1. What do you want to see your business achieve as a result of this campaign?

2. How will you measure results?

3. In simplest terms how do you define your business?

4. How do you define your product/services?

5. Describe your target market in terms of demographics, psycho-graphics, lifestyle etc.

6. Can this market be segmented? If so how?

7. Describe your ideal prospect.

8. What does a prospect expect from a business like yours?

9. What would cause a business like yours to lose a customer?

10. What causes a prospect to start searching for your business’s products and service?

11. How does a prospect go about looking for a business like yours?

12. What is the main reason one of your prospects becomes a customer?

13. Who are your main competitors?

14. How does the prospect view these competitors?

15. How does the prospect view your company?

16. What do your competitors say about themselves?

17. What can you offer that the competition doesn’t?

18. What good things do customers say about your business?

19. What negative things do customers say about your business?

20. What advertising and marketing tactics have you tried in the past that worked? What didn’t work?

There are two reasons that only two out of hundreds of offers were actually good deals:
1. The One-Day sale offers are for broad rotator spots such as Monday-Sunday 6am – 12 midnight. Usually the stations have allocated about 2/3 of the spots you’ll get to non-primetime hours. Primetime in radio is defined as Monday-Friday 6am-7pm. The stations intent, in my opinion, is to sell non-primetime spots that normally they don’t sell much of.

2. I’m a professional media buyer with 21+ years of experience in media sales and media buying. I negotiate rates aggressively all year long. The buys that I make for my clients deliver more value than most of the stations One-Day Sale offers.

Before you plunk down any money on a One-Day Radio Sale contact me. I’m conducting 365 Day Sale on radio rates 365 days a year.

With more than 30 years of experience in video production, we’ve done everything from commercials to training videos to product marketing. Some of our clients have been Time Warner, EZ Pawn, Roger Beasley Mazda, Golfsmith, Gumbo’s, Scholz Beer Garten, ABC Pest Control, Maund Volkswagen, Derm Research, Buffet Palace and many more.

To start the process we’ll have a pre-production meeting, ask a lot of questions and help determine just what you need to get your message across. The next thing is to collaborate on ideas for the script.
Then when the script is ready, shooting can be done on location or in studio.

We shoot with Sony’s EX-1R high definition camera and edit on Final Cut Pro. Other tools we use are Adobe Photoshop and After Effects.

We take care of hiring on-camera talent and getting voiceover work done. If stock video or photos are needed, those can be purchased and downloaded. Graphics will be created prior to post-production.

You should figure about an hour of post-production per finished minute for a long-form video. A 30-second commercial may take several hours, depending on what graphics and effects are needed.

When the video is ready we’ll send you an approval copy for your review. If any changes are needed they will be made promptly and your video will be ready to go. We will then encode your video for various broadcast specifications or for the web.

Whether you need full HD production for broadcast or need video for your website in HD, Frink Inc will get it done on time and on budget. Our job is to make it as easy as possible for you and to communicate your message effectively.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL3XPc4GlrI

Today’s video technology is, without a doubt, amazing. Just a few years ago, anyone wanting to produce a truly professional video for television or the web would have no choice except to hire a professional camera crew and editing studio and it was expensive.

Today, anyone can buy an inexpensive high-definition camera to capture video. They can edit that video using inexpensive or even free, post-production editing programs. And many of our smart phones offer up usable high-definition video capabilities.

So, why not do it yourself? Many who decide to do so end up with a product that does not truly perform or gain the results they hoped for. A quick tour through on line video services like YouTube illustrates the problem, perhaps best explained in the saying, being able to paint or draw does not make someone an artist. Merely using the most technically advanced cameras and editing software does not make someone a professional producer.

“Well, do I need a professional producer? Maybe what I can do is good enough and will save money.”

The problem here is not artistry in and of itself, but what that gives you in the final product: effective communication. A professional look equals a professional impression with customers. Conversely, amateur looks equate to an amateur impression of you. Your homemade video might look OK to you, and with today’s cameras it may look technically fine, but it may also not be effective in communicating to your customers or audience.

An effective video requires serious time and effort in script writing and planning before any footage is shot for it to be a compelling.

When your video presentation is viewed by your prospects, customers, employees, and peers they will instinctively compare it to highly polished work they see on broadcast network television and the web. If your video is not professionally written, shot and edited it reflects that on you and your business.

