Looking to drive ad sales? Try a thrift shop!

Before: A very cute ad, but focused
too much on the name of the
business and not enough (at least
initially) on what's in it for the customer.

Need to drum up revenue? There's money hidden in every one of your territories. You just need to know where to look for it.

Here's a perfect example. This thrift shop in Arizona was only running sporadically, but when presented with the right sales techniques and an effective ad strategy, they signed a huge ad contract on the spot.

I know what you're thinking. A thrift shop? But they're non-profit. And a charity. And isn't their target market people without a lot of money? And don't these places have a small budget? Probably.

But in November, we helped a newspaper client identify this thrift shop as a perfect prospect. They sell many high-ticket, upscale items donated by area residents and compete with the chain stores that sell similar items. And while the money generated by thrift shops ultimately goes to lower income families, their target customers have serious incomes.

We first talked to the store's manager, who was no more interested in spending additional money with the newspaper than any of your accounts in this economy. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be spending more money, and remember, your job is to help them become profitable, not work within what's often an arbitrary budget based on a current or past, less-than-effective ad strategy.

So after getting the standard information about the business' products, target customers, and competition, we went about building an ad that would work for the prospective advertiser. Looking at her previous ads, we saw that while the ads were creative, there was significant room for improvement.

After: This ad places the thrift store more in line with their
competitors (department stores), including the things that
they've learned work and giving the target customer plenty
of substance so they understand the quality, price, and
selection is there. We finished it off with info on where
the money is going.

Like many categories, there are people who have figured out how to sell items like these. So we looked at the department stores, and it was pretty obvious what we needed to do. And it meshed well with what the thrift store manager said as well. They were trying to target people interested in really nice items at a substantial discount and wanted to buy from a place that seemed to have a great selection, so they wouldn't be wasting their time.

The thrift store manager also knew that their target customers want the money they spend to help charity, but since they were competing with so many other charities on that issue, the idea was to appeal to something they already wanted (great items at great prices) and push them over the fence with the idea that their money will also go to a wonderful cause.

So those are the things we based the ad on. We used a graphic at the top to get the target customer's attention (hopefully something similar to what they were in the market for) and then hit them with a headline that would keep them reading the ad. We then put enough items in the ad to convince readers that the shop has great quality, price, and selection, and wrapped it up by including information on the charity to which the proceeds go.

The actual presentation was simple. It was easy to make a case that the publication reached enough people in the right places, so the majority of the final presentation involved teaching the prospect our approach to advertising, element by element, and then plugging in the shop's specifics. (See earlier posts for more information on our effective presentation techniques.)

Once the manager had a new perspective on how advertising worked, we simply took out the spec ad and explained why it was an effective ad. We also explained that they needed to run larger ads to compete with the big department stores and, really, they only needed one response to be making money from donated goods.

The logic made sense and the manager signed a 13x contract (including Web) on the spot for an ad easily twice the size.

The point here is, try not to pay attention to how much money the prospect says they have or appears to have. Ask yourself, do they need to run larger to succeed? And what return on investment do they need to make a profit? Many times, the ad can more than pay for itself with just a response or two and you can find revenue in what initially seemed to be an unlikely place.

Focus on selling response, not space, and the money will follow.

A $45,500 print and Web contract sells to an oral surgeon

Dental work doesn't really have a season, so it's always a good time to get your local oral surgeon on a major contract, just as my client, the Herald-Mail, did recently.

Using our Response Oriented Selling sales techniques, they signed a 52-week contract for a full-page totaling $45,500, including $6,500 in Web ads.

For the past 5 years, this advertiser ran very small and infrequently until ad rep Kathy Gelwicks and ad director Brittney Hamilton started applying our techniques and they landed an appointment with the decision maker: the surgeon herself.

An hour-and-a-half later, they left with a $45,500 contract, without ever feeling like they were selling the account at any point during the meeting.

Instead, after briefly explaining why their print and online newspaper matched up with the demographic the practice was trying to reach, they began the process of proving that the new ad strategy would work.

First, they reiterated what they had learned about the business' target customers, services, and competition.

They had learned that the experience and expertise of the surgeon, the state-of-the art equipment and procedures, and whether or not they take health insurance were critical information to prospective patients.

Kathy then went on to fix the incorrect theories that local businesses typically have about ad size, frequency, and content, and at the same time she drew a new approach to effective advertising out of the surgeon.

Finally, Kathy and Brittney simply showed the ad and explained how it incorporated the new techniques and addressed the key issues prospective patients cared about.

