Area's Best Business Directory Blog

Area's Best Businesses-Charlotte and WBT Deliver More Customers!

Charlotte, NC November 29, 2010—Greater Media station's WBT and WLNK, in conjunction with Area’s Best Businesses-Charlotte, a business directory and local search company, provide a more effective directory and search solution for local businesses in the Charlotte area.

Area's Best Businesses offers the only local business directory that uses the power of these radio stations with social media and the internet to help local area businesses reach more customers and generate more sales.  The organization is dedicated to offering local businesses a more effective solution to reach potential customers through web listings on local media sites and through all the major search engines.  In addition, Area’s Best Businesses-Charlotte incorporate social networking strategies that help support each local business in its effort to gain more exposure on the internet. It is the hope of each organization that this business directory provide a better more efficient way for local Charlotte businesses to get found on the web by potential customers.

The Area’s Best Businesses-Charlotte directory launches in early December of 2010. To learn more about this new local directory and search solution click here.

"I am excited to provide area businesses with a better business directory and search solution; one that uses the power of local radio station’s WBT and WLNK to drive daily traffic to the directory and its member businesses,” states General Sales Manager, Trip Savery of WBT/WLNK radio. “Business owners have so many responsibilities just running their business and providing a quality service or product to their customers.  It is our hope that we can provide them with a better more efficient solution to help them get more customers and generate more sales.”

ABOUT GREATER MEDIA CHARLOTTE

Greater Media local radio station’s News Talk 1110 WBT and 1079 the Link, WLNK are community leaders.  These radio stations operate in the public interest, by informing and entertaining our listeners with high quality local news and entertainment programming while providing services to help our advertisers achieve financial prosperity.  For more information, visit www.wbt.com or  www.1079thelink.com .

ABOUT AREA’S BEST BUSINESSES-CHARLOTTE

Area’s Best Businesses-Charlotte provides local search and business directories that are powered by local media companies to help provide a more effective and affordable marketing solution for Charlotte area businesses.  In addition, it is the goal of the network to supply resource information about all forms of marketing. Through articles, blogs, Q & A and webinars, our partner site Area’s Best Marketing (ABM) provides marketing and advertising  information to help the small business owner make a better informed advertising decision.

 

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Area's Best Businesses Charlotte Delivers for Small Business

A Better Local Search Directory Includes WBT and WLNK Radio!

Many of the area's best companies in Charlotte, NC  have some form of online directory listing like the yellow pages or Google local.  No local directory however, includes search engine optimization in conjunction with the local media support provided by Charlotte radio station's WBT and WLNK.  In addition, the Area's Best Businesses Charlotte directory includes traffic building solutions for the small Charlotte business owners like the Area’s Best Deals coupon and gift certificate application.  This allows small business owners the ability to easily develop traffic building coupon offers through the ABB Charlotte business directory.  

Internet advertising is constantly evolving and it requires a skilled business owner to stay current with the changes in order to use online media effectively.  In addition, online marketing can be very expensive.  So Area's Best Businesses in Charlotte has developed this integrated marketing solution that is inexpensive and easy to understand; a solution that is supported by experts that help the local business owner succeed in the constantly changing world of internet marketing.  To find out more about becoming an Area's Best Preferred Business click here.

Radio Advertising Seminars Drive New Business

Present a comprehensive seminar that educates local business owners

 

This is a simple concept that uses an event in the form of a seminar or workshop as a catalyst to bring lots of business owners and marketers together. Once together they hear an informative “how to” pitch about marketing solutions and the reason “radio” will benefit their company. Every station across the country should be using a sales seminar strategy. There is no downside to getting your sales people hyper-focused on selling new advertisers, none.

Don’t let me hear anyone say that the concentrated telemarketing efforts and the focus of this program takes your sales people off the street. What? They’re selling new business and you’re getting a company to do this for a sales commission just like what you ask your reps to do. If you’re not using a sales seminar call me and tell me why, and I’ll explain why you should do it. You can generate hundreds of thousands of immediate revenue and lay the groundwork for hundreds of thousands more revenue throughout the year that you won’t have to pay commission on. Call me at 877-219-9495 or click here and I’ll send you examples of several companies to consider.

