Tim Miles, Wizard of Ads | The Daily Blur » Marketing

Practical Applications of Social Media in Small Business (in 20 seconds)

Tim — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:37:34 +0000

Hi. So, what have you been doing?

I’ve been thinking a lot about social media. I think they (whoever they are) gave it the wrong name.

Advertising Show and Tell

Tim — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:21:29 +0000

Within one minute of each other, I had two friends – who don’t know each other – share two different ads wanting my thoughts on them.

Weird. But a good weird! I’ll share my thoughts maybe tomorrow. Feel free to start your discussion tonight.

Mr. W

Coca-Cola / NASCAR: Harmony

Thanks, Kathy and Tia – funny thing is … you two would totally be friends if you knew each other.

No related posts.

None of His Business

Tim — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:32:27 +0000

Yesterday, I was ticked off when a local media rep asked me for a complete list of my clients.

I got this email last night from a sales manager I really, really respect:

Here is my follow-up question…

If a rep somehow stumbles, bumbles, rumbles into the front door of
one of your clients and they say “…tim miles handles all my media…”
wouldn’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t that rep then contact you (not on Sunday
at home :-) to start discussions about that one client?

My reply this morning:

“Well, of course. Absolutely. They should contact me.

What I take issue with is … “Say, while I’ve got you on the phone, can you go ahead and give me a list of all your clients?”

No. No. No. Can I go ahead and poop on your shoes? You’re not welcome into that part of my inner circle. I’m also not setting myself up for six weeks of one call after another from you with questions about my dozen local clients.

I saw another poorly trained rep in action yesterday …

I dropped the boy off at preschool at Stephens and went down to eat and work at Bambino’s … kid in a tie, maybe 21 or 22 years old, comes in.

‘Yeah, is the owner here? I don’t have an appointment or anything but I work for ______ and I just wanted to talk to him about his business.’

Really? Really? You don’t know his name? You didn’t even try to make an appointment? Honestly, young man, what did you really think was going to happen?

Owner, sitting right there, says: ‘Listen, just leave your card, and we’ll call you if we need anything.’

Is that call ever coming? Ever?

Sigh. I have some constructive thoughts on this … on how to do it better … it’ll take longer – it’ll make a lot of managers and trainers pretty twitchy. I wrote about six pages of notes last night … but only maybe two of the pages are really good. I’ll keep thinking and refining. I’ll probably post it on Thursday or Friday.”

Why I Don’t Take A Percentage Of The Ad Buy

Tim — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:31:53 +0000

I don’t take a percentage of your ad buy. I don’t accept kickbacks or pocket discounts from media.

If you’re my client, you pay me a one-time upfront fee and then a small monthly salary that’s adjusted annually by the percentage of your growth. That’s it.

Why?

If I suggest you spend more, I want you to be completely convinced I think it’s in our best mutual interest.

I don’t want you to think I have a hidden agenda to pocket an extra commission.

I’d like to think – if we work together – we’re partners in this crazy adventure known as your success.

People who make more as you make more are partners, aren’t they?

People who make more as you spend more?

Those aren’t partners. Those are predators.

Buying Radio Ads: The Myth of Residual Value

Tim — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:21:38 +0000

Listen, most of what I know about buying radio I learned from experience and trusting advice found in two of my partner Roy’s books: The Wizard of Ads and Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads.

There are no real secrets here – just solid principles – that I shared with a colleague when his email popped into my inbox.

Hey Tim,

So…last year I had [client] on [big honkin' country music station] for about 4 months…they got great response…they were on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

This year…they want to spend the same amount of money…maybe less…but be on different days and less times for frequency.

What is a smart and valid answer to the following email that I can give them about frequency:

“I think that 35 ads per week is overkill, there should be residual name recognition in the market from all that we did last year. I believe that people will be thinking about looking for an apartment on Wed, Thurs and Friday. With 6 adds per day that comes to 18 spots per week and should be about 400/ wk, much more palatable for us.

I do not want to commit for 3 solid months, I prefer 1 month then 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off through the season (sept.).”

Thanks, Tim.