Once the surgeon understood why the ad would drive some major revenue each week, it triggered that epiphany and the surgeon herself suggested the 52-time option for the full page.

This brings up a good point: Whenever possible, it's vital that you present to the decision maker. Especially with an ad like this, a full-page with lots of copy, there's no way a gatekeeper would be able to explain why the ad would be worth it. Meeting with the decision maker can sky rocket your success.

Now it's your turn!

A fantastic 5 col x 18" jewelry ad that sold (and you can do it, too!)

Now's the time to get your local jewelry stores on a significant contract as my client the South Bend Tribune just did. This is a 5 col x 18" ad sold on a 13x contract and includes a healthy Web component, too.

There's no reason you can't sell a similar ad contract to your local jeweler as well, even if they're running nothing now.

This one hadn't been running at all for at least a year after finding they could get the same low response rate from broadcast at a much lower price. Sound familiar?

The problem with most local jewelry stores is that they're not correctly positioning themselves in their market.

They're losing business to the big chain stores who, despite their lack of service, still have the great prices and selection buyers love.

The local guys try to go with their own strengths, often making the focus of their ads mainly about trust and knowledge and other service-related issues and less about selection and price.

Unfortunately, it leaves readers believing there's a real tradeoff when choosing between the local and chain stores. In effect, the message is: You can get a great price and selection or you can pay more for service, but you can't have both.

In reality, most local jewelers tell us that it's not a tradeoff at all, that they have a great selection, highly competitive prices, and offer fantastic service, too.

The ad above is the perfect ad to compete with the chains. It shows the incredible selection they have as well as competitive prices but also explains the exceptional service a customer will receive there.

Instead of positioning themselves as nothing like the big chain stores, they communicate that they're everything like them in the ways the target customer cares about, but even better because of the service.

So, how did we help this business see the light and sign a major contract when he wouldn't run anything before? By not just telling him what to do, but instead drawing out of him the information about his products, services, competition, and target customers as well as--based on his own life experiences--a new approach to creating direct-response advertising.

Once we got buy-in in those two areas, it was easy to create (with the help of our designers) and sell the strategy based on them. Once you get it down, you'll be able to sell print and Web ads like this as fast as you can do your homework and create them.

And it'll be the best thing you do for your advertisers, too.

Another 13x contract for a "page killer" ad that killed!

Ad director Brittney Hamilton has been helping her staff at the Herald-Mail in Hagerstown, MD close a ton of print and Web ad sales since implementing our Response Oriented Selling system over the summer.

Brittney is systematically applying this approach to proving response and closing significant sales by helping her staff to identify the highest potential accounts first--those who need to and can run significantly larger and more frequently (but, of course, don't think they can)--and working her way down to smaller accounts from there.

This 5 col x 18" furniture store ad was sold on a 13x contract to an advertiser who was about to drop out of the paper due to budget, cost, and lack of response.

The new ad worked wonderfully from the start, according to the ad rep:

“Good news on my furniture store advertiser's first Response Selling ad over Labor Day Weekend.  The ad appeared on Friday and Jim had immediate response which through the weekend led to $8,000+ in sales.  What made this all the sweeter was the fact that the last ad we ran, which was also a full page, generated nothing. It certainly is nice to walk in and see a big smile versus a frown.  Jim and I have started the process for the next ad.  We are back in the game!”

They took an advertiser who blamed the recession, lack of budget, that print is dying, and a host of other reasons why they weren't getting a response and couldn't spend the money, and turned them into a huge success story!

The newspapers who are focusing not only on delivering response, but proving it upfront are the ones that are thriving in this economy along with their advertisers. Great job Brittney!

Huge sales for the newspaper and the advertiser

This 5 col x 18" ad, sold on a $15,000+, 13x contract (plus Web)
in the middle of July simply by proving the ad was just as effective as the
medium. They had their best weekend in the history of the store. Can you
prove your spec ads will work before they run? You should. This ad is
available for use as a template for newspapers using our
overnight production service. 

After a busy summer helping newspapers all over the U.S. drive major revenue in spite of the economy, I thought I'd share another example of our techniques in action. Once again, it was a local non-believer that a client newspaper turned into a major one--with equally major success for the advertiser.

This ad is a recent one from a publication owned by Pioneer Newspapers, a company that's committed to proving to their advertisers that they're more than just a great medium in which to advertise--their ad reps can also affect response with killer ad strategies and designs.

Using our selling system, their ad reps are learning how to teach prospective advertisers our easy-to-understand but epiphany-triggering approach to getting an immediate, dramatic response.