Radio Leads the Way To New Advertisers

There are stations throughout the U.S. that have found an innovative way to find new advertisers.  The program is called “Prospects on Demand,” (POD) developed by Impact Target Marketing, a company, that had in the past, primarily focused on developing ratings based marketing campaigns for radio. 

Stations use "Prospects on Demand" to support their sales representatives present prospecting efforts.  It is designed to deliver as much or as little support to a station's prospecting efforts as they need. The broadcasters that presently use POD see it as an essential service, one that helps to support their sales efforts by delivering more potential advertisers, more quickly. This allows their sales staff to do what they do best–-close.

“Prospects on Demand” (POD) program combines both offline target marketing tactics like direct mail, telemarketing and email, in conjuction with a comprehensive online strategy to deliver a more effective way to generate new advertising sales.  This program was developed by seasoned marketing and sales professionals and implements many of the same techniques used by Fortune 500 companies. It also includes a prospect nurturing system to convert warm leads to sales ready prospects.

It seems that radio has a great opportunity here to aggresively out position its traditional media competitors that have been slow to embrace an integrated online and offline sales strategy.  This seems to be a better, more effective way to generate new sales leads.  Stations using the program are most excited by its ability to produce new prospects day-in-and-day-out. It delivers more set appointment with potential advertisers while shortening the sales cycle and increasing the odds of being in front of the right prospects before they make a decision to advertise with someone else. 

Area's Businesses Not Finding Leads With Social Networks

 

Most area's small businesses are not into using social media networks to generate business prospects. A Citibank / GfK Roper survey of 500 small business executives across the United States found that 76% do not find  social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads.  86% of area's small businesses say they have not used social networking sites to get business advice or information.

More infomation from the survey found that search engine sites such as Google and Yahoo presently surpass small business-focused sites like areasbestbusiness.com and the WSJ.com as destinations for small business owners to seek business advice or information. 61% of respondents say they rely on these search engine sites.

Lead Generation by Social Networks (% of Respondents, August 2009)
Small Business Execs Who Say	% of Execs Responding
Social networks are:
Very helpful	3%
Somewhat helpful	9
Not very helpful	13
Not at all helpful	63
Don't know/na	11
Source: Citibank omnibus poll by Gfk Roper, October 2009

Maria Veltre, Executive Vice President of Citi's Small Business Segment, concludes "... small business owners are still feeling their way into social media... many... may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them."

Additional responses found that 42% of small business owners and managers reported that in the past year they have made greater use of their company's website to generate business leads and sales. Among companies with 20 to 99 employees the percentage rises, with 57% saying they have made greater use of their website. 28% of survey respondents are also using email marketing and 25% are using online advertising to generate business leads and sales.

Here's the the Future of Marketing

"Social media, video, and mobile."

"Consumers have much greater leverage over marketers, however marketers can invite consumers to participate, they can create feedback loops."

There's a "new accountability standard put on the table by consumers."

"If advertisers can figure out a way to co-create with consumers, everybody wins."

Unlock the Potential of Your Advertising Sales Prospects

Help make the most out of your advertising sales prospects and help your sales teams create more revenue.  There's a lot of methodology and techniques on how to turn sales prospects into actual sales. Prospects have different levels of qualification, but regardless of how qualified a prospect list is, salespersons trying to convince potential buyers they've never had any significant contact with to invest in your company's service or product is no easy task. Training, practice and proven methods of success are what it takes to turn prospects into sales and subsequent revenue for your business.

Prospect generation does have different levels of quality. For instance, it's difficult to convert cold calling prospects to whom you’ve never spoken into a sale over the phone, but using highly qualified sales prospects gleaned from referrals that come from a friend of a potential buyer can get a salesperson's foot in the door. Here are some general tips to use when making the most of sales prospects:

1. Smile when cold calling a sales lead on the phone; it really does make a difference.

2. Call the most qualified prospects first, to try to turn those prospects into sales quickly.

3. Always ask for referrals once a sale is made; referrals are the most qualified sales lead there is.

 

Find out a better way to get advertising prospects.

