page 155 I found, “For the test, the manufacturer of a shampoo selected territories in which his sales had been equal and satisfactory over a period of years. An advertising campaign with increased appropriations was prepared, and at the end of the test period, sales increases were used as the gauge of the merit of the medium. In territory No. 1, where newspaper advertising was used, the sales were increased by 3 percent; in territory No. 2, where radio only was used, they were increased 40 percent.”

Gosh. 40 percent versus 3 percent is nearly 14 to 1, right?

Why has there never been a scientifically controlled, nationwide test funded by the radio stations of America?

Frankly, I was comforted to learn that my organization was the second, rather than the first entity to discover that radio outproduces newspaper nearly 14 to 1.  If we had been the only people ever to discover that little nugget of information, I would have been plagued by doubt.  I'm big enough to admit that my confidence was bolstered by the fact that another organization arrived at virtually the identical conclusion when I was just 13 years old.

But the greater question remains,
“Why has there been no scientifically controlled test?”

I ask the advertising agencies spending all those billions,
“Why has there been no scientifically controlled test?”

I ask the major advertisers of America,
“Why has there been no scientifically controlled test?”

And I ask you the same question in this week’s e-Poll. 
We’re anxious to hear your theory.

PS.  Today's rabbit hole is too weird for words.
        I definitely wouldn't go down it if I were you. (If you are game, click the image at the top of this article.)

By Roy H. Williams

If I told you our experiment was constructed specifically to test radio versus newspaper, I’d be lying.  Like most discoveries, we stumbled on this one by accident.

Here’s how it happened: Lifestyle Centers of America is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to lead you and me to a healthier, happier life through better nutrition, physical activity, and helpful new habits. My team was recruited to give them marketing advice. We accepted the challenge.

Our first assignment was to craft a message that would drive interested persons to a brand new website. We decided to test our messages using a series of quarter-page newspaper ads.

(Article continued after newspaper ad below.) 

The first thing we did was locate a newspaper that would deliver a quarter-page display ad to 89,000 subscribers for only $900. Total circulation would be much higher, of course, due to newsstand sales and pass-along readership, but we were looking strictly at paid circulation for the Sunday edition. If you’ve ever looked at newspaper rates, you’ll recognize this to be an extremely efficient, low-budget buy.

The second thing we did was craft a message for our client.  My secret hope was to see 300 to 400 unique visitors show up within 48 hours at PlantFiberDiet.org, our virgin website.  We got 71 visitors. I didn’t blame the newspaper. I blamed my message. “Tweaking” wasn’t going to get me where I needed to go, so I scrapped the whole concept of the ad and created a new message from scratch.

Two weeks later, that second message got us 217 unique visitors within 48 hours; a definite improvement, but not enough to make us happy. But I knew my message was stronger than the results were indicating. That’s when I said to one of my media buyers, “Find me a radio station that will let us air 36 sixty-second ads in one day – two spots per hour, 6A to midnight – for 900 dollars. If the program director limits us to only one spot per hour, hang up and call someone else. When you’re driving traffic with a 1-day schedule, there’s no such thing as too much frequency.”

No surprises so far, right?

Now pay attention because this next part is where most people would screw up an otherwise valid media test. To be reliable, the test has to be dollar for dollar, message for message, time for time. If we spent 900 dollars in one day with one newspaper, we needed to spend 900 dollars in one day with one radio station. “Dollar for dollar, time for time.”

Too often, advertisers want to take a one-day newspaper budget and spread it out over several days on the radio, or worse, spread it out over several radio stations. To be a fair test, we had to spend all the money in one day on one station.  But radio needs repetition, so I refused to buy stations that would have delivered huge reach but with lower frequency.  My 36-ad schedule was non-negotiable. Call me nuts if you want. I’ll tell you how it ended in a minute.

Take a look at the newspaper ad.
Listen to the radio ad by clicking the audio bar at the top of the page. (A new page will open when you click the link. Once the ad is finished click the back button to return to the story on this page.)

You’ll notice the messages are identical.

We created the radio ad by asking Joe Hamilton to read the newspaper ad into a microphone. Joe’s not a professional voice talent. He’s just the guy whose photo was in the newspaper ad. We had a better-than-average newspaper layout and below-average radio production.  Newspaper was given every advantage. We even waited 2 weeks for the newspaper traffic on our website to die down to zero visitors per day before launching our radio schedule. We didn’t want to radio to have the benefit of residual traffic generated by the newspaper campaign.

