Salmon and Marketers

Water flows downstream. It's a fact of nature. The water carries everything in it's path downstream with it.

Even fish don't swim against the current... oh, wait a minute. Salmon do. Salmon wear themselves out swimming upstream to spawn. Then they die. Marketers who swim against the current tend to suffer the same fate as those salmon. They die, too.

Pulled by gravity, rivers always flow downstream. Pulled by self interest, customers will always follow their own motivation. Marketers who swim against the current are attempting to fight the pull of the customer's self interest.* They could just as well attempt to make the river flow uphill.

Example? Consider a shopper in Rusk, Texas - a community of roughly 5,000 persons. It's easy for that shopper to justify driving to Crocket, Texas (population 7,500) to shop. People from Crocket, however, never shop in Rusk. They drive to Palestine (population 18,000). Of course, you won't find the Palestinians driving to Crocket. They travel to Tyler (population 84,000). Bored shoppers in Tyler drive to Dallas.

All across America shoppers find larger communities appealing, probably because of the perception of greater variety in shopping choices. Shoppers follow their self interest by pursuing more choices. They flow with the current.

They flow with the current when they go from Arnegard, to Watford City, to Williston, to Minot, to Bismarck, North Dakota. They leave Baker and flow with the current to Barstow, to Victorville, to Rancho Cucamonga, to San Bernardino, California. You'll see shoppers flowing from Mount Sterling to Grove City, to Columbus, to Cincinnati, Ohio.

Just as a river flows downhill from higher terrain, shoppers always flow from the smaller community to the larger. Neither flows backwards. Advertising in the bigger community to draw customers to your smaller community is as futile as trying to make the water in a river defy gravity.

I was reminded of the effects of swiming against the current when I received this letter:

"I've owned a boat dealership for over 30 years. We are located 1.5 - 2.5 hours northwest of Chicago in an area of lakes where our best customers own a second home. How do I use radio to reach these people?

A. They are primarily up here only on week-ends in the summer.

B. They live full-time in the greater Chicagoland area where radio advertising is too expensive for us.

C. We have local radio stations, but our customers can still tune in their favorite Chicago area stations.

Over the past few years, I've run a Reed's Marine radio commercial three times a day, seven days a week from April thru August. I've used the two biggest stations in our county, so we are permeating our area. My hope was that I might be heard by my best prospects on a rare occasion, but I was primarily targeting all the people in my county who would eventually mention us when they come in contact with the tourist coming from Chicago on the week-ends.

Do you think "second-hand" radio advertising can have an actual effect ... sort of like second-hand cigarette smoke?"

Tom Johnson, owner
Reed's Marine

Second hand advertising? Yes, it can have an amazing effect. Another name for it is "word of mouth." It's also known as your professional reputation, the sum of the experiences customers have had with you. This personal experience factor determines whether any individual customer will be a good source of word of mouth.

Exceptional experiences turn shoppers into customer evangelists. These are people who can't wait to rave to the world about your exceptional business. (Of course, give them a bad experience and they could just as easily become vigilante customers - also eager to tell the world about your business).

So whether you call it word of mouth or professional reputation, those personal experiences drive repeat business, referral business, and collectively drive first-time business. Yes, "second-hand radio advertising," works. It's also one of the requirements of business success.

But Tom actually asked two questions, didn't he? The second, the unstated question, wasn't about professional reputations, or customer experiences, or referral business.

Tom wonders if he can make the river flow uphill.

He wants to know if his situation is different enough to justify advertising in Chicago.

It's not.

The biggest waste of money in advertising happens when a business spends it's budget, but didn't invest enough to persuade anyone. Compare it to buying a ticket three-quarters of the way to Europe. You spent your money, but still didn't arrive.

The first problem is the sheer size of the Chicago market. The number of people in Chicago who own homes in Delavan is going to be a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a tiny percentage of the population.

In order to reach that miniscule segment of the market, you're forced to also address the rest of the Chicago audience. And Tom, you can't afford enough repetition of your ad on Chicago radio stations to effectively persuade anyone.** Like the salmon using all of it's physical resources swimming against the current, you're going to expend your financial resources fighting the inclination of all of those radio listeners to shop in bigger communities.

There is a practical way, though, to pursue that tiny fraction of Chicago's population.

Stop using mass media.

