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Someone recently explained to me that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over with the expectation of a different result.  Man, have I ever been insane!  I do this with many aspects of my life, but one example is with computers and technology.  I’m the guy who will continue to try the same couple of combinations while working on a website for about an hour thinking maybe the 99th time will work and I just had to try it 98 times in order to get there!  I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve stayed up messing around with my iPhone or editing HTML on my blog to get everything to line up right.

People do that with their businesses every day.  How many clients tell me they continue to advertise in a local newspaper because it’s what they’ve always done?  It doesn’t really work much if at all, but they like the way the ad looks and it’s something they can hold on to and feel like they are at least making an attempt to draw in new customers.  They tell me all the time how much they don’t like their website, but a friend built it for them and the price was right, but it’s not a very good representation of their services and doesn’t really drive any traffic or even show up in search results.  Another great line I get is, “Well, people don’t really know what we do, but we have a billboard up to get our name out there.”

If you or your business is stuck in a rut, you can come up with all kinds of excuses like “Oh, the economy is terrible right now.”  “People are still out of work”.  “I’d love to re-image our logo and marketing material, but I’m just wearing too many hats right now.”  Continuing to step on the gas, when you are stuck in the mud only digs you in deeper!

Here’s what I have learned in my own life as well as by the example of many successful clients.

1. You have to stop doing the same thing expecting a different result.  Just stop it.  Right now.  Do it!
2. Be willing to make some changes.  Drastic ones if you need to.  Move your location.  Change your company’s name!  Come up with a new logo or color design.  Do something DIFFERENT.
3. Network!  Go to a morning chamber coffee meeting?  It’s awkward to talk to people you don’t know, but what if your next top sales person is there?  Talk to your customers.  Find out what they do for a living.
4. Get some help.  There are tons of marketing and advertising experts in the world.  (I’m one of them)  We spend hours and hours thinking about commercials, design, promotions, all to drive traffic, increase sales, get your customer’s attention.  It’s our full time job.  We have really good ideas and have experience with what works because we work with a lot of other smart businesses out there who know that they can’t do it alone.

Getting help & a support system is an important lesson that I have learned the hard way.  We can’t do it alone.  If you don’t have a team of fans in your corner, co-workers, business partners, etc., then you are doing yourself a disservice.  Your friends will help pull you out of the mud!  And you never know… some time you might be called to return the favor.

So, what are you going to do today that’s different than yesterday?

I’m in the process of upgrading my site to Wordpress.  Look for more great content and an easier to navigate site soon!

Normally I focus my attention on this blog to TV and how local Kansas City area companies can use television to invite more people to visit their store, use their services, try a new product, etc. When talking to my clients I often discuss their website and what they are doing to drive traffic to that site, or in general how the site helps them get more business.

At the end of the day, all marketing and advertising is about telling your story. Why should people buy from you? What makes your business unique? Why should I buy something from you now? The reason I want to take a moment to talk about social media is because during my experience in advertising sales I have noticed a shift in the sales cycle. When I started my career in radio, we primarily used location and phone numbers as the way for the audience to take the next step in the sales process. Visit a showroom. Call to schedule an appointment. You wanted a good phone number that was easy to remember and repeat it several times in a commercial. That’s old school. Now, it’s all about a your url. Once someone sees your commercial and realizes that their life isn’t complete without your product or service they’ll go online to find out how to take the next step. Is your website easy to remember? If not, can someone easily find you with a search engine? Maybe you’re buying keywords, maybe not depending on how competitive your industry is. Companies will continue to use television to get people to want to buy something, or to continue to establish their brand. Today there is an extra step in the sales cycle that happens online. It’s critical to have a website that is easy to find and simple to navigate.

What do people mean by social media? Why is it important to me, a local business in Kansas City? Why should I invest time, energy, and possibly money into it?

I’m so glad you asked!

My definition of social media is an online way to communicate or network with your customers, colleagues and potential clients in order to build a support system or community on the Internet. The basic tools available to build this relationship electronically consists of your own website, a blog, e-mail newsletters, a Twitter account, and MySpace and/or Facebook pages. There are other tools people use like FriendFeed, url shorteners for Twitter like bit.ly or Tinyurl, but to keep it simple let’s focus on having a blog tied to your website, a fan page on Facebook and/or MySpace, and a Twitter account.

