One of the most daunting parts of marketing for a new business owner is the absolute barrage of people who suddenly want to help you advertise.
Television. Radio. Print. Digital. Outdoor. Direct mail. Social media. Search. Streaming. Sponsorships. And occasionally something you've never heard of before but are assured is absolutely crushing it with your exact demographic.
They usually arrive with polished presentations, glossy handouts, charts, graphs and enough industry terminology to make you wonder whether you accidentally wandered into a graduate-level statistics course.
There will be impressions. Reach. Frequency. Demographics. CPMs. Ratings. Attribution. Maybe some proprietary metric with an impressive name.
And, remarkably, nearly every one of them will arrive at roughly the same conclusion:
Their particular product is one of the best possible places for you to spend your money.
If you're fortunate, you'll get an experienced representative who understands that a healthy marketing strategy usually involves more nuance than dumping your entire budget into whatever happens to be printed on their business card.
But that's not guaranteed.
So, are all these people lying to you?
Oddly enough, probably not.
They Can't All Be Right. But They Can All Believe They're Right.
Spend five minutes thinking about it and the contradiction becomes obvious.
The television station can't simultaneously be the only medium you really need while the radio group is the only medium you really need while the digital company is the only medium you really need.
Something doesn't add up.
But here's something I learned during my years working inside media:
The salesperson sitting across from you may genuinely believe every word they're saying.
That's important.
Most media representatives are trained extensively on the strengths of the products they're expected to sell. Their managers were trained before them, often within larger corporate systems that have developed very effective ways of teaching people why their particular medium, audience, station or platform deserves a larger share of an advertiser's budget.
Media companies also bring in outside sales-training and consulting organizations to reinforce those messages.
And some of these people are very good at it.
Imagine you're relatively new to advertising sales. Your company brings in a nationally recognized expert who has trained thousands of people across the country. You're sitting in a conference room being told exactly why your platform works, why competing media aren't nearly as effective as advertisers believe, and why businesses in your market should be investing more money with you.
Why wouldn't you believe them?
After all, they're the expert.
There is also a wonderfully human incentive at work here: believing wholeheartedly in the product you're selling makes selling it considerably easier.
And selling more of it generally makes you more money.
Everybody wins.
Well...potentially everybody.
When Everything You Have Is a Hammer...
There's an old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail.
Media sales can work the same way.
A television representative has television to sell you. A radio representative has radio. A newspaper or publication has print products. A digital service has its specific platform and products. And almost all media companies these days have a white label digital agency.
That doesn't make any of those things bad.
I've worked with all of them.
Depending on your business, your customers, your market and what you're trying to accomplish, any one of them could be exactly the right tool.
The problem begins when we start with the tool instead of the problem.
And that brings me to one of my favorite experiences from my years inside the media circus.
A Tale of Two Conferences
At the time, I was working for a local television station. Like many traditional media companies in the modern era, sales weren't growing at the rate the guys upstairs would have preferred.
This is, of course, the natural order of things.
Media audiences have fragmented dramatically. Consumers have more choices than ever. Digital advertising disrupted traditional media and then promptly began disrupting itself. Meanwhile, corporate revenue expectations have an amusing tendency to remain considerably less complicated than the markets expected to produce them.
So myself and two other sales managers were sent to a rather impressive industry conference.
I won't name the national organization because that's not really the point of this story.
Their job was to help media companies understand their position in the marketplace and teach their sales organizations how to present the value of their products more effectively.
At the time, I was considering leaving the company. In fact, I already had another opportunity in front of me.
But I went into that conference hoping it might rekindle some of the enthusiasm I'd lost.
I was ready to drink the Kool-Aid.
And, sweet merciful heavens, was it on the menu.
Nice hotel. Expensive dinners. Excellent presenters. Professionally developed sessions. Three solid days explaining the extraordinary power of broadcast television and why it remained one of the most effective advertising vehicles available.
And those poor people selling radio, print and digital?
Well, bless their hearts.
By the time the conference ended, you could have been forgiven for believing that anyone purchasing anything other than television advertising was simply making life unnecessarily difficult for themselves and their business.
The experience didn't ultimately change my decision. I left the company and accepted another position.
And that's when this story gets interesting.
Wait...Didn't I Just See You?
Before I even officially started my new job, I was flown across the country to attend another large sales conference.
New company. New city. Great food. New coworkers from around the country. Lots of excitement about what I was being brought in to accomplish.
And then came one of the special presentations.
From the same organization I'd just spent three days listening to less than a month earlier.
Well, this should be interesting.
It was.
Because this time I learned about the extraordinary power of broadcast radio and why it remained one of the most—if not THE MOST—effective advertising vehicles available.
And those poor people selling television and print?
Well, bless their hearts.
Sound familiar?
Luckily for me, this version lasted only a few hours instead of three days.
But somewhere during that presentation, sitting in the audience as the new guy at my new company, I had one of the more illuminating moments of my media career. Or perhpas, something I already knew was cast into even deeper relief.
I wasn't really learning about radio.
I was learning about the business of selling to the sellers.
Less than a month apart, I'd watched essentially the same authority equip two different groups of salespeople with compelling arguments for why their medium deserved the advertiser's money.
And suddenly a lot of things I'd observed throughout my career made considerably more sense.
That's Why the Question Shouldn't Be, “Which Media Is Best?”
There isn't one.
And anyone who tells you otherwise without first knowing a considerable amount about your business should immediately earn a few more questions.
Television can be phenomenal.
Radio can be phenomenal.
Digital can be phenomenal.
Print can still be phenomenal.
Social media, search, streaming, outdoor, direct mail, sponsorships and community outreach can all produce meaningful results.
They can also all be spectacular ways to set money on fire.
The medium isn't the strategy.
The right question isn't:
“Is radio better than television?”
Or:
“Should I move everything into digital?”
The right questions are:
Who are we trying to reach? What are we trying to accomplish? What will reach those people effectively? What can we realistically afford? Are our expectations grounded in reality? And how will we know whether it worked?
Only after answering those questions should anyone start prescribing media.
Be Kind to Your Media Rep. But Know What You're Buying.
This is the part I want to emphasize, because I've worked alongside a lot of media salespeople over the years.
Most aren't villains.
They're people trying to make a living in an extraordinarily competitive industry. Many genuinely care about their clients. Some are exceptionally knowledgeable, ethical professionals whom I'd happily put across the table from a business owner.
But they also operate within systems designed to teach them how to sell the products their companies own.
Their job is to represent their company.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that. In fact that is exactly what you want your employees or contractors to do. So it should be applauded!
Your job is simply to remember that you need someone knowledgeable in that field representing your interests.
So listen to the pitch. Ask questions. Look at the numbers. Let good representatives teach you about their products—they often know them extraordinarily well.
Just don't confuse expertise in selling a particular medium with an independent assessment of whether that medium is where your next marketing dollar belongs.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it isn't.
And sometimes the smartest marketing decision you can make is keeping that dollar in your pocket until you know the difference.
That's where experience outside a single platform becomes incredibly valuable—and where a little independent perspective can save a business owner a great deal of money.