I have coaches asking me continually how they can make advertising work for their client’s small businesses. All business owners eventually face a serious dilemma—how to advertise their business… which advertising medium will get them the most exposure… and which advertising venue will provide the biggest bang for the buck.

Over my last few articles, we’ve explored the pros and cons of various advertising medium. Knowing these can help you decide which medium is right for advertising your client’s product or service. We’ve discussed newspapers, radio, television and magazine advertising… including Sunday supplements.

Based on what you now know, you should be in a much better position to decide which medium is best for your business, product or service. Of course, the only perfect way to make a final decision is to test market using each medium. You can do that by starting out with small, inexpensive ads in each medium. Those that bring the best results deserve to get your future business… and a larger share of your advertising dollar. But know this!

Most small business owners today are attempting to market everything online, especially through email marketing. They will fail miserably. The internet has become a hotbed for scams, shams and charlatans. It’s next to impossible to establish any measure of trust, respect and rapport online these days.

Online marketing requires that somehow, some way you establish a personal relationship with your prospects. Email marketing will never do that…UNLESS you use a joint venture strategy where your JV partner already has an established relationship with their prospects and clients and they’re willing to personally endorse you… your product or service.

Stop relying on prospects to “find” you online. Most of them aren’t even looking for you. Instead, find ways to buy the traffic you need and want. This is how you build a successful business… by finding ways to rely on yourself and not sheer luck or spray and pray marketing. If you find that you can place an ad in your local newspaper for $500, and that ad consistently averages $1,000 in profit to your business, now you’re creating what I like to call a profit faucet. YOU have total control over the number of leads and sales you generate, and like a faucet, you control the flow.

If sales are slow, you can place your ad and metaphorically “turn on” your profit faucet. If sales are booming and you’re at capacity, you can stop the ad and “turn off” your faucet. This gives you total and complete control over the growth of your business, and eliminates your dependence on any other form of marketing. Naturally, you’ll want to continue to test other mediums, but again, do this in small, controlled and trackable segments.

Never forget that buying leads and sales using newspaper, radio, TV and so on is far superior to hope and pray online marketing endeavors. Look at how many times in just the past year Google has changed the rules for online marketing. Just when you think you’ve figured out the basics for search engine optimization, Google changes their parameters in order to reset the playing field. Small business owners hardly have the time, effort or energy to play these games… and they need to find reliable marketing venues that produce reliable and consistent results.

So how do you make radio and TV advertising work for your small business?

Marketing, when broken into its simplest elements, consists of just three steps: 1) have something good to say, 2) say it well, and 3) say it often. That first component… having something good to say… refers to the fact that you MUST have a market-dominating position. We have a two part instructional video series that shows you how to do this.

Just go to More Leads, then click on Fundamentals and the second link down is labeled How To Create Your Market Dominating Position. This video series will help you create “something good to say” for your specific business.

The second component – say it well – refers to your million dollar message, also known as your elevator pitch. We have an in-depth instructional video that shows you how to create one for your business. It’s also in the Fundamentals section. Scroll down a little farther to the link labeled How We Create Your Elevator Pitch Using Our Four Part Process. This video will help you “say it well.”

But the real key to marketing success is that all important third component… the one that 99.9% of ALL small businesses completely ignore… “say it often.” This refers to repetition, and in today’s media saturated world, repetition is NOT an option… its MANDATORY! That’s why we spent the time to go through all the pros and cons of the various marketing mediums available today. It’s imperative that you know all the benefits and pitfalls of radio, TV, newspapers, magazines and supplements so you can accurately select the best form of media for your business to use… and use repetitiously.

You CAN’T just run a single TV ad and expect to see a flood of new prospects. A single print ad is unlikely to generate much if any interest. So how can you make these various marketing channels produce real results for your business… and do so with a positive return on your investment?

Here’s a specific six-step formula for you to follow that will greatly increase your chances for success. First, start with radio or TV. Both of these have many advantages over the other local media we discussed. They reach a much wider audience, they give you an opportunity to really target your ideal client… and they’re both relatively inexpensive when compared to the number of sales they can generate for your business. But their biggest advantage lies in their ability to consistently deliver your compelling message to the same listeners over and over.

Do a quick self-audit of your own viewing or listening habits. How many different stations do you listen to… or watch… during a given month? If you’re like most people, only 2 to 5… and only 1 or 2 of those will get 80% of your attention. Compare that to the number of websites you’ll visit… or the number of magazines you’ll read. You’ll easily see that there’s a real opportunity to engrain your brand into peoples’ brains using radio or television. All you need to do is find the relatively few stations that reach your target market… and start there.

