Super Bowl Ads-Lessons Learned

There are only two times a year that people want to see or hear ads. One of those times is during the Christmas holiday shopping period. The other… the Super Bowl.  In many ways, the ads have become nearly as exciting as the game.  People tune in much earlier than ever before simply to watch the ads.

Why is this the case?  Why are we so much more attracted and interested in “Super Bowl Ads” than we are in other ads throughout the year?  Because the ads are GOOD, and some are even GREAT!  And, when someone misses and creates a BAD ad, as they do from time to time, well, that creates conversation as well. Read more

Spring Forward with a Promotion 

While it may not seem like it to those in the northern parts of the US, spring is just around the corner. In fact, it’s less than 30 days away, leaping upon us on March 20th.

The Super Bowl and Presidents Day are behind us. Next up is springtime, which means Easter, kids’ sporting events, family activities, lawn and garden, beach time, the end of another school year, and planning for summer vacations.

Regardless if you live in the cold and frozen north or the sun-blanketed south, we think of springtime as a time to plant and sew our seeds. However, in retail and many service-related business categories, springtime is the time to harvest!  It’s also time for many special events, promotions, and open houses. Read more

Training your Team 

Henry Ford is quoted as saying, “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay!”

Before we talk about the value of meetings, let’s start by asking, are you actually conducting regular training? If you are, congratulations, and if you’re not… START!

Let’s be honest, nobody likes meetings, including the person responsible for putting the meetings together.  Creating good, productive training sessions, especially on a regular basis, is not easy.

While regular training meetings are not an absolute must to running a profitable business, most successful business owners will tell you that without them, you’ll never be as successful as you can be!  Read More

Targeting

Have you noticed that most advertising is targeting people that are in the market to buy products or services, RIGHT NOW? We constantly hear ads that shout, “Sale ends TODAY! SALE – SALE – SALE! Offer Ends Soon! Limited Supply, For a limited time only, Hurry in today!”, etc.

Here’s the bad news… Usually, less than 2% of the population is actually in the market to buy any product or service, regardless of the business category, in any given month. This means that 98% are not in the market! Read More

Core Customer Connection 

Every business owner understands that keeping a current customer is much less expensive than creating a new customer. Or at least you think they would!  Let me rephrase this; Every SUCCESSFUL business owner not only understands this, but they do things to ensure that they remain a customer and become a Core Customer.

So what exactly is a Core Customer?  A Core Customer is someone that has done business with you in the past “X-period of time” and has the potential to do business with you again.

The “X-period of time” depends upon the purchase cycle or how often purchases are made within each business category. Read more

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Last week we talked about kicking the year off right and how “One of us is never smarter than both of us”.  That little saying has many meanings, like, getting advice and opinions from others, and asking for help in areas that aren’t your strength. Another is, asking for help from your partners in business.

All of your suppliers have a vested interest in your success, and in addition to having access to extraordinary marketing funds, they can also be a valuable resource beyond traditional co-op funds and what we refer to as “Squeaky Wheel Money”, all of which can help you sell more of their products. Read more

Leadership Secrets of Santa 

Ho! Ho! Ho!

What? Santa Claus, a Leader?

Last week we wrote about the difference between leadership and management. As we mentioned, oftentimes the roles of a leader and a manager are played by the same person.

Leading a company and managing the people and aspects of the company is never easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it and doing it well! Like Santa Read more

Raising Prices with Grace 

If you haven’t already done so, you may soon be forced to increase your pricing on your products and services. The questions you may be asking yourself are, when is the right time to implement the increases and how do we do it gracefully so that we don’t lose customers.

As inflation continues, one of the main topics you will read about in the business trades is the rising prices of both products and services.  A past headline in the Wall Street Journal was this: U.S. Companies Bet Shoppers Will Keep Paying Higher Prices.  But there’s a catch. The article further states, “Price increases so far have paid off for makers of household staples as shoppers, particularly in the U.S. and Western Europe, have remained loyal to big-name brands”. Read more 

The WOW Factor

To have a business, you must have customers, and I have never met a customer who, at some level, does not like to be “WOWED”!Since you are a business owner or manager receiving this, the title to this week’s SoundADvice didn’t necessarily unravel you with curiosity. “The WOW Factor” has been an expression you’ve heard often. But ask yourself this question…How many times in the past month or even in the past year have you made a purchase from a business and actually been “WOWED”?  Read more

A Self Evaluation of Business

You already know that running a business is very difficult and stressful. But, running a business can also become habit-forming and very mundane. The processes and timelines you use “just happen” and we continue to do the same things over and over.Albert Einstein is widely credited with saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” Read more

POSITIVE LESSONS FROM POLITICAL ADVERTISING

The most high-stakes marketing game in the world is the race for President of the United States. During the 2020 presidential election, the two candidates spent 6.6 billion dollars, all to capture a salary of $400,000! Now that’s high-stakes marketing.