Start making personal contact with Chicago residents who own homes in Delavan. The good news is it's easier, and less costly, to make that personal contact once they've already arrived.

• In most communities you can find the names and addresses of all new homeowners at the courthouse (or wherever the deeds are recorded). These are highly-targeted potential customers. Consider a "Welcome to your new home" letter to those folks, and include a CD ROM of the e-book you offer on your web site: The Five Biggest Mistakes People Make When Buying A Boat. Perhaps you could make that letter a full package of "welcome" gifts. Be sure to keep testing different letters and keeping very careful records of your expenses and conversion rates. Whenever you determine that one works better, dump the old one.


• Find locations that tourists frequently patronize... restaurants, gas stations, and local service businesses. Any possibilities for flyers? Display ads in those locations?


• Find referral partners. Team up with other local businesses who's reputations are as good as your own; non-competitors who share your customers. Exchange sales leads. Support one another, publicly and privately. Start with the realtors, motorcycle / ATV dealers, and sporting goods stores.


• Consider a "boat out" on a weekday evening. Take some of your best-selling models out on the water and invite local folks (as well as any visitors in the area) to look and ride. Make it a party atmosphere. Tie in a local restaurant or caterer. Get some local artists to show off their work. Find some local musicians to perform. Most of those folks will participate for the publicity. Twist the arm of your Chaparral Boat representative to pick up any out-of-pocket costs.

These personal contact ideas are not replacements for your primary marketing plan, which will include local mass media. Any can be added to a good plan, however.

What you've told us about Reed's Marine's radio strategy appears solid. Long term, twenty-one ads per week will be sufficient on most radio stations, provided that you're targeting relational shoppers.

I'm also assuming that your ads are customer focused. You are personally involved in the writing of those ads, aren't you? Please don't leave it up to the local radio stations. We already discussed the power of word of mouth. If your message isn't worth repeating, it won't be repeated.

Here are a few additional things to consider:

• Maximize your local media impact with heavier schedules early in the season and heavier schedules on weekends throughout the season.


• Purchase gift certificates for dinners, concert events, or movies. Offer them to your local radio stations as give-away items. "Be the 9th caller and win a family four-pack of movie tickets, courtesy of Reed's Marine in Delavan."


• Consider billboards on the main roads into town. In some small communities, especially those with few roads into town, three or four boards can provide as much as a 100 showing.


• Your web site is very well done. Crisp, clean, informative, and easy to navigate. I'd suggest that you add the free download of your e-book to the home page as well. (More companies should be following your lead in this area - its an excellent piece.) Also consider making a link from your home page to the "Reed's Marine Pledge To You" statement. You can't go wrong telling customers what's in it for them. Tell them early and often.

Most advertisers in a smaller communities can afford enough frequency in local newspaper or radio to persuade local shoppers to come do business. You're already doing the things most businesses should be doing. Stick with your existing strategy, and when tempted to purchase advertising in Chicago, remember what happens to the Salmon. Don't wear yourself out fighting the current.

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Thanks to Wizard of Ads partners Sonja Howle, Ron Love, Marjorie Working, Adam Deatherage, Walter Koschnitzke, and Dan Seiler for their help in organizing my thoughts about the effects of current on Salmon and on marketers.

* Please don't confuse comments about marketers swimming against the current as a condemnation of any contrarian philosophy. Contrarians find opportunities in serving the existing needs of customers which other businesses are ignoring.

** There is one possible exception in which Chicago radio could pay off, but it's a long shot.

Are there outdoor shows in the Chicago area sponsored by Chicago radio stations? Is the attendance at those shows such that you could justify your involvement?

Many of the stations will tie your involvement in the show to purchases of advertising packages. Your mission is to get the largest number of announcements with the financial investment they require. See if they'll let you exchange prime time ads for overnight placement to increase frequency, then concentrate those between 4am - 6am, especially Friday and Saturday. Consider sponsoring Friday evening or Saturday traffic reports.

And remember, the primary value of this strategy is to get face-to-face with potential customers at the outdoor show. The radio schedule is the price of your participation.

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Bragging Rights

Today I'm choosing to bring to your attention several recent notworthy accomplishments of Wizard of Ads^® Partners.

Although this is current information, what follows is not news. News is (allegedly) impartial. I can't be impartial about these people... I'm much to proud of them.

Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg

How much more profitable could your web site be if more visitors actually made a purchase? The first web marketers told us that a two percent “conversion ratio” was acceptable, probably because that two percent number has been thrown around the direct marketing camps for so many decades.