Blogging
A blog is important because it is an easy way for you to be an expert and be able to post helpful information that your customers may be looking for. Is it time consuming? A little. You need to continue to keep some fresh content available so that your readers will keep coming back. But is it worth it? You bet! One of the best reasons to have a blog is so that search engines will find you easier. You can use keywords that are important to your industry in the blog and then when someone Googles those keywords, your blog will show up in the results! The more specific to your industry you write about, the better! Also, the more links you have from other websites to your site, the higher you will rank in search results. Go to other blogs that relate to your industry and leave comments. This will immediately give you free links back to your site or blog and make the search engines take notice. You might also gain more readers to your own blog in the process! If your content is valuable people will leave comments and now an online conversation has been started. Don’t forget, you’re the expert on whatever it is you do. Don’t be afraid to write about it. You can get free software loaded into your own website like Word Press or you can create a free blog at http://www.blogger.com/ to get started.

Twitter
So you’ve started this online conversation with your blog. Other than search engines, how are people going to know to read your blog? Twitter is a social media community where people are able to post messages called “tweets” that may not exceed 140 characters. You can include weblinks in your tweet, or attach pictures. Start finding people who talk about things that are related to your industry. I’ll use myself as an example. I started following people who write about advertising. I follow Tom Martin and Phil Johnson who write for Ad Age. I follow local advertising agencies in Kansas City or people who work at local agencies. I also follow people who write about blogging or social media like Chris Brogan. If you know me very well, you also know that I’m into technology like iPhones and computer software, so I follow Chris Pirillo who talks about all things Geeky. I follow most of these people on Twitter and I read many of their blogs because they write about things I’m into. This is the online community I’m talking about. When they post something on their blogs, they broadcast it in a tweet on Twitter and all of their followers or “friends” know to go take a look. People also just kind of chat back and forth about different topics that relate to their industries. Sometimes people write about silly things like the weather, their pets, what they’re going to do on the weekend, or their favorite restaurants, but isn’t that what we do in real life with our business relationships? I often talk about my family with clients, or activities I do with friends. That’s how we build relationships with one another. That’s how we build credibility with our clients as well because they get to know us! The real us.

Twitter also gets me back to the whole search engine optimization thing or SEO as people refer to it. Again, the more links from external sites you have back to your site, the better. Twitter is also being used as a customer service tool. If you want to know what people are saying about you, Twitter is searchable! You can set up a search for keywords, or your business name and whenever anyone tweets about you, you can read it. It feels a little like spying in a high tech kind of way! Why wouldn’t you want to know? I booked a reservation last night for a Hyatt hotel near Chicago. I’m going to be in a friend’s wedding and they have a block of rooms reserved there. If I need anything from Hyatt regarding my stay, guess what? I can tweet about it. Hyatt has an online concierge on Twitter! I bet you that they are searching Twitter for anything related to the Hyatt brand, so if I tweet that I’m unhappy about the quality of my room, don’t like the food, or just wanted to brag about how awesome my hotel is, they’ll see it and be able to respond directly to me accordingly. It’s amazing and it’s the future of customer service! Since I tweet from my iPhone, I’ll be able to have a conversation with them via Twitter while I’m staying at their hotel in Chicago.

Are you starting to get it? Have I recommended anything that costs much money yet? Well, not if you do it mostly yourself. There are agencies that specialize in social media and if you want to pay people to set this up and manage it for you, they can. BUT, wouldn’t you want to be engaged with your customers using these great tools? Of course you would!

E-mail Newsletters
Many of you are already using e-mail newsletters to promote your business or services. Great job! Keep it up. Once you have a blog, you pretty much have most of the content that you’d need for your newsletter. Maybe you could put a little more insider information in it though. You should be using your e-letter to offer highly sought information, or the newest product launches to your subscribers before the general public hears about it, or for special discounts available only to those that read your message. Make your newsletter something people look forward to getting, not just more junk to delete from their inbox. Chris Brogan does a great job of making his e-mail newsletters more personal and a deeper look inside what he’s doing to build his army of social media colleagues. The content in his e-mails is different than his blogs, so I look forward to reading it. I subscribe to all kinds of e-letters and I actually read most of them. I begin deleting them when they start looking and sounding like spam. I’m talking about you Harrah’s, Caesar’s Palace, and yes, even you Venetian!

