Tune in to Rush, Sean, Mark, Michael, Laura, Dennis, Stephanie, Randi... or to any of the 2,000 or so news, talk, sports, country, or XM satellite stations served by ABC, Premiere, Westwood One, The Jones Media Group, Salem, or Talk Radio Network. 

You'll likely hear one of our Year III :30 radio spots that encourage Dinovite's happy customers to reorder, and "aware non-triers" to finally do something about their stinky, itchy, scratchy, shedding or otherwise Miserable Pooch.

Dinovite is today the leading brand in the obscure, unheralded category of "Canine Health Food Supplements."  You, of course, compete in a different category.  Your best prospects, though have simply reached some other form of Critical Stink.

How you attract their attention and grow your own business depends on how wedded you are to the standard operating procedures of your own Corporate Entity and to the local affiliate of your Global Advertising Consortium.  

Is there Life after Google for you, too?

(407) 895-3092

That was the question Ed posed to me in the fall of 2005.  Fortunately, I had already answered it for Dice.com, National Dynamics, Whitney, Verbal Advantage, and a dozen or so other Direct Marketers.

Key Strategy:  Shift the Marketing Focus from
Keyword Shoppers to Impulse Buyers.

Try to reach prospects just before they start to Google all your competitors.

Address real problems.  Use simple sentences. Spell out your URL.  Greet the wary & curious with the rest of the story.  Send them to your shopping cart.  K.I.S.S! 

In Dinovite's case, we knew there are 60 million dogs in America.  They all eat dog food.  Sooner or later they'll all succumb to the Miseries.  Eventually they'll reach Critical Stink: The miseries get so bad that the owner is miserable, too - and decides to do something today.

A short-term fix is to blast out some problem-solution VO announce copy.  Over the long haul, though, you'll do better to engage the services of your best salesmen, i.e. your customers. In December '05 I whittled eight hours of phone interviews into three fusillade :60s.

STINKY DOG 
BREEDER
BUMPER

In January '06 we tested Stinky and Breeder on benchmark AM stations in California.  We compared results (GM/C^* and drag) to a dozen or so other DR campaigns, then promptly went national.

We launched on ABC Network in June - we were one of Mark Levin's first advertisers. We bought wired and unwired networks in CA and TX; added ABC Music; and continued to expand network cume reach on a pay as you go basis. 

The Bumper spot includes an interview with Yours Truly  after Dinovite brought my 15-year old pug Bumper back from near the grave.

^*GM/C=X.  (Gross Impressions per Inquiry x Media Cost) / Conversion Rate = Media Cost Per Sale

Ed redesigned the site in mid-year, improved the shopping cart, and added copy to persuade people to try a 90-day supply, based on the size of their dog. Average order $$$ doubled.  

In November '06 he added an in-bound phone bank to answer customer questions (e.g. why a 3-pint jar won't do much for two 100-pound dogs), and to deal with the inevitable disappointment that occurs when an owner's beloved pooch is too far gone. 

Call 'em:  859-428-1000.  Your nickel.   


From October '06 through the summer of '07 we built awareness among loyal listeners to the major AM talkers (Sean, Mark, Michael, Laura...).  We tracked daily orders by source from a drop-down "Where did you hear of us?" menu. At the end of March we debuted on Rush Limbaugh and had our first 3,500-order week.

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"we been giving it to them every day and its great"

Do you jot down the comments made by people who call you or buy from you on line?  You should.  Here are a few of the thousands of verbatims we've fielded from our fans: 

 

 
My husband first heard about this on Mark Levin and Rush and wanted me to order. Since then, I saw an ad on TV--probably Animal Planet or Fox News

Husband heard Sean Hannity endorsement on WSB in Atlanta GA.

Heard your ad on the Sean Hannity Radio Show. Can't wait to try this, I have tried everything from shampoos, antibiotics, etc and nothing has worked.

I first heard about Dynovite on Sean Hannity and then with in a few days I heard from 2 random people that I know mentioning that they have had great success with their dogs' allergies. I figured I would try it out on my 6 pound mini daschund.

Our golden retriever, Duke, has been taking Dinovite for almost 90 days, and the chronic bacterial and yeast ear infections he suffered have virtually ceased! 

This is a re-order. My Jack Russell who has suffered for the past 4 years is a new dog. He knows that the dynovite helps, so he actually jumps up at the bottle on the counter. Smart dog.