Then, along came Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg. They posed a simple question:

“In direct response an unsolicited offer is sent to a large group of people. But when shoppers land on your web site, we can presume that they already are interested in what you have to offer. Why should you be satisfied with a two percent return among qualified prospects?”

Their new book, Call To Action reveals the tested methods they've used to improve that conversion rate by multiple orders of magnitude for their Fortune 500 clients. Read what Web Marketing Today had to say about this book.

Call To Action is an overview of the principles and tactics of conversion rate marketing. Wizard Academy Press has a special pre-publication offer: purchase three copies of this 314 page hardcover book for only $13.95… and the publisher pays the shipping. At this price, ($4.65 each) you could buy one for yourself and give the other two as gifts. But be sure to order quickly. This is, remember, a pre-publication offer, and it's only good until May 1.

Michelle Miller

The Wednesday, April 20 issue of Media Bulletin lists the most influential and best-read blogs in the country. And among the top three in marketing and advertising? Michelle Miller’s Wonder Branding.

It’s no surprise to anyone who knows Michelle that people pay close attention to what she has to say. She’s one of the world’s top authorities on marketing to women. Her study of the female brain, detailed in The Natural Advantages Of Women, explores and explains female traits like emotion, passion, intuition and nurturing. It’s available in audiobook format from Wizard Academy Press.

Juan Guillermo Tornoe

The Hispanic Marketing & Communications Association has just announced the addition of Juan Tornoe to their board of directors. The Association is a national not-for-profit professional association dedicated to Hispanic marketing excellence.

You can read more of his work at his Hispanic Trending blog, which features news and commentaries related to Hispanic Marketing in the US. If any part of your market speaks English as a second language, you probably should bookmark this site, and refer to it often.

Mike Dandridge

One of the most significant motivations for a customer to do business with you a second time, is the way you treated her the first time. At Wizard Academy we refer to this as the Personal Experience Factor. One of the newest Wizard of Ads^® Partners, Mike Dandridge, knows how to create a PEF so amazing that it will make your business truly worth advertising.

Mike explains that the world inside your door is the place where you succeed or fail in meeting your customer's expectations. His book, Thinking Outside the Bulb – The Art of Creating an Amazing Customer Experience is all about revolutionizing your business from the inside out. Read some of Mike's specific recommendations at Business Turnaround.

Steve Clark

When you focus on determining your client’s needs, you may very well discover that what you sell isn’t the answer to the client's problem. Steve Clark says the correct solution is to recommend someone who can help, even when that recommendation costs the sale.

Not your typical sales trainer, is he?

Steve’s New School Selling is helping sales professionals all over the country to achieve their goals with new skills and the ability to sell the customer the way the customer wants to be sold. He’s the author of Cultivating an Abundant Mentality. Watch his Online Video Introduction.

I hope you can see why I'm so proud to be associated with these people. I can, without hesitation, recommend every one of them.

There are currently 43 Wizard of Ads^® Partners in Canada, Austraila, Sweden, England, and across the US. Each partner is a specialist in a different area of marketing. The individual partners' expertise is pooled and made available to all Wizard of Ads^® clients.

If you have an owner-operated business, consultation with a Wizard Partner can be one of the most valuable business tools available.

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Passing The Torch (Torching The Past) Part 2.

Verisimilitude. (ver-a-sim'-il-i-tood) Noun. "The appearance of truth."

It's the word that could make you rich. But first, a quick history lesson.

When the Baby Boom generation came of age they rejected many of the values of their parents' generation. Consider dress and presentation, for instance. If Dad kept his hair short, Junior grew his long. If Dad wore a white shirt, tie, and dark slacks to the office, Junior wore paisley, or tie-died shirts over his jeans.

In approximately six short years our whole society had accepted, and adopted, the new style. By 1969 even grandmothers wouldn't be caught dead dressing as they did in 1963. Much like styles in clothing, advertising didn't make it through the following decade unaffected.

Ads targeting the WWII generation tended to be factual statements of benefits ("More iron than a pound of calf's liver"), or slice-of-life dialogs ("Oh, Mrs. Olson... I just can't brew a good cup of coffee"). By the late sixties, advertisers were dropping features and benefits and playing to the Boomers self-esteem. Sexual innuendo became common ("Does she, or doesn't she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure"), as did a greater awareness of the women's movement ("I can bring home the bacon, cook it up in a pan, and never never let you forget you're a man").

