Free Advertising – We are new to owning an Ace Hardware but we are not new to sales and marketing. You could call us deal junkies. My partner and I have been in commercial real estate for a long time and we took an unforeseen circuitous route to managing our Ace Hardware. But, that’s another story. So, faced with an Ace Hardware that started out incorrectly, my partner and I began trying to figure it all out. Where do we advertise? One thing we found in the beginning is that print ad is expensive and not cost effective. We immediately came to another revelation which is that television is salty and even if it were affordable, most people record their shows and flip through the advertisements. But, I am writing this because we have stumbled upon FREE ADVERTISING. Not only FREE ADVERTISING but FREE ADVERTISING THAT WORKS.
Did I get your attention? I haven’t had an original thought in my head but I can see what works for others and what does not work. Here in Indianapolis, one of the largest Hardware stores is on the other side of town and they have had a radio show that has aired since I was a kid. I am an old guy and they have been airing the same old tired boring hardware show for years. We thought we would try something similar but we changed it up by making it funny, entertaining, informative, with some store branding and advertising. We came up with the Two Fat Guys Hardware Show.
We bought an hour on the radio and took some of the advertising spots and sold them to cover most of the cost of the show. Then we hit up the vendors for some co-op dollars and now we had a vehicle to talk to our customers for the better part of an hour FOR FREE. Little did we know that the talk radio venue was hot, and is “the” local radio platform, and it’s still growing rapidly – and – talk radio will be around forever. It gets better. Every radio station has to promote a show airing during the weekend, so we negotiated 30 second promotional commercials every day, as part of the deal. Now, we have FREE advertisements every weekday, which just mention the show, but actually tell our audience where we are and what we have going on at that time. You can say quite a bit in 30 seconds if you think about it. The radio show is great to explain new products or just to talk a little more about things that are not simple: like chemicals, paint, fertilizers and herbicides. As an added bonus, there are still several 30 second commercials within the body of the show that you can use for your stores promotions as well.
All I hear is how can we compete with the big boxes? They don’t have their own radio show do they? And they can’t customize to your local branding message like we can. It works. Our sales have increased dramatically. We stunned everyone when they saw how many Weber Grills we sold the first year out. All for FREE. Now the Two Fat Guys have tailored the show so it can be used in any market for your store. We have it figured out so it is easy and can be FREE. We are already doing most of the work so let us know if you are interested in finding out more by emailing me at smokey@twofatguysradio.com. Who doesn’t like free advertising that works.