Why you might ask, would anybody intentionally portray themselves as a “hick.” Andy’s motivation was what we call in the advertising and marketing industry, “branding” and “positioning”.  Andy and I were members of a large fraternity at The University of Texas in the mid 1970s.  The fraternity from a social stand point was our world, a small provincial, pretentious, chauvinistic world. Many of our “brothers” were handsome guys; we called them “face jocks”.  Even more of them seemed to be from wealthy families.  They dressed well and they drove very nice late model automobiles.  Being a face jock, dressing well and driving nice cars had its’ advantages in the Greek world at The University of Texas in the mid 1970s.  The most important advantage of course was with the women.  If you had these characteristics you were guaranteed opportunities to date some beautiful sorority girls who might also be from a wealthy family.  Yeah the Greek world at The University had some shallow aspects to it.

Andy wasn’t a face jock. He didn’t drive a nice late model car and he didn’t appear to be from a wealthy family. Since he couldn’t compete in those areas Andy brilliantly identified a strength he could exploit when it came to competing against wealthy “face jocks” for women.  Andy developed a “charming hick” persona.  Think Andy Griffith as the small town North Carolina sheriff in The Andy Griffith Show.  Andy was good at it.  He worked construction during summers in east Texas and enjoyed using the region’s accent and some of its’ interesting phraseology that he had picked up.  His positioning strategy worked.  Andy dated more than his share of pretty sorority girls and eventually became engaged to one during his senior year.

I wasn’t rich or particularly handsome and I had no gimmick as Andy perceptively pointed out.  Despite Andy’s advice I didn’t identify a positioning strategy that I could successfully execute.  Therefore my love life was some what of a bust juxtaposed to my roommate the “Charming hick”.

What’s your business’ “gimmick” i.e. your position versus your competition?  What do you do best?  What do you want to perceived by the marketplace?  Have you done what Andy did by identifying and exploiting a market niche for yourself?  Or are you like I was– without a positioning strategy? If your position is: “low prices”, “been in business for over 20 years” or “locally owned and operated,” you probably haven’t claimed a unique position in the market place and my advice to you is,  “you got to have a gimmick.”

bill@frinkadvertising.com

How can you go wrong?

1. Letting the cable provider write the script and control the production of your commercial.

The sales people and the production people with the cable provider are not professional script writers and it’s not what they get paid to do. In fact their compensation is not tied to the quality or effectiveness of the commercials they’re producing. The production people know how to operate a camera and know something about lighting and audio but to do a professional job they need to be supervised and directed by a professional television advertising producer.

You don’t have to be an advertising writer/producer to have noticed local television commercials that seemed a little gamey or less than polished. It’s probable that these are spots written and produced by a local cable provider or television station.

2. Making your media buy based solely on the recommendation of the sales rep.

The sales rep is not a professional media buyer. The cable rep’s charge is to sell cable network advertising inventory at the highest possible rate that they can charge. Another responsibility of the sales rep is to sell inventory that is less in demand whether or not it’s suitable for the advertiser. Therefore their recommendations are influenced by several factors that are unrelated to your best interests.

3. Buying Cheap Spots.

Cheap spots are cheap for a reason. The audience is small therefore the demand for them is low. A campaign of hundreds cheap spots even if they’re targeted to a niche audience isn’t going to reach enough of your market to help you unless it’s combined with spots that reach a large audience.

4. Buying a “Package”.

Cable providers are always selling packages. There’s the “Summer Sizzler” the “Hot Spots”, the “Lots-O-Spots” or just the plain old “Frequency Package”. These are designed to sell inventory that doesn’t normally sell. Usually a combination of Monday-Friday daytime inventory, Monday-Sunday 5am-12midnight rotators on low demand networks such as CNBC, Animal Planet, Oxygen and The Travel Channel that are packaged together so the average spot rate comes in at less than $10 or so. The purpose of these packages is to sell unsold inventory for the cable operator. This is probably not an effective strategy for a unique advertiser.

5. Not evaluating your market’s local television stations.

Don’t assume you can’t afford to incorporate local broadcast stations into your plan or even use broadcast exclusively. If your target audience is lower income or retirees your local broadcast stations may be the best choice.

Conclusion
I sold local television advertising for Time Warner Cable in Austin, Texas for ten years. For the last nine years I’ve planned and executed media buys for my clients in several markets across the United States. My expertise in utilizing cable television continues to grow and develop.

If you’re interested in contacting me regarding cable television advertising or other advertising and marketing issues, please click here or on any of the contact links on this website.

How to make a good Cable buy:

1. Clearly define your target prospects

2. Identify what they’re watching

3. Know the cable vendor’s pressure points.

With a little thought you can probably handle #1 on your own. A good cable sales representative might be able to help you with #2.  A good sales rep. isn’t going to help you with #3.  Your best bet is to seek the advice of an independent advertising professional. A good one will save you time and money.