Today’s business owners are faced with the daunting task of marketing their business. And while some have backgrounds in marketing, most have had to learn on the fly, or by trial and error. And trial and error can be a very expensive proposition.
Back in my radio management days 15 years ago I had the opportunity to know the owner of a very successful paddleboat company that operated a fleet of boats on the Mississippi River. One day we were talking marketing and he said, “You know Scott, when I first got started in this business 25 years ago advertising was the easiest thing I did. I bought a ½ page ad in both Minneapolis and St. Paul Newspapers in the Sunday editions and an ad schedule on WCCO radio (note: during the time period he was referencing WCCO had a 50+ share), and that’s pretty much all I did. I could pretty much cover the market with those 3 things.”
Imagine what he would say about the complexity of marketing in 2021!
The media marketplace has experienced a seismic shift in the past 20 years. In the 2000’s Newspapers were under assault but still pretty much controlled 40 cents of every advertising dollar, TV came in 2nd, Direct Mail was still dominant and yellow pages were still plentiful. Radio enjoyed about the same share of revenue it receives today (7%).
As the 2000’s progressed things really started changing: Recruitment/help-wanted advertising, Automotive and Real Estate advertisers left the newspapers in droves and moved their dollars online, and a little thing called Google came along and pretty much stuck the proverbial knife into Yellow Pages.
Then came 2010 and an explosion of Digital marketing products became available. Facebook started accepting advertising, Google ad words became a must-buy, and terms like programmatic, geo-fencing, geo-targeting and SEO started to become commonplace with marketers. The medium became so dominant so quickly that digital advertising actually overtook Television as the number one advertising medium in 2019.
Radio has endured its share of audio competitors, too; Sirius/XM Radio, Spotify, Pandora and other music services, and most recently the podcasting universe has exploded in popularity. In spite of all this, Radio still reaches 92% of U.S. Americans every single week, larger than TV or Facebook. And radio is still the most cost-effective way for a local business to create top-of-mind awareness in their given market.
Marketers refer to successful long-term marketing solutions as “sticky”. Big Deals Media is one of the companies that provides sticky solutions for radio station groups. Big Deals’ marketing programs combine the power of local radio advertising, a google-searchable one-page digital ad, and the tracking capabilities of gift certificates. This hybrid cash/gift certificate advertising solution allows for local businesses to purchase a marketing program from radio station groups and pay for the bulk of it with trade. It also scratches the itch that all businesses have — The desire to have a tracking device to know their advertising is working.
Big Deals is changing the way Main Street buys media. Today, Big Deals has over 3,000 businesses in 90 markets utilizing a Big Deals solution to market their business. To learn more about Big Deals click here or contact us at 952.243.2678.