Here’s my reply:

“You don’t have residual value. Unfortunately, people have this dadgum habit of remembering what they want to remember and feel is important. If they didn’t have a need last year, you weren’t important.

“My partner Roy likes to say that people don’t stay reached any more than a lawn stays mowed. Sleep is a great eraser of the noise of the day. Again, if someone didn’t have a need last year, your ads – no matter how good they were – were noise.

“Assuming an ad of average impact/quality, and assuming your competitors are largely absent from radio, you may assume you’re working toward top of mind awareness by running somewhere between 18-21 ads/week between 6a and 7p. Early week. Late week. It makes little difference. That general number of ads each week, every week will give you the approximate frequency to reach the most number of people on a station 3.0 times per week – the number necessary to generate and keep top of mind awareness.

“If you can’t afford to do it on [Big Honkin' Station], do it on a smaller station. Frequency matters more than reach. Reaching 100% of the listening area with only enough frequency to convince them 10% of the way costs exactly the same as reaching 10% of the listening area but convincing them 100% of the way. Understand? They cost exactly the same, but only one makes cash flow.

“If you really, really want [Big Honkin' Country Music Station] but can’t afford the 18-21 per week, buy only select dayparts. Again, your reach will suffer, but you’ll at least be able to afford the necessary frequency. The station can run reach and frequency analysis for you.

“And then budget to continue this plan for only as long as you wish to be in business.

“Otherwise, as Morris Hite said, underspending in advertising is like buying a plane ticket halfway to Europe.”

That’s what I shared with my colleague, and with his permission, I’m sharing it with you. What do you think?

UPDATE: My friend Rick Harrington pointed out: “Something that I’ve found in news/talk is that building frequency is a different animal than with a music station because there’s significant audience turnover as programming changes.”

Absolutely true. News/talk is a different animal and we buy it much more like television – shows vs. stations, although there’s a little more to it than that, and you’ll often find people listen longer, and you’ll need fewer ads to reach the same frequency. The station in question above was a music station.

Do you have more than one URL?

Tim — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:10:09 +0000

Over the weekend, I suggested to a client that they purchase an additional URL for a promotion to go to a specific landing page of their site.

“We can have more than one?” she asked.

Yep.

As a small business, one of the cheapest investments you can make (approximately US$10 for a year) would be to purchase an evocative URL (the stuff between the ‘www’ and the ‘.com’ or ‘.net’ or ‘.whatnot’) and forward it toward the page you want folks to reach.

Another client, a restaurant, uses “a Regular place” in their marketing campaign, so in addition to the traditional www.[restaurantname].com, we purchased that tagline as a URL that points to our home page.

Additionally, we realized that when people called to ask us where we were located, we always found our employees telling folks, “at Forum and Nifong on the south side … behind Walgreen’s”

Always … the same … “behind Walgreen’s.”

Can you guess what our next twenty bucks purchased and what URL we put on the big coupon we include with those new resident ‘welcome to the community’ baskets?

Last week, when I spoke in Champaign-Urbana about practical applications of social media, I ended my talk with three slides worth of takeaways. I wanted to give them more, but I only had half an hour, so I directed them to the Social Media tagged posts on this site.

I didn’t say, “So, go to the daily blur dot com slash tag slash social dash media.”

I simply put the following up on screen:

Buy memorable URLs for different purposes – point your users where they want to go.

Follow up to make sure that once they arrive to your online portal that they can easily pick up the scent trail.

Make the landing page relevant to the URL or marketing materials.

Three Meaty Bits to Start Your Week

Tim — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:28:13 +0000

Hmm … guess these should be three different posts to jack up my page views, but I don’t want to waste your time on a Monday.

1. How I Ran An Ad On Fox News: Way cool, instructive video. I’m sure every media buying company in the world will tell you why you’re not smart enough to do this, but I enjoyed watching it. (Hat tip to Jeff Sexton for sharing.)

2. How to Write a Mission Statement That Doesn’t Suck: Dan Heath of the Made to Stick and Switch Heath Brothers. We watched this a couple times during a workshop at the United Way of Champaign County on Thursday. Again, it’s only a couple minutes, but it illustrates how bad things sometimes happen to good words and good groups.

