by Paul Weyland, reprinted with permission from www.RBR.com
“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles.”-Sun Tzu
Broadcast salespeople have always fought other media for budget share. In this article, we’ll focus on the strengths and weaknesses of two competitive advertising mediums, the Yellow Pages and Cable TV.
Yellow Pages -- Despite rumors of its imminent Internet-inspired death, many businesses still feel they absolutely must advertise in the phone book. When many consumers are ready to buy a product or service they pull out the Yellow Pages for information. Advertisers feel that many sales can be traced directly to the phone book. Many cities now have more than one book and for many advertising decision makers that poses a problem. Which book (or books) do you buy? Technology poses another problem for phone book advertisers. Younger people are relying more and more on the Internet for information on businesses. Despite it’s problems, Yellow Page advertising is still very popular, and they’re doing a lot to embrace the Internet and keep their customers.
Here are some of the strengths of the Yellow Pages:
• Perceived as reliable-People turn to the Yellow Pages when they are ready to buy.
• Room to display multiple products and services-Like the newspaper.
• Advertising by section-Yellow Pages can place ads for one client in several different product/service categories.
• Couponing-Like the newspaper, Yellow Page customers can find coupons they can bring directly to the advertiser.
• Ubiquitous-Yellow Pages are everywhere. And usually right next to the telephone.
Like newspaper, Yellow Page advertising does have its drawbacks. Here are some examples:
• High cost-Yellow Pages advertising can be very expensive, particularly when the advertiser is running full-page color ads in several product/service categories. And if you dispute your bill your phone could be cut off.
• You can’t change the copy-The advertiser is stuck with the same copy for a year. That’s a long time, especially if something new you have something new you’d like to say. And what if there’s a mistake in the ad? Too bad. You live with it for a year.
• Passive medium-Again, a Yellow Pages ad doesn’t say anything until you pick it up and turn the pages. Up to that point the book sits in a drawer or under piles of mail.
• Absolutely no competitive protection-When you a consumer shops the Yellow Pages he has the opportunity to shop all of your competitors as well.
• The biggest ads are in the front of the product/service category-Sounds nice, until you think about how many consumers really pick up and handle the phone book. “When you buy a full page ad in our Yellow Pages, we’ll put your ad right in the front of the section!” Fine, except most people thumb through the Yellow Pages from back to front. Try it yourself. Pick up the phone book and look at the way you actually handle it to get to the pawn brokers section. That means that in reality, customers will see the smaller ads before they get to the big, expensive ones in the front of the section.
• Clutter-The Yellow Pages is virtually all ads. For small businesses it’s becoming very expensive to compete in the phone book, particularly if you need multiple listings. For example, if you’re in the heating and air conditioning business you’ll need an ad in heating and another in air conditioning. If you’re in the appliance business you’d need listings in refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, etc.
• Too many books-Clients in many markets are being courted by multiple “Yellow Pages” books. Which book (or books) should you buy?
• The Internet-Many younger people use the Internet for searching out businesses. And there are many different Internet “Yellow Pages”. Older people may have trouble with the Yellow Pages as well. In big cities the books are big and the older you get, the harder it is to read the numbers.
Cable TV -- The cable industry has made huge progress in recent years and most homes now subscribe to either a cable or a satellite system. Despite what you might think, cable advertising is pretty low on the totem pole when you consider all of the other various revenue sources the cable company has, which include:
• Cable subscription
• Broadband Internet subscription
• Entertainment and sports pay-per-view
• Telephone service
Still, cable is making huge inroads with advertisers and it is taking business away from many other media. TV executives do their best to convince clients that broadcast television and cable are two different things but many local advertisers perceive very little difference between cable and terrestrial television. Cable and broadcast television now come into most homes through the same box and cable looks just like television. People in their forties and older remember a time when there were only four (or fewer) choices when it came to watching television, the ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS affiliate station. Today of course, there are hundreds of stations available through cable and there are always more on the way.
Let’s discuss the strengths of cable as an advertising medium:
• Frequency-Because cable stations have fractions of the audience size of a broadcast television station or a radio station prices are very low. Advertisers can therefore afford to buy more spots on cable.
• Low cost per commercial-Cable account executives can pitch cable as “television without the high cost” or “radio with video”.
• Targeting by network-Cable advertisers can “narrow-cast” their messages to targeted groups, like the food channel for women or the golf channel for men.
• Reach- The cable advertising executive can claim his company can offer a higher reach, like a broadcast station, when local clients buy a mix of cable channels.
• Targeting by geography-Some cable companies claim they can make a local direct client’s advertising much more efficient because he can choose to purchase only in neighborhoods close to his business.
• Cable block-Some cable companies can arrange for a client’s commercial to run at about the same time on multiple channels. So no matter what channel the viewer tunes in, he’s likely to see the same commercial within five minutes or so.
Like all media, cable advertising has its share of weaknesses:
• Small reach-When compared to broadcast stations, cable generates very low audience figures. Cable salespeople might claim that they have a large reach number. For example, let’s say they claim they have 200,000 subscribers. But not all of those two hundred thousand are ever tuned in to the same channel at the same time. The largest cable audience may be equal to the smallest broadcast audience.
• Deceptive interpretation of research-A cable company might claim that because eighty percent of the market is wired to cable that they have an eighty percent penetration in that market. What the research really means is they have the capacity to reach eighty percent, but one hundred percent of that eighty percent do not subscribe to cable. Cable may claim that they have a more affluent and better educated audience than a broadcast station. But that also means that cable fails to reach thousands of people who can’t afford cable subscription but still spend money on other products and services.
• Small daytime audience-Cable’s daytime numbers are very low. Most people don’t start watching cable until 6PM or later.
• Reaches tight niche audiences and misses potential customers outside that niche-Cable’s narrow-cast advantage turns into a disadvantage when you consider that because of a particular channel’s lack of broad appeal fewer people in a household are likely to be watching when the set is tuned to that channel. Generally speaking, men don’t like the Cooking Channel and they won’t watch. Women don’t like the golf channel and they won’t watch.
--Paul Weyland helps broadcast stations sell more long-term local direct business. Read Paul’s book, Successful Local Broadcast Sales. You can reach Paul at www.paulweyland.com or call him at 512 236 1222.