Social Networking
Finally, MySpace and Facebook are not just dating sites! I see more music industry people still using MySpace becuase people can listen to their products there. Facebook seems to be dominating with overall members and businesses by recent trends. The other day I became a fan of The Grass Pad. It’s a local outdoor lawn and garden company… “The Grass Pad’s High On Grass”! Why would I be a fan? Because now I get alerts when they’re having a sale, or when I should be buying a certain type of fertilizer for my lawn. They have information that I want. Are you catching on? I’m into have a good looking lawn and they’re experts on teaching me how to do this. I’m a loyal customer, a fan. I don’t buy cheap grass seed or lawn chemicals at Home Depot because they are not my local expert, The Grass Pad is.

That’s how you do it! (There’s so much more, but these are the fundamentals.) Social networking isn’t just for bloggers and it’s not just for big national companies. Quite the opposite actually. It’s for niches. It’s for extending your local community and brand online. Success doesn’t happen overnight. I’ve been blogging and tweeting for less than a year. I rarely have comments on my blog, (and rarely any readers! ) but if you Google my name, I’m starting to show up. Quite amazing given that my name is very common and Raymartin.com/net is a company that specializes in near nude pictures of female body builders. (How could I make that up! This is why I chose MyAdGuy.com. It was easy to remember, available, and said something about what I do.) That being said, people are starting to have an interest in what I say on my blog, or tweet on Twitter. And why shouldn’t they? I’m an advertising expert. So, what are you waiting for? Come join the online conversation!

I welcome your questions and comments! After reading this, you should know how to find me!

Should we care about the change in leadership at NBC Universal? How does it affect advertising in Kansas City? Well, the news story is that Ben Silverman, Co-Chairman at NBC Universal is stepping down and Jeff Gaspin, the former executive in charge of NBC’s cable channels such as USA and Bravo, is being promoted to replace him. You can read the full story from the NY Times here. Silverman was the person who tried to turn around the network’s prime time lineup with shows like “The Celebrity Apprentice” and “Knight Rider”.

What is applicable to local advertisers in KC is the way in which NBC is acknowledging the fact that Cable TV is a better business to be in these days. “In an interview, Mr. Gaspin acknowledged the change in television fortunes. ‘You can’t dismiss the fact that cable is just much more profitable than broadcast television. I don’t see that changing. Cable is a much superior business model.’”

Another quote from the article talks about the superior programming now found on Cable Networks: “The scripted shows on USA now rival those on NBC, especially in the summertime months, when NBC’s only hit is the reality show ‘America’s Got Talent.’ Last Thursday, when NBC struggled to draw three million viewers to its sitcom repeats, a new episode of USA’s most popular show, ‘Burn Notice,’ attracted 6.8 million viewers.”

Time & time again we are seeing the broadcast networks acknowledge that Cable TV is a valuable medium for today’s advertisers. On any given evening over half of the TV Audience is watching cable TV. If you are a local advertiser that is advertising on TV, but not using cable, you should take a serious look at what you are missing. Don’t take it from me, take it from the executives at NBC Universal.

Do you agree that this has any local advertising impact or is this a case of musical chairs in New York that has little to do with us here in the Midwest?

CableSpots is reporting today that in a little more than a month, broadcast networks will announce their 2009/2010 season schedules and will be trying to figure out strategies to gain back viewers. MAGNA Global has been analyzing this past season and noted that, “While overall television viewing remains remarkably stable, the broadcast networks’ share of the pie continues to shrink. Depending on the demo all broadcast viewing for the week among adults age groups is down between 5 and 10% from last season.”

This according to the agency is more of the migration that I talk about away from traditional broadcast TV and toward cable networks. According to MAGNA Global, “Ad-supported cable has picked up virtually all of the defecting broadcast viewers, which is why overall television usage remains stable.”

This week is also the annual convention of the Newspaper Association of America where they will work on a strategy to save the subscription revenue stream. One idea has been to see if there is a way they can charge for web content, instead of “giving it away” via an ad-supported model.

Newspapers readers are down, broadcast TV viewership is shrinking. Are you adjusting your advertising allocation based on the shift in audience in these media? Are you shifting more money toward cable TV?