No single form of advertising is right for all ISP businesses in every market. But billboards, referral programs, and talk radio are very cost-effective media for ISP marketing.

by Brock Henderson Brock Henderson & Associates [April 1, 2002]

A common question that independent ISP businesses ask is "What's the best form of advertising?" For ISPs the answer is three-fold:

1. Billboards
2. Referral programs
3. Talk radio

Obviously each medium has its own advantages and disadvantages depending on your market area, target customer profile, and of course, how your marketing plan is executed.

Let's take a moment and review success stories of each medium.

Billboards
Some ISP's love them and some hate them, but clearly billboards can be very effective at bringing new subscribers to your ISP business when done properly.

Location is the first factor for any business considering buying a billboard. But often, in order to get one good billboard location, you have to purchase four or five less attractive locations. If the billboard companies didn't sell their advertising space this way, they would end up with a lot of unsold inventory, which for them is unacceptable. Just remember, it is usually less expensive for you to buy an outdoor advertiser's package plan, than to try and buy just one of their prime billboard locations.

When deciding what ISP marketing message to put on a billboard, please remember that drivers have traffic around them and may be going 65 MPH on the expressway, which leaves them about one second to read your sign. Drivers aren't going to pull over to the side of the freeway and back up to read your sign, so your message has to be quick and easy for them to read. Keep your ISP marketing message short, simple and memorable.

For example, I've recently seen several excellent billboards from a religious organization that generated quite a buzz on the local broadcast news and radio talk shows. The billboards were very simple, with black with white lettering (top left).

Most of the billboard messages contained only one brief sentence, but made a powerful message, like our second example (bottom left).

It has been months since I've seen these billboards, yet the messages remain with me today. This is just the kind of staying power you want to build into your ISP marketing messages on billboards.

Referral programs
Talk is cheap, or at least cheaper than conventional advertising. The great thing about referral programs is that the subscriber comes to you pre-sold. All you have to do is sign them up to hook them up. The more challenging part of a building referral program is motivating your customers to talk about your ISP business. You customers have busy lives, jobs and all of life's little problems to deal with. Recruiting new subscribers for your ISP business is not one of your customer's top priorities.

Many ISPs reward customers for bringing news customers to your fold. Most offer a one-month service credit for each customer referred. This can be relatively effective, up to a point. If a customer only needs to refer two individuals a month to have their Internet service paid for each month by referral credits, then typically your ISP would get two referrals a month. But if you up the ante and start paying your customer cash after the first two referrals, a motivated customer will go get the first two referrals and then push him to get more.

A few of your customers will turn into super-stars and need to be encouraged with gifts in addition to the cash. T-shirts are great because then your customer becomes a walking billboard for you, too. Baseball caps, mouse pads and gift certificates also make good customer referral rewards. You might also consider some sort of trophy for the customer who refers the most new business your way in the year. Take them, and their family, out to eat at their favorite restaurant and present the award to them at dinner. Come on now, if they've gone out of their way to bring you 40 or 50 customers in a year, can't you make the extra effort to spring for dinner and a gift?

There is one caveat to consider. You might need to set limits as to how many new users any one customer can refer over a period of time, unless you don't mind giving away a year's worth of Internet access for the additional business. Just remember to send them a bill each month showing their zero balance so they know they are getting their referral rewards—and your monthly ISP marketing message too!

Talk radio
Talk radio advertising is much more effective than entertainment or music-based radio advertising for a very simple reason—the style of listener.

Music radio is typically passive listening, where some attention is being paid to the music but not a lot. A favorite song comes on and the listeners' ears perk up, but when commercials or other non-music announcements are being broadcast, listener's tune out the banter along with your ISP marketing message.

However, listeners tuned into a talk radio station actively listen to what is being said. When a commercial comes on, listeners don't adjust their concentration efforts to disengage from listening, so listeners actively hear your ISP marketing message and the likelihood of earning a favorable response from talk radio listeners is increased.

When I was with IgLou Internet, we tested talk radio against other radio station formats and found that talk radio, outperformed the other stations nearly two-to-one. Except for the promotion code, the radio advertisements were virtually identical. But the ads running during the Rush Limbaugh Show generated almost 70 percent of our new subscriber sign-ups. This is far too significant a marketing test result to ignore.

No single form of advertising is right for all ISP businesses in every market. But billboards, referral programs, and talk radio are very cost-effective media for ISP marketing. Try them and see for yourself, then tell me about your results.

—End