Ads for Edmonds helps Arista Wines

We have a new division of Team Watkins, Ads for Edmonds, providing full service advertising to the Edmonds community where we live and work. Arista Wine Cellars (http://www.aristawines.com/) had a quick turnaround project: a print and on-screen ad for the upcoming Edmonds Film Festival (http://www.edmondsfilmfestival.com/). Owner Ruth Arista was generous with her praise: "Once again you have come up with something terrific!" Thanks, Ruth, and thanks to our graphics artist, Chris Watkins, for the appealing wine glass image and clean look. You can visit http://www.adsforedmonds.com/ for information on our services.

Marketing tips from today's presentation

I had the pleasure to speak this week at the Edmonds Chamber of Commerce networking breakfast. It's a solid group of local businesses representing a wide range of products and services. I was very impressed with the energy and effort these people put forth in networking.

I spoke about my new company, Ads for Edmonds (http://www.adsforedmonds.com/) . It's a full service agency focused on helping local businesses. They asked some excellent questions, and I touched on some key things to consider in today's varied media-choice market.

1. Make sure your web site is working for you. It should be clean, simple and have a menu that's understandable. I have seen some horrible sites lately, and it's a huge turnoff. But I've seen some good ones, too, from establishments I frequent:
http://www.jazzalley.com/; http://www.portaliswines.com/; http://www.rays.com/. These sites have lots of information but well organized, easy to find and pleasing to the eye.

2. Set up your email address to mime your web address. Why have a hotmail, yahoo, gmail or other account? Make it john@smithrealty.com.

3. Make your ad/marketing expense a line item in your budget. And keep it there. Cut that in a down economy? Are you kidding? There are ample studies that show market share gain for people who maintain or increase their budgets when things get slow.

4. What should that budget be? Something you are comfortable with, and if business improves, increase it. When I deal with small businesses, I don't tell them what their budget should be, but I do tell them what strategy I would employ, and we go from there.

5. Social media and PR are not free. Yes, if you can do this yourself you can save money, but it still costs you time. And if you are not good at it, you need to hire someone to help you. If you buy ads, you know they will run and people will see them. You don't always know that about social media or PR.

6. What media should you use? Good question. Radio and TV are still the most cost effective, but you do have to expend a healthy expense to make them work. I love radio with internet ads. There are good pieces of research that hit on the value of running these together: the recall, the branding, are very positive.

I'll offer some more tips next week on internet advertising.

David Watkins
Ads for Edmonds
A division of Team Watkins Advertising and PR

Sunny Kobe Cook

Had the pleasure to hear a most enjoyable presentation from Sunny Kobe Cook today at the Edmonds Chamber of Commerce monthly luncheon. She has smart marketing ideas for small businesses, including some tips on setting up social media (she's a recent convert). I liked what she had to say, including:

1) You can't be in business today if you don't have a web site. (Honestly, I get referrals for people who don't have a site.)
2) Different media for different folks. Something that works for one, does not necessarly work for all. (There are a lot of media options, large and small. A good consultant or ad agency listens carefully and recommends what makes sense, not just what we like.)
3) Clean up your act. (Make sure your place of business is neat, your marketing materials clear and concise. You never know who's looking.)
4) Get social. (OK, we can't know if social media--twitter, blogs, facebook, etc--will work for us, but it's easy to find out. She set up her own accounts and you can too. If not, find help.)

Based on what I heard today, I would recommend Sunny as a consultant for your business and as a speaker. Smart and entertaining.

Ad services for Edmonds merchants

Ads for Edmonds is a new division of Team Watkins Advertising & Public Relations, focused on helping businesses in Edmonds and especially those which are members of the Edmonds Chamber of Commerce. We offer professional ad and marketing services at reasonable rates and now feature a free 30-minute marketing consultation, where we'll give you 5 great tips on how to market your products or services. To find out how you can get smart marketing advice for free (well, it will cost you a cup of coffee), visit www.AdsforEdmonds.com.

Radio & Internet Ads Work Together

You can find some solid research that supports using a combination of radio commercials with online advertising. Our agency does a lot of radio campaigns (visit http://teamwatkins.com/sample_radio.htm) and we're now doing more and more online ads for clients like Bob Byers Volvo and Golf Savings Bank.

Together, recall of ads is much higher when radio and online run simultaneously. Here's some information taken from "Radio Ad Lab:"


Radio and the Internet: Powerful Complements for Advertisers
A New Study of How Radio Ads Can Complement Internet Campaigns
Conducted by Harris Interactive, Inc.

A Compoment of "Radio and the Consumer’s Mind: How Radio Works," February 2007
Our new online test showed that recall of advertising is dramatically enhanced (27 percent versus 6 percent) when a mix of Radio and Internet ads is used compared to website ads alone. Radio ads also can improve website traffic and a brand’s emotional bond with consumers when added to Internet exposures.

Radio Can Drive Traffic to Websites
Research in the UK (from the UK’s RAB and IAB) indicated that 57 percent of those who listen to Radio while online say they’ve "checked out things on the Internet after just hearing about them on the Radio." And 67 percent said that "hearing things on the Radio will remind me to look up something when I’m using the Internet." We explore this idea further in the new Radio Ad Lab study described below.

Radio and the Internet Have Unique Reach Patterns ...
and that can make them work powerfully in combination. When you put those two media together, we found that the daily reach of Radio and the Internet is similar to that of television.

If you'd like a copy of the full report, email david@teamwatkins.com.

New era for local radio advertising

Our ad agency, Team Watkins Advertising, is in the process of making several annual radio advertising buys for local clients. This past fall, the Seattle market finally joined others nationwide with Arbitron's new "people meters" that keep tabs of people's listening habits. The bottom line? It's a lot more accurate. The results? A lot of changes in the rankings. Most notably, talk stations took a big drop, and some stations who rode the middle for years moved to the top. There we a lot of surprises.

As we look for radio "partners" to help us promote and brand our clients in 2010, we're careful. Stations that haven't fared as well with the new rating system can still be good partners. We'll look at their listener profiles, loyalty and qualitative information, then compare the numbers. While we expect a few changes in the stations we buy for 2010, we don't plan on dumping those whose formats have not fared well in the new rating system. And we'll keep our minds open to looking at stations we didn't consider in the past.

Our clients are keeping their budgets level in 2010, which is good news after a couple of years of reductions. With our radio buys, we'll be looking at what we can do with the radio station's web site. While stations might include some free promotions on their sites, they aren't giving web ads away. So our online ad budgets will include buys on radio station sites. It makes good sense.