Smart B2B Advertisers Count Hearts & Minds Not Eyes & Ears.

Dear B2B Advertiser,

Why do you think it’s a good idea to invest in advertising that passively puts your company’s logo in front of the masses, most of who will never do business with you? Isn’t it more effective to invest in marketing that develops and nurtures personal interactions with individuals who meet your client profile precisely? What’s going to move the needle in your business, more impressions or more relationships? Eyes and Ears or Hearts and Minds.

It’s not hard to guess where I stand on this issue.

For some reason most of the media still sells advertising primarily based on the number of impressions they allegedly generate. All those eyes and ears theoretically fill the top of the sales funnel. The media loves to tout a large audience (even if the number is at best, a guess and at worst, made up) that is waiting patiently to be made aware of your product or service so they can dutifully purchase it.

A skeptical person might see an unholy alliance between the media and the “ratings” companies that supposedly count their audiences. Let’s follow the money for a bit — hmm, who pays these rating companies? The media pays them. Do you think these ratings companies have an economic incentive to give their clients (the media companies) as large of an audience number as they can give them with a straight face? Don’t you think the ratings companies know that the media companies make their money from advertisers and advertisers are more willing to part with their money if the audience is large enough. Maybe?

A large audience number is important to the media because it helps them sell advertising by using a “Stupid Math” strategy. A “Stupid Math” conversation goes like this.

Media: That’s our most popular show, your ad will be seen by about 1,000,000 people each week. (Usually the salesperson does a Dr Evil impersonation touching his pinky to his lips when he says 1 million.)

Potential Advertiser: (Doing math in their head) If 1,000,000 people (top of the sales funnel) see my ad surely at least 1% (10,000 people) will go to my website to check out my company. And surely at least 1% of them (100 people) will buy my stuff (bottom of the sales funnel) so this media buy is a no brainer. I’m in.

Media: Makes sense to me — here’s the contract.

The advertiser believes the media company because they are showing them the ratings company’s third party verified audience numbers. When the campaign fails the advertiser attributes the failure on things outside of their control. The ad sucked. The timing wasn’t right. Or some other excuse. The media sales person shrugs his shoulders and can’t explain why your ad didn’t work because that show worked for other companies in the past. (If it really worked so well for those other companies in the past why aren’t they continuing to buy ads on it?)

Well here are some of the flaws in this passive impression based ad buying logic.

1. Most people don’t even remember who advertised on their favorite shows. Take the Super Bowl, this Marketing Land article says 75% of the viewers don’t remember the ads and 90% aren’t going to buy the product anyway. And remember, the Super Bowl is the only show where most people are looking forward to and are paying close attention to the ads.
2. Is your creative team better at making ads than the ones making Super Bowl ads?
3. Can you name any of the advertisers of your favorite show or favorite magazine or blog or podcast?
4. When was the last time you actually went to the website of any advertiser?
5. When was the last time you bought something from an advertisement.
6. Maybe the audience wasn’t as large as the media company said they were.

Advertisers who care about impressions are doing it all wrong. They are implementing a passive advertising model that relies on interrupting the content their prospect wants to consume in the hopes of persuading that same prospect to engage in a sales conversation with them. Good luck with that. This strategy might have worked back in the day when barely anyone advertised. But now the average person is bombarded with ads all the time and everywhere they go. According to this CBS News article in 1970 a person saw 500 ads a day, by 2006 it was 5,000. Today it’s probably twice that.

How about considering an Active advertising strategy that gives you more control and encourages you to serve your most coveted prospects so you can interact with them face to face. How about providing them with so much content value that they want to share it with their constituents and then interact with you and learn more about what you do.

How much more effective would it be to use your ad dollars to actually serve your profession, build and nurture meaningful relationships with the people who are most important to you and amplify the stories of your community. Don’t you think if you did that, you’d ultimately sell more? You can do that with an Active advertising strategy.

The key to Active advertising is to reverse engineer the process in order to determine what your prospect really needs and desires. Build your media platform around WIIFT. Whats In It For Them. By putting your own needs aside and really serving and providing value to your prospect you can now elegantly place yourself inside the media platform and build meaningful relationships with the people who will move the needle in your business.

This Active advertising strategy is more efficient because it works much farther down the sales funnel. The only people you are interacting with are people that meet your profile and are the leaders of the industry you serve. By underwriting a media property that truly serves and provides value to your industry you are no longer another vendor. You are a key member of the community who is bringing something to the table that is much more valuable than your product or service. In short order your company becomes the de facto media outlet, chief storyteller and story curator for your industry, your profession and your community.

So don’t waste your ad dollars for a seemingly large (but superficial) audience to fill the top of your sales funnel and hope they make it all the way down to the bottom. It is more effective to build meaningful relationships and truly serve your most coveted prospects at the bottom of the sales funnel with an Active advertising plan.

Business RadioX amplifies the voice of business in local markets around the country by sharing unscripted stories every single day. And we are actively looking for Sponsors who share our pro business values.