I heard your ad on the Ed Schultz Show on the local Air America radio station. The foot licking, itching, etc sounded just like the symptoms my dog was having.

i am a truck driver and heard about this on my xm-radio....our first order lasted a long time but thats ok we been giving it to them every day and its great we have a weimeriener that is sick alot this helps keep her weight up ..we love our dogs and this great for them ...we are looking forward to the dog food ...tks again

Dinovite is the best thing in the world. Please don't stop making it. I tell everyone how great your product is.

I have herd your radio ads for a year. My neighbor swears that Dinovite works.  I pray to God that it does! 

[The lady who sent in the last comment clicked Michael Savage on our Customer Tracking Menu, and ordered a 2-gallon pail for $99.95.  Oddly, we had not run on Savage for at least month.  That is some drag!]

Brand Awareness v Key Word Optimization?   

In January '06 Ed fielded about 50 orders a week from Overture, MSN, Google, and Yahoo.  Today, search engines account for 7-8% of sales.  The  chart to the left plots weekly YR I radio sales. For YR II, continue the purple line up to the mid $150K range.  Ed now averages about 2,500 orders a week, depending on our pulsed media weights.

What next?

In October '07 we asked Ed's good friend Frank DiBartolo to write and record a couple of four-minute Dinovite ballads.  He left room for Testimonial Gush:

STINKY III
MISERY

In December '07, to forestall the surge in network rates during election years, I locked in a 2008 schedule of :30s at QIV07 prices. We used shorter versions of the Country and Blues music tracks salted with our Best Gush.

CHEW
ENERGY
ENZYMES
HAIR
HAPPY
SMELL
VETS

What about brand pool-outs?  In March '08 we introduced Essential Oil, Lavender, Peppermint, and Unscented DogOSuds Shampoo...

MINDY-SUDS
BELLA-SUDS
DACHSHUNDS-SUDS

...and reminded owners to, "End the misery of allergy season, before it begins."

QUICK VISIT (Happy)
ALLERGY SEASON (Misery)

Since we get very high frequency on 18 XM channels and CCOMR (Clear Channel's 164-station streaming network), I added a couple of pure reminder spots to the weekly line-up.

50 VERY SAD DOGS
100 VERY HAPPY DOGS

Cable TV is next. 

You'll know we've really arrived when Jay Leno pans Dinovite in his monologue.

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By now you've probably figured out that running one :30 radio spot with wall-to-wall announcer copy is not the way to build a brand.  It's cheap.  It doesn't work.  People's attention span is too short.  They want variety.  

Quick - think of any GEICO TV spot.  Can you think of any other car insurance spot?  QED.

Ed's building a Brand.  I help.

After the first two spots ran on KABC-AM in LA, in the dead of night, way back in January '06, I looked at the "radio" orders the next morning, called Dry Ridge and said, "Ed, Build a shed. We have a winner!" 

Ed & Cindy moved Manufacturing & Fulfillment out of their 3-tractor barn and into a 55,000 square foot "shed" in the summer of '07.  There are 35 employees as of this writing.  We have our own railroad siding to take shipments of raw materials.  Dinovite is UPS's biggest Kentucky customer.  Ed has met and negotiated with the FDA and several state Feed & Grain regulators.  The site is clean; its contents are accurate.  A new shopping cart went live in March.

Dinovite still has No Corporate Entity to finance its growth, though. All of today's salaries, overhead and media dollars come from last week's sales. The account is still way too small for Omnicom, WPP, Interpublic, or your award-winning ad agency. 

Dinovite has successfully and naturally evolved from a pure pay-per-click brand to a pure pay-as-you-go national network brand.  Meanwhile, your brand is a pure...what?

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 "But Content is still King, right?"

Content has always been King.  The operative issue is Context.

Endless 8-point keyword-rich bullet-point text content on a standard format landing page loaded with hundreds of hyperlinks to elsewhere in your  Empire is one context.

Up beat enthusiastic customers telling the world in their own words how great you are is quite another context.

Monster, Travelocity, and Esurance, to name three Corporate Entities, have built massive on-line franchises via sumptuous production and media budgets - all administered by vast Teams of Team Players employed by their Global Advertising Consortiums.

Their spots run right after mine.

I am the only human in America who writes, produces, voices, plans, buys and tracks the results of Network Radio advertising. 

If you'd like to reach prospects who have reached Critical Stink in your category, do what you want them to do.

Pick up the phone.

407 895 3092.

   04/02/2008



¹ If your website is choking on links, blurbs, banners, and other mind-numbing Content, see How To Track 1-800 & Click-to Radio for the financial incentive to Slickify your site.  Also see  Practical SEOPS & PPC for suggestions on how to K.I.S.S.