This makes it much easier for a prospect to believe in the new ad strategy and commit to a significant size and frequency when they previously had believed the problem was with the newspaper or the economy, for example.

This ad is a 5 col. x 18 ad for a flooring store that sold on a 13-time, $15,000+ contract. It was designed by my overnight production service based on a strategy we gave them (if your ads aren't coming back from your designers overnight and looking as good as the national chains, I can help).

The Idaho State Journal's ad director Michelle Robinson shared that the very first time this ad ran--a couple of months ago in the dead of summer--their flooring dealer had the biggest weekend in the history of their store.

The prospect had been saying the exact same thing I'm sure your own prospective advertisers are telling you--they had no money, it's a recession and nobody's buying, print is dead, and the publication just doesn't work anymore.

If you think there's no way you'd be able to get your advertisers to run this big and this frequently, perhaps you're using the same ad sales techniques that have been circulating for years.

"Just sell the media and let the designers come up with that minor detail of the ad strategy," is what other ad reps told me when I first started. Working on ad strategy was considered a waste of time and more of an art project better done by someone else.

But I have hundreds of similar case studies in the past few months that my clients have closed using my techniques in markets as challenging as yours, and sold without any pressure. It's incredibly easy once you learn how.

The strategy in this ad was to grab the attention of everyone thinking of buying new flooring, get them reading on with the right benefit headline (price, selection, and service in this instance), and then get into enough detail that their target customers--people about to install flooring--are confident enough of their advertising claims to go to them instead of where they may have been thinking of going (the big home centers, for example).

The strategy is incredibly simple and with the right designers who can give those national ad agencies a run for their money, it's a killer combination.

So, in this recession, the newspapers who are getting their prospective advertisers to spend any serious money and succeed with print and Web realize simply talking about the medium is not enough anymore.

To these local businesses who are trying to choose between paying their rent or spending money on something as unpredictable as advertising, running with a newspaper whose ad reps can create and prove the effectiveness of the ad strategy is a no brainer.

Montana ad rep helps retailer sell more hot tubs than ever before with one ad in April (and secures a 13x "page killer" contract)

Before: This ad lacked a clear attention-getter,
a clear benefit headline, and enough substance to
convince prospective buyers to stop in.

You may think some accounts are just unsellable this time of year. So, you might wonder how a Montana ad rep convinced a hot tub store owner to sign a 13x contract (for 5 col x 18" ads) in the middle of April, getting them to spend more in 3 months than they did throughout the entire previous year.

Andrea DeNucci is the ad rep at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle group was able to do it because she proved upfront that running a new ad with a strong strategy would get a dramatic response. In fact, the business sold more hot tubs off the very first ad than they ever had before, even before the recession.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle just passed the $75,000 in added revenue for a little over a month of using these techniques, and is showing no sign of slowing down.

This is especially significant because while conducting my ad sales seminars, ad reps are telling me their most common objection continues to be, "nobody's spending money right now, so I can't advertise (or I need to really cut back)."

The reality is that there are plenty of consumers buying, your ad reps just have to convince the prospect that with the right ad strategy, they can get the majority of those consumers into their store. It involves you doing two things.

First, you'll need a killer ad strategy. All the case studies in this blog use a process taught in our Response Oriented Selling course that make creating direct-response ads easy. Look through the posts and I bet you'll see a pattern.

Second, you've got to actually sell the strategy, the size, and the frequency to a business who has the misconception that nobody's buying. This is an involved process that starts by eliminating any incorrect theories the prospect has in mind about how to advertise and helps them see how much they need to spend to succeed (we show ad reps how to use the Socratic method of teaching to get the prospective advertiser to buy into the approach.)

When it's time to show the ad, you can explain how the new ad fits in with the information about their business, products, and competition while at the same time adhering to the new approach to creating effective ad strategies.

After: The new ad had a great strategy. It was much clearer what the sale
was about as well as enough proof for the most skeptical reader
believing this will be worthwhile to visit.

Once you learn how to do it, it's incredibly simple.

After teaching the prospective advertiser the new techniques (which also moved her from the "vendor" mode to the "partner" mode), Andrea got some information and sketched out a rough strategy.

It involved featuring a major graphic of hot tubs at the top of the ad to grab the attention of those few people who happen to be obsessed with hot tubs this week, mirroring back what the target customer cared about when buying hot tubs (price, selection, and service), and then getting into enough substance that even the most skeptical prospective buyers-- those planning on going somewhere else--would be sold enough on the shop to go there.