3. Speaking of Glenn Beck … Roy’s memo this morning – Change Their Mind? – introduces a fantastic new concept about persuasion called the invisible backboard. I really enjoyed it, and I think you will, too.

Gotta run. Have a good Monday.

A Weekly Blur

Tim — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:01:08 +0000

Phew. What a week. How about you?

We spent most of the last week in Illinois visiting mom and dad and celebrating perfect weather for planting corn.

We’re very big on seed time and harvest around these parts.

Want to learn how patience is the greater expression of commitment? Spend a little time with a farmer. Those crops which yield the most bountiful harvests take the longest.

Since the week whirred by, I wanted to give you a quick glimpse into some things you may have missed that are worth a couple minutes of your valuable weekend time.

My buddy Tom Wanek’s 7-year-old daughter, Olivia, wrote a poem I think you’ll like.

My buddy Michele Miller wrote a fantastic little piece about the importance of opening gestures in work and life.

Seth Godin wrote a great bit this morning about being addicted to stuff that’s incoming versus focusing your time on doing fun, interesting, and important work.

I gave a new talk on Practical Applications of Social Media for Small Business that went over very well.

I’m no expert – be wary of 99.9% of people who tell you they are experts in social media (and run for the hills if anyone proclaims himself a guru) - but I’ve been fortunate to have some success with clients in a few different categories. We’re illustrating those case studies and the audience this week ate it up.

While there, I met a tremendous young staff writer from the local paper who really understands the future of newspapers if they’re to survive.

She’ll be an important voice in Champaign County for years to come … if she doesn’t get frustrated and move onto a different industry. She wrote a small recap of the talk here, but you might get distracted by the lede of the story about some cats that’ll teach you to play bagpipes.

We’re going to be expanding the Practically Social talk in a couple fun and interesting and important ways. Stay tuned.

After the presentation, I got to lead a meeting at United Way of Champaign County with a group of impressively committed volunteers and staff. They’re trying to re-write and improve their mission statement. We had a great session that started with Dan Heath’s video from Fast Company to understand why most mission statements suck. It’s worth a look.

I’ll try to expand on our session and the methods we used. We were striving for clarity. It worked, and it was a lot of fun.

And my wife had a birthday, and my son and I played catch for the first time, and he said “I love you” for the second time, and my daughter’s about to crawl and start doing trigonometry (I think).

That’s been our weekly blur. And while I’m sure some of them social media experts would tell you I shouldn’t blog or send out emails on Saturdays, this is going to be a regular thing.

On Saturdays, I’ll start emailing out The Weekly Blur.

It’ll be different content than the blog, though it may have some links to something from the week, but it’ll also give you something to hopefully enjoy over coffee. You can sign up for the one email per week here if you’re interested.

Today, the boy’s going to help grandpa plant corn. Hope grandpa can teach him a little patience. And Baby Sarah might just crack cold fusion.

Here’s to a weekend full of fun and interesting and important new beginnings.

My First Text Spam

Tim — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 12:54:52 +0000

I don’t text message much … but definitely more than I did even six months ago. We even had one of Will’s therapists text in sick a couple weeks back.

Tuesday night, I got this:

No Thank U

So, is this like email spam? Should I be afraid to text them to stop?

Do you get a bunch of these? How do they make you feel? I’ve been considering using a(n opt-in) text service for one of my clients, but this gives me a little pause. It did feel more intrusive than email spam, but maybe that’s because we’re all so desensitized to it.

What’s next? Spam filtering software for our phones?

And, most importantly, who the heck gave me up? Who sold out my cell phone number to these weasels?

wth? idk. l8r.

No related posts.

Small Business Social Media Can Be A Lot Like This

Tim — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:50:32 +0000

You want to jump into every social media platform you can get your username penciled into … but some are better fits than others and, frankly, you just don’t have the time. No one does. Not even Greg.

Be careful. It could all blow up in your face like Peter’s volcano.

Start small. Start slowly. Breathe and enjoy. Stick with ceramics if that makes you happy and you can make a living.

(Okay, maybe Greg can do it all. The elder ManPerm Greg anyway …)