The result of spending $900 in one day on one radio station? Our first test yielded 4,308 unique visitors within 48 hours. This seemed too good to be true, so I told my media buyers I was worried they’d gotten a radio buy that wasn’t typical. “Find me a deal the average buyer could buy, any day of the week, for the same price we’re paying.”

We then waited another 2 weeks until residual traffic died down to about 150 unique visitors per day, then ran the second radio campaign in a town 1000 miles from the first campaign.

As I had expected, our net result from the second test was lower than the first city where we’d gotten far too good a deal. After deducting 150 visitors per day, the first 48 hours yielded only 3,033 unique visitors for $900. This was 30 percent less than our first test, but still 14 times more visitors than our best newspaper results.

Newspaper and Radio were given an identical message with an identical budget spread over an identical amount of time.

Radio delivered 14 times the results.

Radio beat newspaper.

We're continuing the test in additional cities, pitting the local newspaper against against a radio station in the same town. Dollar for dollar, message for message, time for time.

I'll keep you informed.

Maybe.

The Medium is Not the Message

Marshall McLuhan’s famous line, “The medium is the message,” is at best a Japanese koan (ko-ahn.) You know, “What is the sound of one hand clapping,” and all that? I’m sure I’ll get a thousand ranting emails about this, but I’ve always felt koans to be a silly attempt to sound profound.

McLuhan’s koan is at the top of my list. It was originally published in his 1964 book, Understanding Media. Nearly half a century later later, his disciples are still trying to explain what he meant.

Enough.

The medium is the medium.
The message is the message.

Ad campaigns don’t fail because someone chose the wrong media. Ad campaigns fail because someone chose the wrong message.

The job of the media is to deliver your message.
Your job is to give the media a message worth delivering.

Each media has its own strengths and weaknesses. And because I’ve spent the last 20 years talking about message, today we’ll glance at media:

Signage: Expensive signage at an intrusively visible business location is often the cheapest advertising your money can buy. Intrusive visibility is the quality that separates landmarks from scenery. You’re intrusively visible when the public sees you without looking for you. Do you have an intrusive location? Have you maximized your signage?

Outdoor: Billboards reach more people for a dollar than any other media and they’re geographically targetable. In other words, you can reach specific pockets of your city with them. Their weakness is that they become invisible after just a few sightings in the same location, so be sure to move your boards every 30 days. Additionally, the average driver is unwilling to look away from the road for longer than eight words. So if you can’t sing your song in eight words or less, billboards aren’t your best bet.

Direct Mail: Like billboards, direct mail lets you target geographically and in theory, psychographically as well, assuming the right member of the household sorts the mail. The problem with direct mail is that most of it gets thrown away unopened. And the costs of printing and delivery have skyrocketed.

Television: Television delivers the highest impact of any media, but unpredictable viewer habits make it difficult to reach the same viewer a second or third time within seven nights sleep. If your message needs repetition, television is even trickier to schedule than radio. And the cost of production is extremely high for an ad that won’t embarrass you. But if you’ve got the cash and it’s not the off-season (summertime,) TV can be a powerful ally.

Radio: Sound is neurologically intrusive and radio feels like a friend. The problem with radio is that most ads are written in such a way that they’re easily ignored, so your ad will need to be presented repeatedly to the same listener. This need for repetition makes scheduling easily botched. Most campaigns are scheduled to reach the largest possible number of people. Consequently, these schedules deliver too little repetition. Be careful you don’t make this mistake. The good news is that radio is the great equalizer. Unlike magazines, television and direct mail, radio ads don’t require a big budget to be world class; radio requires nothing but word skills and imagination.

Newspaper: Newspaper ads need a visual trigger, a picture of your product. This trigger will attract the attention of customers who are consciously in the market for your product, but those who aren’t in the market will fail to see your ad. Consequently, newspaper ads often deliver immediately identifiable results, but these results fail to get better and better over time. In the short run, newspaper wins. In the long run, TV and radio win.

Yellow Pages: Like newspaper, the yellow pages reach people who are consciously in the market. But while newspapers promote products, the yellow pages promote services. The highest goal of a service business is to be the name that immediately comes to mind when the public needs your services. This can be accomplished with Radio, Television, Signage or Billboards. But if your budget doesn't permit you to win customers before they need you, make sure you sing loud in the yellow pages.