Why dwell on the last passing of the torch? Because it's a predictor of the current demographic shift. It's creating a change in our society of equal magnitude. As I pointed out in Part 1,

"At the peak of the Baby Boom, there were 74 million teenagers. Today there are 72 million teenagers ready to take over the world."

This emerging generation is rejecting many of their parents values. And, just as the coming of age of the Baby Boomers effected every aspect of the rest of society, so too will the emerging generation change society again. By the end of this decade, grandmothers will be wearing hip hop influenced clothing. Within just a very few years, marketing which targets these new consumers will be motivating all of us.

Your current marketing plan? It's probably useless.

Those advertisers who are successfully reaching the emerging generation are doing it differently than they did even two years ago. The new communication is unscripted. It's real. And you get the distinct feeling that you know the people delivering the message.

Here are some examples of that new communication. Click in the link to hear the radio ads in MP3 format, or the streaming videos as QuickTime movies:

Clayton Homes Radio Ad
City Perk Radio Ad
Star Pawn Radio Ad

Robbins Brothers OVI
Michelle Miller OVI
Champ Software OVI

These people are real. They own or manage the businesses featured. They are speaking from the heart. Do you believe them?

Do you believe Glenn when he describes the quality of his manufactured homes? Do you believe Sharon when she explains helping young men do a better job of proposing marriage? Do you believe Al when he says he puts love and quality into his coffee?

Would you choose to do business with these people? If you were as transparent in your communication, would other consumers choose to do business with you?

Wizard of Ads^® Partner Rex Williams expressed it this way:

"Your customers want a truthful representation of you and your business. They sense your honesty when you pause to search for just the right word. They feel the authenticity of your quirky glance across the room. Congratulations, you’ve just pulled back the curtain and revealed to the world who you really are… and they love you for it."

Start examining the way you communicate with your customers. (Hint: pay close attention to the way they communicate with each other.) Today's consumers aren't just buying what you sell, they're buying you. They're buying verisimilitude. In the coming decade, it's the word that could make you rich.

Remember there is opportunity at every time of change.

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Senior Wizard of Ads^® Partner Roy H. Williams has six solid recommendations for advertisers preparing to do business with the emerging generation. Download your free copy of Marketing In 2005 And Beyond by clicking on the link.

Online Video Introductions were created by Wizard of Ads^® Partner Rex Williams, at his Sunpop Studios while the rest of the industry was still making tightly-scripted industrial videos. You might want to consider an OVI when you budget for next year's marketing plan.

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Passing The Torch (Torching The Past) Part 1.

Care to be alarmed? The way you've been marketing your goods and services is about to fail. Not suddenly, not dramatically, but surely, completely, and inevitably. The aging of the Boomer generation is changing the nature of the market. By necessity it's changing the nature of marketing, too.

The Boomers were the "me" generation. They were pampered, and catered to, in a way that previous generations never understood. Marketing to the Boomers was driven by the understated message "everybody else has one, you deserve one too." That message isn't working very well, anymore. It will continue to be less and less effective.

The sheer size of the Baby Boom generation has shaped almost every facet of our society for the last half century.

• The parents of the Baby Boomers, enjoying a post-war economic boom, doted on the Boomers. In the process they contributed to the success of Mattel, Tyco, Hasbro, Ideal, Tonka, Wham-O, Parker Brothers, and Milton Bradley.

• The co-incidence of the unbridled growth of television broadcasting during this period brought us the first children's programming both as education and entertainment.

• We saw local taxes affected by the enormous growth in the number of schools and teachers as the Boomers hit the five and six year marks.

• As the Boomers hit adolescence, they had more spend-able income than any previous generation, and spent it on clothing, make-up, and entertainment.

• In early adulthood the Baby Boomers had a dramatic effect on social mores. Couples living together "without benefit of clergy," or having children out of wedlock... concepts which would have horrified their grandparents... became common. Equal opportunity started leveling the paying field (pun intended) and eliminating gender bias in employment.

• Over the next decades, the sheer size of the Boomer generation drove purchasing trends in automobiles, housing, and again, entertainment.

• Recently the Boomers have forced demand in the stock market, investment real estate, and health care.

Wait a minute. What happened to entertainment?