While I have never met anyone who likes political advertising, there are some proven, and yes positive, tactics that can help you become the “president” of your business category. First, you must win their hearts and mind. Once you’ve accomplished that, you’ll win their wallets and purses. Read more

Christmas Shoppers are Shopping 

On average, the top 10 busiest shopping days in the U.S. account for approximately 40% of all holiday retail traffic. Taking advantage of these 10 days and the days that surround them is paramount to having a successful holiday shopping season. (Source: Forbes online, Sept 28, 2021)Consumer reports and surveys from nearly every industry expert indicate that the 2022 Christmas shopping season started as early as July, but accelerated in September.  Read more

Media Knowledge 

We live in a world of perceptions, but our perceptions are not always reality.As a business owner or manager, you are bombarded with conjecture about who consumes what mediums and why one is better than the others. People overuse the words everybody, nobody, always, and never. “Nobody shops at local retail stores anymore, everyone buys online”. “Everyone has Facebook nowadays”, “We never watch TV, “Nobody gets the newspaper anymore, do they?”, or “We never listen to radio anymore, doesn’t everyone have satellite or streaming services?” Read more

Keep them Informed

When you’re planning a huge event which places additional demands on your staff, what is in it for them to buy in and participate? Vince Lombardi was once quoted as saying, “Individual commitment to a group effort–that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.“ Is each and every employee on your team buying in and willing to do their part so that the entire team is successful? Read more

FREE, Powerful use with Caution 

… “but wait, if you call now, you’ll receive a second set of (fill in the blank) absolutely FREE!  Buy two – Get one FREE!  Free Delivery – Free Interest. Free This – Free That!”

No business owner likes to give away things for free, so why do they do it? It’s simple… because it’s the incentive that makes consumers buy! Read more

ALL Advertising Mediums Work… But Which is Best for Your Business?

The advertising options in today’s crazy, fast-paced world are endless. The more options there are the more confusing it gets. There’s an old saying in the marketing world that states, “All advertising mediums work if you know how to work the medium”.   The challenge for business owners today is knowing what mediums they should be investing in. How many mediums at one time are too many?  Is there a secret to making them work better together?  And do certain mediums work better for certain businesses?

Read more

Just Smile and Be Happy!

Is it just me, or do people not smile nearly as much as they used to?

Smiling is ALWAYS appropriate, regardless of the type of business: bank, dentist’s office, car wash, hardware store, restaurant, grocery store, feed and seed store, manufacturing plant, or even a funeral home.

A simple smile can uplift everything and everyone! Read more

What are you known for?  What do your customers think or “know” you’re best at? In other words, what do your consumers trust your competence to be?Straying from the consumers’ beliefs can be dangerous! Amazon is one of the best-known brands in the world. They are known for online shopping with fast, and FREE, delivery.  They are not known as a store where you walk in, make a purchase, and walk out, brick-n-mortar shopping. Read more

Mistakes happen!  Regardless of how well a business is run, ultimately you will experience a customer complaint. How you handle the customer complaint will determine whether you have good word of mouth or bad word of mouth going forward.  In today’s social media world, a molehill can turn into a mountain in a matter of seconds.  Warren Buffet, someone that understands brand reputation as well as anyone, once said, “It takes 20 years to build a good reputation and only 5-minutes to ruin it”. Read More

In a world that continues to get more complicated and over-communicated, the acronym KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid) can be some very wise words to live by.

In the world of advertising (both complicated and over-communicated) trying to be “too fancy” and trying to reach “too many people” can be a very expensive mistake. Read more 

In today’s business economy you need referrals and repeat business more than ever! Nothing impacts the way your customers feel about your business more than the way you and your people treat them.

Ensuring that your people create a positive customer experience every time is no easy matter, and often it’s the “little things” that delight or annoy your customers. Read More

As a business owner, what is your biggest challenge in running your business?

Before you continue reading, stop and think about this for 30-seconds. (30-sec pause….)

Let me guess, it didn’t take 30 seconds for you to come up with your answer.

We are willing to bet that over 80% of you said… “finding good employees”!

Now, if I were to ask you who the biggest radio advertiser in the U.S. was over the last two years, it might take you a bit longer to come up with an answer. More than likely, many would say Geico, Liberty, Tide, The Home Depot, or McDonald’s, and they would be good guesses, as they are some of the largest advertisers.  But the largest radio advertiser is… Indeed! Read More

The first recorded recession in the United States was in 1797. Since then, there have been 17 additional recessions and one depression (The Great Depression 1929-1939) with the latest recession being in 2020, caused by the COVID pandemic.As a business owner or manager, “if” we enter into another recession, you’ll have difficult decisions to make. One of the most difficult is deciding where you will make cuts if needed. Read More

The “R” word! It’s the one word that no one, especially business owners, wants to hear. Recession!.If perception is reality, more than likely we are headed there.  A recent Gallup Poll noted that 71% of Americans’ perception is that the country is headed towards a depression or a recession. However, it’s not official until the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) says so! Read More

You can learn a lot by watching what major national and multinational companies are doing.

While they execute their strategies on a national level, you can take some of their already tested ideas, tweak them, and put your local spin on them.

In his book, The Difference, When Good Isn’t Good Enough, Subir Chowdhury asks the question, “If you saw a toothpick on the floor of your office or home, what would you do?”

As a business owner, when you walk in, out, and around your business each day and see small things that litter your business, what do you do?

That question led bestselling author and world-renowned management consultant Chowdhury to a profound discovery. He said, “When it comes to both companies and individuals, good isn’t good enough. Read More 

In his book, The Difference, When Good Isn’t Good Enough, Subir Chowdhury asks the question, “If you saw a toothpick on the floor of your office or home, what would you do?”

As a business owner, when you walk in, out, and around your business each day and see small things that litter your business, what do you do?

That question led bestselling author and world-renowned management consultant Chowdhury to a profound discovery. He said, “When it comes to both companies and individuals, good isn’t good enough. The best management systems and processes in the world won’t be effective if you don’t first develop the right mindset to achieve real and sustainable change.” Read More 

In the business world, the year 2021 may forever be known as, “The Great Resignation”. The year that more than 47 million US employed citizens voluntarily quit their jobs in a single year.

This disaster may very well be referred to as, “The Great Customer Resignation”. Read More