Magazines: Perhaps the ultimate tool for psychographic targeting, magazines ads tend to be expensive. Another downside is that most are delivered with very poor frequency, often just once a month. But when your message fits the readership, magazine ads can be awesome.

Internet: The advantage of the internet is that it lets you reach the whole world.  The disadvantage of the internet is that you’re competing with the whole world. How will you drive traffic to your site? If your small business has the ability to drive traffic through mass media, a website is often the perfect half step between your advertising and your store. Let your prospective customer get to know you online.

It’s worked well for me.

By Roy H. Williams

PS - Hone your public speaking skills,
    Learn new ways to sell radio ads, and
    Add a chapter to our upcoming hardback,
    at WizardAcademy.org

Which Station Should I Buy?... How Can I Reach the Right People?

If you are asking these questions before you uncover your message, you are about to make one of the biggest mistakes in advertising.

Customer Profiles... (Hear the Memo)

By Roy H. Williams

I’ve never seen a business fail due to reaching the wrong people. But if you listen to advertising sales reps, “reaching the right people” will solve all your problems.

And guess who has exactly the right people for you?

The conversation usually goes something like this: the sales rep says, “Tell me, who is your customer?”
“Blah, blah, blah.”
“Really? That’s exactly who we reach! What a fit! It’s like a hand in glove, a marriage made in heaven! We reach your exact customer profile!”

Here’s an idea. Call every advertising sales office in your city and tell them you want to advertise with them. Let’s see how many of them say, “Sorry, your customer isn’t who we reach.”

The myth of “the right people” is a myth every business owner wants to believe because it keeps them from having to make uncomfortable changes. “Our selection isn’t off-target, we’re just reaching the wrong people.” “Our prices aren’t too high, we’re just reaching the wrong people.” Traffic isn’t down because our ads are flaccid, we’re just reaching the wrong people.”

In truth, “the right people” are easy to find.
They’re everywhere.
And they know each other.
And they talk.

The right message works regardless of which media delivers it.
The wrong message disappoints you and your customer alike.

Click to read more ...

By Michael Keesee, Wizard of Ads Partner

Here's a secret from the best producers of television advertising: write the words first. Then match the visuals to reinforce your message.

I can prove it. Turn off the sound and see which ads make sense. Then turn the sound up and try it again without looking at the screen. Most of the time the audio alone can carry the message. Most of the time the picture alone can't.

Many will claim television's power is in its pictures. They're wrong. Television's power is in it's ability to demonstrate.

Show the six-year-old making toaster waffles, or the clean dishes coming out of the dishwasher. Show how easy the prepackaged skillet breakfast is to prepare, or how even your arthritic Grandmother can open jars with the new cap snaffler.

Show people using your product or service and having great results, but match that picture to the selling message your words have already created. If your words alone don't carry the message, better rewrite until it does.

This is where gambling and advertising are dangerously similar.

By Craig Arthur

"Pumpkin ads answer these questions:
Who you are... Where you are... What you have to offer"

Image by Shelley KeithWhen governments have a problem what do they normally do? They simply throw money at the problem and hope like hell it will go away.

When businesses have a problem with gross sales what do they do? They too simply throw money at the problem and hope like hell things will improve. They call it advertising.

There is an old saying in professional gambling circles, “Off with the head and on with the pumpkin.” The saying refers to the seemingly sane, intelligent, successful people who walk onto a racetrack or into a casino and instantly turn stupid and brainless. Just because you are brilliant in one field of business does not give you instant access to the smarts needed for other fields.

Click to read more ...

Media selection should be the last consideration when planning your advertising. 

Here's the truth you need to hear about the media or the delivery vehicle of your message. Every media 'works' to some degree, but every media fails when it delivers a message no one cares about.

Relevance is what determines whether an ad works or not. In other words it’s what you SAY that counts. How the message is delivered is completely secondary.

"Every business owner must decide for themselves what percentage of their profits to take out of their company and how much to re-invest in facilities, equipment, advertising and people. Sadly, due to the near-universal fear that "If it doesn't work, I've wasted my money," very few business people are willing to advertise as aggressively as they should. Consequently, unrestrained growth is available in most categories to those who can afford the dollars and stomach the risk." - Roy H. Williams 

Before you start spending your ad dollars, how much should you really invest? Thanks to Wizard Partner, Dave Young, you can run your numbers through the online calculator.