Needs to be told

When I’m visiting stations, it often feels as if the Sales staff is playing more of a defensive game than an offensive one.

I understand that agencies and local clients frequently want the demo your station doesn’t own, and they’re always working to put your sales guys on the defensive so they can get you to lower rates, but enough’s enough.

Maybe agency buyers don’t really care if the ads they buy work as long as they come in at the right cost, but I think, increasingly, that will have to change.

There are now studies that correspond with what many of your local clients feel intuitively: namely that online ads don’t produce sales.

THIS STUDY showed “...a majority of advertisers doubt the legitimacy of web traffic flowing to online advertisements.”

Even Google ads are suspect.

THIS STUDY claims that “…the advertisers who pay Google most of the money it earns are getting a negative return on their investment, to the tune of -63%.“

I don’t know whether internet ads work or not. I’ve never used them. Your station probably hasn’t either.

But we know radio ads work! It’s a certainty, and we can prove it. We have proved it, over and over for countless businesses.

Radio is less expensive than TV. It’s probably less expensive than Google ads.

But cost only matters if return on investment counts. It doesn’t matter how cheap internet banner ads are. No one clicks on them.

The more important story is that radio ads work, without time-shifting, without dubious click-through statistics.

That’s the story we need to tell, over and over, in the voices of the clients whose businesses we have helped build.

It’s our story, but no one will tell it if we don’t.