Media: Prospecting for New Advertisers

Get more advertising prospects using both an online and offline marketing strategy

The way potential advertisers research and find new marketing solutions has changed.  Has the way you prospect for new business changed? The answer to that is probably dependent upon what you sell, where you sell it, who your customers are, the nature of your competition, how your prospects and customers have been traditionally contacted, the budget allocated for winning new business and lots more.

 

However, it has been my observation that one thing has never changed. Somehow, somewhere you will be expected to develop strategies to get you and your message in front of qualified prospects. That will never change for salespeople. You included!

 

Today’s media sales person needs to find and attract new prospects differently.  Because over 75 percent of B2B purchase begin with an online search, you’d better either develop a new prospecting strategy that includes online marketing or find an organization that does.  Gone are the days where cold calling alone, whether in person or on the phone, will generate a consist flow of new prospects.  If you want to be successful incorporate a comprehensive strategy to include both online and offline marketing techniques.    

 

Get Prospects

 

There's a Better Way to Reach New Advertisers

Don't lose more ad revenue waiting to make a decision

There's a belief in the advertising industry that things are beginning to change.  Our industry prospects are looking up.  Others believe that the industry now faces the challenge to increase pricing to counteract recent pricing strategies of the past year.  I don't know anyone who thinks it is going to be easy to increase pricing to existing clients.

There's a solution to this pricing issue.  There needs to be an aggressive push for new business advertisers.  Many media companies continue to practice sales strategies that are becoming obsolete.  Today 75% of new business purchases begin with an online search. Where are we?  Yes we have a website, but who are we targeting, not potential advertisers considering one advertising solution over another.  In fact, most media websites hide their advertising link either at the bottom of the homepage or buried on the top navigation bar at the bottom of some non descript heading.  Where is yours?  We must have a strong web presence devoted to reaching  the potential advertiser where they make a buying decision-on the web.

There is a better way to reach new customers. We have created a new company to do just that.  It merges the best offline sales strategies including cold calling etc. along with the best online prospecting tactics to deliver qualified advertising prospects to our media partners.  The company is Area's Best Businesses, http://www.areasbestbusinesses.com/ and it is dedicated to matching small and midsize companies with the best advertising solution and provider.  These providers represent every available marketing and advertising solution from search and website development to radio and television.  You might say that Area's Best is the matchmaker for the media industry.

Some advertising sales managers have said to me, why do we need you to prospect, we have our sales reps to do that.  My response to them is that for every day your inventory goes unsold you lose revenue.  If you presently have twenty or thirty maybe fifty reps selling each day, you don't have enough.  Do you know that for every one rep that you employee there are hundreds of others trying to sell competitive media?  Think about the power of having more reps working on behalf of your organization and a website that systematically generates advertising prospects for your present reps. There is a better way to reach new advertisers and you can take advantage of this innovative prospecting tool.

Find out how to become a media partner and begin receiving sales prospects.

 

 

 

 

 

A Lead is Not a Qualified Prospect

  

Look closer to find a qualified lead

Tell me if you know the difference between a lead and a qualified prospect.  Many of you probably figure that they're about the same, but that the qualified prospect is better.  Hell it's qualified, right, so it must be better.  The answer of course is yes.

Let's go deeper to better understand the difference. In many cases  the term lead is used by list companies to identify individual records that make up the list. The truth is, it is just a name and address file.  Simple.  No more, no less.  Where as a qualified prospect is just that, someone who has expressed an interest in the product or service you sell.

Maybe I am being a bit picky.  Some of you may say that is just semantics.  Maybe, but too many media companies I speak with each day don't know the difference.  If you are considering using a service to supply you with "leads" or "qualified prospects" ask the right questions to determine if you getting individuals that are actively seeking your product or service.  Don't start using a lead generation service without understanding how they define lead.  Remember, a lead is not a qualified prospect unless they're interested in what you have to sell.