The T.O.M.A.

Report Report

How to Sell the Non-Advertiser

Hastings, MN says SPECIAL ISSUE! that doing TOMA How TOMA helps was a slam dunk! weeklies open doors Page 2 and build revenue!

PLUS! -Visit one of our upcoming seminars - Coast to coast, review our list of recent TOMA clients Page 3

Athens, Ohio- Athens County has a population of about 62,000 with a circulation of 18,000 when Ohio University is in session and 12,000 when its not. Athens is a college town that has a lot of service related businesses with medicine being the biggest employer. I founded the Athens News in 1977 at the age of 23 and have been the publisher for 28 years, says Bruce Mitchel. It started out as a weekly and presently were a twice weekly community/alternative newspaper with 6 display reps. We were introduced to TOMA 14 yreas ago through one of its former programs, A Closer Look at Yellow Page Advertising. Its worked well for us and ever since then weve been shrinking our phone books converting passive yellow page advertising dollars into creative, repetitive, name awareness building advertising. We were extremely impressed with their yellow page training program. It was unbelievable. I gure weve saved local businesses over a half million dollars a year with much of that converted over to The Athens News. A couple of years later that our TOMA rep,Tom Ludwig introduced me to a new product of theirs called TOMA. It gave me another sales opportunity with local businesses by giving me the ability to take new information to them about their standing in the minds of local consumers. So, when I call accounts that have never advertised with the Athens News, I have a wonderful opening line.Hello, my name is Bruce Mitchell, I am publisher of the Athens News I am not calling you today to sell advertising. What I am calling you about is a national company that

Best investment The Athens News ever made!

Bruce Mitchel, Pulisher / The Athens News we hired to do a survey of Athens consumers. These consumers were asked which name came to mind rst in specic business categories. The electrician category was one of those that were surveyed and your name was mentioned. Would you like to see how you ranked in the minds of local consumers versus your local competitors? The better I followed the script the better I got. We do the TOMA surveys consistantly and are able to show businesses that sign on with us that they actually do increase their Top Of Mind Awareness. I have four TOMA survey books now and next year I will have ve. We also learned how to build TOMA ads. My newspaper is full of TOMA ads but the best part is all of the non traditional advertisers. Show me a paper that has 6 attorneys advertising, 4 nancial planners, 6 individual real-estate agents and many more new advertisers all running ads in a weekly? Usually everyone would like to know what 100 people have to say about their business. It would ordinarily cost them thousands and thousands of dollars to do this kind of research that I can show them for free. Business owners are fascinated with the research because its about them and where they stand in the market place. When we show them the research they see the opportunity to capture market share. When they see who the leaders are in different business categories other than their own and that they are usually the ones who advertise the most, the light bulb goes on. TOMA is a wonderful tool! Our closure rate for a 1 year agreement is 40%. That is very high. This is very unusual but were usually closing the deal within a our rst meeting, says Mitchell.
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The rst sales call I made we converted enough money from the yellow pages to pay for half of the training program!

June 2005 - Fortieth Issue

TOMA helps Hastings Star Gazette target new customers, new revenue!
Hastings, Minnesota - Hastings is an established market, with a good solid weekly newspaper. It ts in as a part of the whole of the Twin Cities, about 20 miles south of St. Paul. Hastings economy benets by having a strong mom and pop business core with larger retail corporations such as WalMart, Target and Home Depot now starting to move in. The Hastings Star Gazette is just one part of a group of newspapers in the SE corner of the Twin Cities. I have been in the newspaper advertising business for about 15 years and all of it in Minnesota. I was a sales rep when I started then ad director and now GM for the last four years, says Ross Ulrich, of the Hastings Star Gazette. If I had any concerns when rst deciding whether to do the TOMA program, it was that I didnt think it could work with a weekly. TOMA has played a big part in how our mom and pop stores now advertise. Weekly newspapers and small dailies are so geared towards advertising for today. There is never any thought given towards tomorrow. I think what TOMA has taught us and taught our business owners is why its important to have a long-term advertising strategy, says Ulrich. We need to be positioning potential customers who maybe arent ready to buy today but will be in the future. When you do just price ads, positioning is usually never talked about. That is what TOMA does. TOMA is that type of advertising, talking more about service and quality than just prices. Our TOMA presenter, Tom Ludwig showed us the right way to sell tons of advertising, says Ulrich. Probably one of the best things about TOMA for me was the two hour sales pitch that the TOMA trainer presented to the merchants. We never seem to have that kind of time to sit in front of an account and have their total attention. That total focus, based on what TOMA is, really delivers, says Ulrich. It was great to see how many of those in our business community came up to us after the seminar and thanked us for doing this. I would have given money just for all the good will that we got from doing TOMA. Were around these people every day and its great to present something that honestly helps them!

Sales staff from left to right: Peggy Tupper, Mandy Voss, Ross Ulrich and Megan Vier

TOMA helps us target new categories and bring to us a new steam of money.