She then handed it off to her designer, Duncan Bullock, who did an outstanding job making the strategy shine. Here's what Andrea emailed me after the ad ran the first weekend:

Hi Bob,

I wanted to let you know that I met with the hot tub place today and he said the ad worked great! They were crazy busy that weekend and sold more hot tubs for that sale that weekend than any other sale they have had in the past. And he said that people were saying that they saw the ad in the paper and came in knowing what hot tubs they wanted.

Andrea

So, keep in mind that until you fix the underlying theories the advertiser has on how to get a response, you, your newspaper, and the recession will continue to be the most logical explanation for why newspapers don't work for them.

Fix their underlying theories and create a real strategy--don't just hand an old ad off to your designers and say "be creative"--and you'll be amazed how quickly you'll increase your ad sales as well as the sales of your advertisers.

Even when advertisers say they don't have any money, they really do. Here's why:

. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle knew they could do a lot more for this advertiser and in the process get them spending the money they needed to succeed.

I know it makes no sense. Your current and prospective advertisers aren't lying when they insist they have no money. All evidence seems to support it. Their sales are down. We're in a recession and nobody's buying.

But what they're saying is almost never true, and if you accept their objections, you're doing a huge disservice to them, your newspaper, and yourself.

I have the pleasure of working with ad reps week after week who come in to my seminars convinced they have a unique territory full of businesses unable to spend anything. Of course, by the end of the process, which includes personally helping them go after business, they learn how to make major sales to these same businesses and get them a dramatic response.

For example, we just wrapped up teaching our selling system to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, a 18,000 circulation newspaper in Montana. The day we finished up our final target account sessions, the ad reps headed out to present their first new strategies. The sales were instantaneous and dramatic.

The first presentation and sale (aside from one I helped close while on-site) was made by ad rep Megan Armstrong to an historic hotel in her territory that was running sporadically at best, occasionally sticking some menu items in a small ad and just not spending the money they needed in order to succeed.

After teaching a better approach to ad size, frequency, and content, the advertiser signed on to a series of 5 col x 18" ads (twice per week!) designed to overwhelm the target customers with information matching the reasons why people take a weekend escape to one place rather than another. Until Megan proved they needed and could run this ad, they never would have spent this kind of money.

Megan first taught them our new ad strategy techniques, which fixed any incorrect theories on ad size, frequency, and content. Then, once the advertiser understood the logic involved in succeeding with print and online newspapers, Megan presented the new ad, a 5 col x 18" ad, and suggested they run two times per week for 13 weeks, plus a number of impressions in their online newspaper (the same techniques apply to Web ads). The contract presented was for $14,000.

They signed on the spot, but asked if they could have an "out" after the first $8,000 if nothing happened. The great thing with a 5 x 18, of course, is that clearly everybody in the market this week for a weekend getaway will see the ad (out of almost 50,000 readers per day) and there's so much room for some real substance that the reader will be overwhelmed by all the reasons they should go there-- the food, the rooms, more food, and the historic charm of the area are all covered in detail.

Too much copy? We don't think so. Their readers, like yours, are literate enough to handle a few paragraphs, despite the "advertising folklore" that trickles down to us that says bulleted items are all that people will read. That "keep it short" concept comes from image advertising, and it's even questionable for those types of ads.

In effect, with this ad, they're stacking the deck in favor of the advertiser and, as long as they're using our effective ad techniques properly, they'll do wonderfully and essentially own the market for weekend getaways.

Keep in mind it wasn't just the ad that sold them. It was a combination of a few things.

Megan made it clear from the start that she wasn't there to sell the account, but to see if she could help them like she's helped other advertisers, not just with the media, but the message.

She taught new techniques that made much more sense to the advertiser.

She got better information out of the account.

And she invested some time into creating a killer strategy using our techniques that she could then hand off to her designers to make look better (we taught the techniques to them, too).

Sure, it took a little longer, but it was time better spent than knocking on doors for an hour and trying to close them on the spot.

Last week, I was in a publisher's office wrapping up five days of training and I liked the way he summed up the issue of advertisers selling ad reps on the fact that they have no money to spend.

"When they say they have no money, it's not that they're saying they have no money," he said. "They're really saying: you haven't yet shown me you're going to make my business a lot of money."

Focus on response, ignore their cries of poverty, and you'll not only increase your ad sales dramatically, but it'll be the best thing you do for your accounts, as Megan showed so successfully her first time out with these new techniques.