Adventures with lyrical - buying a business

Aetos said:

What kind of ROI do you expect out of a campaign? I"m sure you"ve calculated all the points and what not.

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Looks like I"ll be running 3 spots a week during rush on NPR @$500 a month, and I"ll be sponsoring the weather on Conservative talk during rush three times a day ($10 a spot), and then run three spots a week during Rush Limbaugh ($50 a spot). Limbaugh is the highest rated show they have. Total radio budget wlll be $1700 a month, that"s fine, all I need is to generate three calls a day, our average job is $700, we close half of every customer we bid a job on, so its $14-20 k a month sales I am hoping for. We"ll see how it goes.

I could care less about ideology, I want the college educateds with income. First NPR spot is in an hour, still working on negotiating with the conservative station, and will need to cut some creative.

Jalynfane said:

Are you planning on tracking your close % from the radio spots separately from your other lines of advertising?

Did they charge you production fees or did you supply everything?

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We track where our calls come from, as well as our % close for each media source. And yeah, by far our close rate is much higher for repeat/referral than anything else. People that have used us know we will do the job right.

NPR, since its a non-profit, has very specific rules for advertising (like no calls to action), and the announcer reads every spot. For conservative radio, they know that most small businesses don"t want to drop $1k on production costs, so I"ll have them do the ad in-house (they offer it for free), but with alot of input from me. I don"t want to fit a cookie cutter ad they use for everyone, ad doesn"t go forward unless I approve it.

So, I"ve never done TV or radio, but I"ve known of business owners who are paranoid that the station is screwing them by not playing their spots. Lo and behold, the first radio spot didn"t get played. Ive been arguing with NPR all morning, they claim that everyone signed off on the ad as done, yet I heard with my own ears it wasn"t on. Thankfully, since it was our first time on the radio, we had the whole thing on camcorder and send them the video with a timestamp.

Moral of the story, look over your schedule and listen or watch, because people get screwed and/or mistakes happen.

opiate82 said:

It"s not like the radio-station doesn"t also have tape, but the camcorder more shows that you are paying attention. When it comes to a "time stamp" pretty much short of verifying your longitude and latitude and then compare that with the position of the sun in the sky anything can be tampered.

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Timestamp is not the issue. What is the issue is that we were supposed to be on when they switched between certain segments, and that is what has made them crap their pants. Sadly, I think stuff like this goes on alot. They"ve told me they"ll air a make up spot here in 30 mins, and we"ll go from there.

Lyrical said:

Timestamp is not the issue. What is the issue is that we were supposed to be on when they switched between certain segments, and that is what has made them crap their pants. Sadly, I think stuff like this goes on alot. They"ve told me they"ll air a make up spot here in 30 mins, and we"ll go from there.

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ROFL, they did the make up anouncement and the announcer read it like someone stuck a broomstick up his ass. I thought it was just me imagining things, then two of my employees called me and said that he sounded stressed and like he was on crack. He signed off certifying that he read it yesterday, I called him a liar, and the station"s been on his ass all day. He had three or four managers sitting their glaring at him in the booth while he read the announcement.

Cathan said:

My uncle runs his own mobile home set up business and finding good help is a serious pain in the ass. Seems like that"s true for ALL manual labor jobs imo. If in cutting expenses you cut staff in the winter how do you maintain loyalty among your staff and get them to work hard?

My uncle did a lot to take care of the good employees he had when work slowed down so they stayed on and were there to help make money when work picked back up.

Are you only cutting like part time help or do you lay off permanent staff in the slow periods?

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I"ve cut non-payroll expenses about 7k a month, I"ve hardly ever laid off a good worker (FT or PT) due to Winter yet. Part of it is the kindness of my heart, part of it is that we give great customer service, and its hard to do that if the workers think they"ll be laid off in a few months.

The one Winter where I lost 100k paying everyone, I wish I could change. I talked to the previous owner who said he wouldn"t have been that generous, and he was known for its generosity. Most Winters we lose 20-40k, I"m thinking that at 40k in the red, I need to consider laying off. But I"ve got some new marketing initiatives out there that I"m hoping will pay off with more sales in the Winter.

All you can do is hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

LikeTheWhirlwind said:

My dad works for a irrigation company and they close down during the winter and most of the workers just claim seasonal unemployment (some do snow removal, etc). Something you"ve ever considered or does it just not work this way in your state?

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The problem is like someone else said, in some states, your unemployment stays high no matter how soon your laid off employee gets work. Last time I called, I would get nicked $300 a month for two years for each employee laid off, even if he picked up work the next day. States are so overbudget on unemployment that they do this crap. In some states, you are better off blocking unemployment. Example, I hire a guy, he doesn"t do good work, I let him work one day, technically, I"m out $7k on a guy I paid a little over a hundred bucks to.

Eomer said:

That"s fucked. Here Employment Insurance rates are basically just a payroll tax. The company pays some, the employee pays some. The rates are set based upon salary, with an upper limit. There"s no adjustment of rates for either the employer or employee based upon hiring/employment history.

If a company is laying people off, it likely means they"re already in trouble. Then you compound that with higher employment insurance rates? That"s assbackwards, and incentivizes inefficiency.

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Its really screwed up, and I remember the first time I laid someone off and called the state, I was pissed off to the highest of pisstivity. You really have to check out references and stuff before you hire, a guy working for the company for one day could cost you thousands. The one thing that is the saving grace is that if they violate company policy, or quit, they can"t draw. So if I put in the employee handbook that we work weekends for emergency work, and a guy doesn"t show, he gets nothing. Also, a no-show is considered a quit. The other day, one of our guys backed into a customer"s mailbox, and got into a verbal fight with my Foreman, and didn"t show up to work (all over a $20 repair). These guys are shocked when they don"t show up to work, or show up to work late, find out they are laid off, file for unemployment, and then the state denies them.

Like another poster said in this thread, unemployment is so screwed up here, that you better document everything, and find a policy they"ve broken. You could very easilty find yourself with an unemployment insurance bill of 10k or more at the end of the year (if just three people leave) and the bad news is that this goes on for multiple years.