For the first time, network TV isn't meeting their entertainment preferences. And the networks don't seem concerned. Consider this to be evidence of the fading influence of the Baby Boom generation.

The staple of prime-time television since the beginning of network programming has been the situation comedy. Seen any new situation comedies recently? It appears that they've all been replaced by "reality programming." Sitcoms were watched by Baby Boomers. Today's audience doesn't relate.

At the peak of the Baby Boom, there were 74 million teenagers. Today there are 72 million teenagers ready to take over the world. Their motivations are vastly different from those of their parents... in fact, different from their older siblings.

As Senior Wizard of Ads^® Partner, Roy Williams, said in his Monday Morning Memo of December 15, 2003:

"AOL and Google.com are the Kerouac and Salinger of the new generation that will soon pry the torch from the hands of Baby Boomers reluctant to let it go. Tupac Shakur and Eminem are the new Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley and the Boomers' reaction to them is much like their own parents' reaction to Chuck and Elvis. But instead of saying 'Take a bath, cut your hair, and get a job,' we're saying, 'Pull those pants up, spin that cap around and wash your mouth out with soap.'"

Boomers rejected conformity. Today's teens reject pretense. Words like "amazing," "astounding," and "spectacular" are heard by today's teens as as we hear the adults in the Peanuts^® cartoons: "Wah wah, wah wah wah." Tested marketing methods which have worked since WWII are no longer pulling the predictable results that experienced marketers have grown to expect. As you might suspect, this is leaving a large number of experienced marketers perplexed at the new reality.

In the past, decisions-to-purchase revolved primarily around features and benefits. All you had to do was explain why your product was better than your competitor’s. The new trend in decisions-to-purchase is based on shared values. Today's customers aren't just buying what you sell, they're buying you.

To succeed in the new marketplace, your messages must reveal who and what you really are. It's going to take courage, and a different way of communicating.

Today's kids are a savvy, streetwise generation. They want it real. They don't expect perfection. They demand truth. It's going to be harder and harder to win these kids as customers through advertising alone. It's going to be nearly impossible through traditional advertising.

What are you doing to prepare for your new customers?

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How Big Is Your Reputation?

Here I sit in Victorville, California, on a working vacation. The lovely Mrs. McKay and I are taking some time to visit all three of our daughters (and play with the grandkids), and I've had the privilege of speaking before several Southern California service organizations this week.

Yesterday I was the guest speaker at the weekly meeting of Victorville, California's Victor Valley Marketing Group. I've known about half of these people for years. I used to be a member of this group. Of course, there were only 30 of us then. In the last three years the group membership has doubled.

When I went through the steps of creating an advertising budget, my long-time friend Bob Sole, owner of Express Blinds, asked a pertinent question: "Once you've created a budget, how long do you have to advertise at that level before enough people know about you that you can cut back on your advertising?"

I don't believe that you ever can. In fact, if your business is successful, you'll probably be investing ever-larger sums in advertising. Here are two reasons why.

The purpose of advertising is largely to expose your business to people who don't pass by and see you on a daily basis. The best thing that you can do to promote your business is to locate in the busiest intersection in town, then hang out a "now open" sign. Find an area with enough traffic, and you may not need to advertise at all. Most of us though, don't have prime locations. The farther we locate from where people naturally congregate, the more we need to use other means (ie: advertising) to remind those people to come and do business with us.

One of the realities of any community is that it's a continually changing entity. And no matter how great your location was ten years ago, the population and traffic patterns have probably shifted to some other prime location in the last decade. Perhaps you'll find it makes sense to relocate every eight to ten years. A number of national grocery chains do that with their stores for this very reason. Then again, you may find that its more cost effective to simply keep inviting people to your current location.

The second reason is that people move. According to the United States Postal Service, approximately 17% of the people in any given community relocate each year. Run the math and you'll find (worst case) that after ten years only 19% of the people who "knew" you a decade ago still remember you. Add a small growth in population, and that figure can drop by a couple more percentage points.

This brings out an odd contradiction, doesn't it? The faster your community's population grows, the more money there is in circulation. That usually means more business happens by default. Long term, though, it also means that you're becoming lost in the crowd.

Look around town. Are some of your old customers disappearing? Are new people moving to town? Have the traffic patterns changed in the last decade?

Can you afford to assume that enough people have heard about you to quit inviting them into your business?

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