Then second, allocate a tiny budget. I can’t begin to tell you how many small business owners I’ve spoken with that plunged the majority of their marketing budget into something they had never done before. Instead, allocate a small percentage of your budget to trying something new. Small means 5% to 20%, depending on how well the other, bigger part of your budget is performing. If everything else is flopping anyway, you can probably afford to allocate more to this new approach.

Then third, exploit creatures of habit. Another major advantage radio and television have over other media is the fact that you can predict… with a high degree of accuracy… exactly when an individual listener is going to be listening or watching. Review your own morning routine for some clues. I’ll bet most of the time you get up at the same time every day, do the same things at the same time every day, and listen to or watch the same programs on the same stations at the same time consistently every day. Why such predictable behavior? Because we’re human! And humans tend to follow daily routines with astonishing reliability.

Now take this a step further and you’ll see this means that it doesn’t really matter if your tiny budget only affords you time on the 2^nd or 13^th or 19^th ranked radio or TV station in your market. The fact that the station isn’t super popular to the masses is irrelevant to the people who listen to it daily with predictable regularity. The key is to pound the same people… at the same time… every day.

So take your tiny budget and laser focus it on an extremely small part of the day. Start with 1 spot per weekday at the EXACT same time. If you can afford two spots… run them within 15 minutes of each other. You’ll catch your prospect before and after their shower. If you can afford 3 daily spots, run them within the same hour.

I’ve noticed that lately a number of advertisers are running their ads within the exact same advertising block. As an example, their ad will be the first commercial you see when they break from their regular programming… and then that exact same ad will run again at the end of that block of ads… approximately 3 minutes later. This is pounding their message into the same viewers over and over.

But whatever you do, DO NOT listen to the media sales rep who will want you to spread your spots out throughout the day so you can increase the number of people you reach. The key isn’t to reach a ton of people a couple of times each; the idea is to reach a relative few people a million times each. Remember this adage… inch wide… mile deep. Inch wide… mile deep!

Now you’re ready for step four… make a compelling offer. Just because you’re beginning to brand your company at this point doesn’t mean you should forgo a powerful offer in your ads. You can achieve a direct response… such as call now… and brand your company at the same time. Just don’t forget to extend an offer to future buyers with an information offer for some kind of educational report or DVD.

Then fifth, stay the course. Let’s say you own a mattress store. I’m probably not going to buy a mattress from you this week… or this month… or even this year. I just don’t need a new mattress all that often. But statistically speaking, I’m probably going to need one sometime in the next FIVE years—which means that about 20% of us are going to need one this year, and just north of 1% of us will need one this month. That means if 2,000 people listen to your chosen station at the same time every day, only about 20 of them are in the market at all this month for a new mattress. Now comes the hard part… sticking to the plan, especially in the early going.

Let’s say you start this marketing campaign this week. After 5 weekdays, those 20 people are going to have a maximum of 5 to 10 of your impressions in their brain. That’s good, but it’s also competing with the 22,621 impressions that are already in their head from every other mattress ad they’ve heard or seen. It’s going to take a little time to break down their will to resist. You have to acknowledge this and employ patience as you build momentum. But build it you will.

Think forward 12 months. The same 2,000 people have been hearing or seeing your ad 2 to 10 times a week for an entire year now. That’s 100 to 500 times. Now when the statistically-identified 20 people need a mattress, you’ll be at the forefront of their brains most of the time. Thinking that this formula should start producing huge results right away is as foolish as thinking you can drop a watermelon seed into the ground on June 12^th and have them ready for your 4^th of July party. It will take some time.

But now comes the final step… rinse and repeat. Once the tiny part of your budget begins to produce an acceptable ROI, then repeat the process again by increasing the number of spots you buy on that exact same station. After all, there’s a whole other set of people that get out of the shower at 6:15… and at 7:08… and at 7:44. And once you’re making money on all the morning people, then start capturing the afternoon drivers… then the middle of the day listeners. Then move on to another station that matches your demographic and do it all over again.

The rewards for implementing this plan are tremendous. You can start to literally dominate your market by capturing your desired target market one small group at a time. As your plan succeeds, your budget will grow, and you can afford to expand your influence to a larger and larger percentage of your target market. At some point you will be making so much money that you’ll run out of stations to dominate. But that’s a problem we all want to have, isn’t it?

So until next time