Yesterday I attended a presentation put on by TOMA and the New Mexican, our local newspaper. TOMA was the presenter and must get credit for this summary, allowing for my commentary and presuming I got the salient points right. As a business broker, it seems very good information for the business owner who some day wants to sell their business and make the most money doing so.
TOMA does surveys in various cities and partners with the newspaper in finding and assisting advertisers in raising their percent of the population recognition, followed by share of sales and profit.
The basic premise is that there is typically room for only two leaders in any category, Coke and Pepsi in the cola category (likely internationally,) Walgreens and CVS in Santa Fe for pharmacy, etc. In many categories in Santa Fe there is no leader, e.g. who does nails.
It is really never okay to not want more business. If one does nothing to gain business, others will be working to gain share, and eventually business will be sliding away from the inattentive owner.
The way to gain business is to take business from others and gain the business from those potential customers who have not yet had a need and have not declared who to buy from.
TOMA’s solution for this is constant advertising on radio or in the newspaper. The radio has advantage because a story can be told and a jingle sung, both very memorable. However because of the broad number of stations necessary to capture a broad audience, it is likely much more expensive than the newspaper.
The ad one places in the newspaper need not be large. It must be clean with few messages, your name plus one clear statement, perhaps a visual and your phone and website.
This is a very brief summary but one worth remembering. (see a subsequent blog post about another TOMA related concept)
Note: TOMA is not so infatuated with the Internet but I found their site at TOMA.com.
