Are we losing clients because of weak production?

Are we losing customers after we’ve made the sale?

The folks at our company look at hundreds… maybe thousands of TV ads every year. That’s what we do!

We just viewed a bunch more at our most recent Senior Consultant meeting. And want to hear something REALLY scary?

Most of the commercials that we see look great. They’re well-edited and have a professional look. But, most of the commercials we see probably won’t work for the client. At least they won’t work with all the potential of a truly effective message.

My friend and colleague, Don Fitzgibbons, a.k.a. the Guru of Ads, does a fun and powerful seminar. During the seminar, he shows a horrid-looking ad and asks the audience, “Good ad or bad ad?” The audience responds to their emotional sense and says, “Bad ad.” Don, however, goes on to report that this ad was responsible for a huge growth in sales for the advertiser and asks again, “Good ad or bad ad?”

There’s just one thing that makes an ad good. Good ads produce good, measurable good results for our clients. Bad ads don’t. No matter how creative or how well-produced the ad is, if it doesn’t produce results for the customer, it’s a bad ad.

We spend hours and hours of our time working on new business. We make new business a major priority of our sales effort—and then create commercials that don’t work for our advertisers.

What an incredible tragedy!

Leaders know that today we MUST succeed with new business development. Our new business efforts have to be more effective than they have ever been.

But there’s a dirty little secret about new business development: it's profitable for the company, and for the AE, only when we get repeat business. The amount of time it takes to generate one new business sale makes it a very unprofitable deal. Renew the 2nd or 3rd time and and ROI grows dramatically. And, if the client keeps going for a couple of years? Wow.

Unfortunately, a massive percentage of the time we never get that 2nd order because our client doesn’t get results during their first schedule. And yes, that’s often caused by under-selling. But far more often, the problem is a nice-looking ad that isn’t effective and doesn’t get results.

If we’re going to develop local business, our AE’s and producers must become better at marketing. That’s true for our core TV business and digital products alike.

Here’s a real-life example. Ask yourself if your AE’s and Producers could help a client in this way.

An assisted living center was advertising on a station’s dot.com. The banner ad:

Southwood Assisted Living, click here

We suggested they apply the marketing principle of focus, a basic marketing concept. The ad was changed to:

Assisted Living Programs for Veterans, click here

The click-through rates quadrupled overnight. (The same idea would have dramatically improved the results for the core TV product, as well.)

Before that change, the client probably would have cancelled. But not now!!

This is a big deal. If our new business efforts get better and better, but we lose clients as fast as we bring them in because of poor production, we’re cooked. We’ll have clients who now believe TV doesn’t work and won’t come back anytime soon. And, we’ll have AE’s who don’t believe in the power our products.

I can think of few industry issues that are as critical to our long-term success as this one. Too bad it’s one we don’t talk about very often.

It’s a problem we need to fix!