We rst began our TOMA program in November, 2004. So far weve signed $184,000 in new TOMA contracts with most of them being annuals. Id have to say that attorneys and dentists make up about half. With the rest coming from merchants that have never advertised with us before. The huge key is to get as many people as you can to the seminar and fill the room. We had such a cross section of people there. We had a bunch of chiropractors, lawyers and dentists show up. Lawyers are tough, but now we have about four signed up. Weve even been able to sell some that didnt go to the TOMA seminar. For example, there is a department store here called Clancys who since coming to the seminar have bought three TOMA ads that run in different parts of the newspaper every week. They also bought other regular sale ads. Through TOMA we made another $64,000 just from this one account. TOMA helped Clancys to nally, get it! As a weekly community newspaper, one of the real positive PR effects that TOMA has helped our newspaper with is that regular mom and pop businesses cant afford to buy radio and TV because its too expensive. Weve become the only viable choice for them. If they do choose to advertise using the TOMA principals, which should be placed often and everywhere, then it becomes a

strengthening deal for your newspaper. You cant always go into an account wanting to sell them something every week, they become skeptical. Having long-term consistent customers makes sense and its a lot easier to make budgets. We have a wiring guy who bought TOMA and works out of his house. We have a landscaper who has never done a thing with us and has been in business 10 years. He bought 6 different newspapers in the area and is running a 2 by 3 inch ad every week. Thats an eleven thousand dollar per year contract. When you go from zero dollars to $11,000, thats pretty good! I even have a car salesman who, on his own, is buying TOMA ads just to promote himself, states Ulrich. There are too many advertising sales people out there competing for the same dollars but when you can walk into a business with a TOMA survey and say; heres the survey, heres where you rank in the consumers mind and heres how we can increase your top of mind awareness. Its given our sales staff more ammunition to open doors and to develop new business and its given them more condence. TOMA is another way of handling objections and its made it much easier for us to now get appointments, says Ulrich.
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(Hastings Star Gazette continued from page 2)

We made half our revenue goal within 25 minutes of the seminar... but if you want to make TOMA really successful, invest the time and the money to keep the TOMA consultant there another day. Having that third party (TOMA representative) there is so important. We saw it in our customers faces. It made our sale easy and if that was all wed have to do, we could get rid of the sales staff and sell TOMA once a year, Ulrich said jokingly. Seriously though, as Ulrich continued, if you have a sales department that needs a little something else; if they are becoming a little stale, then this is that part of the business that TOMA does a good job with. I have to tell you, after the training its like shooting sh in a barrel. If I was to offer advice to another newspaper that may be considering doing the TOMA program, Id have to say quit looking at it as an expense, states Ulrich. Thats the way merchants look at their own advertising, when we need to be training them to look at their advertising as an investment. You will get out of it what you put in to it and more! With the success our newspaper has been having, now the Hudson, Woodbury and Cottage Grove newspapers in our group have signed up for the TOMA program and will be starting next October. Ill tell you, I may not be the greatest organizer, says Ulrich, but because their planning and execution is so good, doing TOMA was just a slam dunk! -interviewed by Doug Darroch

business categories. It showed them their problem with low name awareness but it Generally, if it is a viable business and also showed them the opportunity to gain they want to grow, a very high percentage TOMA and corresponding market share. The non-traditional advertiswill buy from us, plus ers perhaps benefited there is the PR value we TOMA is by far the my more than the traditional get from bringing infor- staffs favorite sales tool advertisers. I just sold a mation to our clients and the value of an ad campaign if they stick to lawyer last week and my research is now 2 years old. He understood TOMA users rise it, says Mitchell. So far our results to date this year are to the top. TOMA was the best training inclose to $130,000 in TOMA related business. vestment Ive ever made and it was the best Virtually 80% of this is new business. We sales tool investment Ive ever made. TOMA also share the TOMA Research with exist- Research and their program selling against ing clients with the objective to bring them the yellow pages has made our newspaper information on their own success and on more money than any other single investother businesses, to show movement in the ment Ive ever made!, says Mitchell. If I were to offer advice to another weekly market. It gives us an opportunity to offer suggestions on how to improve the market- newspaper that may be considering doing the TOMA program, I would have to say ing of their business. The rst attorney that we sold has caused prepare to train your people. If you train at least 4 others to see the survey material your people properly and follow the TOMA and its having a snow ball affect. So I say training materials as instructed, you will be to them, If I am able to run an add for you successful! - interviewd by Doug Darroch once a week, I can give you 1.4 million sales impressions over the course of a year. That usually works! Advertising is not rocket science, it is repetition, quotes Mitchell. The TOMA program is a tremendous door opener for accounts that have never advertised and never seen the need to advertise. Its helped get us through the door and helped us sell non-traditional advertisers on the need for repetitive, long-term, name awareness advertising. TOMA is the best single door opener I have ever seen! The local merchants were very interested on how they ranked in the survey by consumers and many were surprised how few people mentioned them rst in their own
(The Athens News continued from page 1)

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