Media Made Easy W/ Charleston Media Solutions

We kick off a new media series with John Hakim from Charleston Media Solutions and get brutally clear on what local marketing needs to do: make people want you, find you, and choose you. We break down why generic ads and vanity metrics fail and how stronger storytelling keeps you in front of buyers until they act. 
• shifting from products to people in marketing strategy 
• why radio works differently than it did five years ago 
• building simple top of funnel messaging that sparks search 
• focusing on qualified searchers instead of raw clicks 
• understanding the messy middle and why retargeting matters 
• using stage-based storytelling instead of one generic message 
• “never abandon the buyer” as the campaign mindset 
• the four actions ads should drive: call, click, walk in, keep searching 
• previewing upcoming topics like media buying and budget breakdowns 
listeners, if you have questions, please comment on any of the social medias, send us emails or whatever. CharlestonMediaSolutions.com

How can Charleston businesses get noticed, found and chosen? The Charleston Marketing Podcast, brought to you by Charleston AMA and recorded at Charleston Media Solutions, answers the marketing and media questions local business owners are asking. We explore media buying, advertising budgets, radio, digital marketing, storytelling and the customer journey, with practical strategies for growing your business in today’s attention economy. CharlestonMediaSolutions.com

South Carolina Research Authority (SCRA) is a public, nonprofit organization that fuels South Carolina’s innovation economy by supporting technology-based startups, academic research, and industry partnerships. Through funding, coaching, and its investment arm SC Launch, SCRA helps early-stage companies grow, commercialize ideas, and scale within the state’s key innovation sectors.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Welcome to the Charleston Marketing Podcast, brought to you by the Charleston AMA and broadcasting from our friends at Charleston Media Solutions Studios. From business and art to hospitality and tech, these movers and shakers choose to call the low country home. So what's their story? Let's find out together.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

We're here at the Charleston Media Solutions, the Charleston Marketing Podcast, and our listeners have a ton of questions about media. What it is, what a media buyer is, how where to spend their money. What I want this series of episodes to do is cover everything and all those questions. So, listeners, if you have questions, please comment on any of the social medias, send us

Welcome And The Media Questions

SPEAKER_01 1:13

emails or whatever. But we're going to cover some topics that include what, John?

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Well, if you're talking about the simplicity of what I do, maybe not it's not necessarily simple, but the strategy of what we employ here is simply I advise and guide local businesses on how to get people to want them, find them, and then ultimately choose them. Okay. Right? So that's the basis of everything I do. Um I really no longer focus on the products that can get people there, but more on the people that that we want to be wanted,

Getting Wanted Found Chosen

SPEAKER_00 1:54

found, and chosen.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

How long did it take you to get to that? That sounds like a learned process right there.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Well, we changed our name from Charleston Radio Group to Charleston Media Solutions about two years ago now, where again the focus was more on the people and less on all the cool things that our radio stations could do. Okay. Right. You know, we had to look ourselves in the mirror and really kind of come to the realization that radio, as strong as a medium that it is and been around for a hundred years, doesn't work the same way it worked even five years ago. Um radio only and always will lead to someone searching you out to to do their own due diligence and research on you and check your reviews and find your phone number and your address and all stuff you don't necessarily want in your messaging and advertising. Right. You want to really paint the picture of you know what problems you're gonna solve and and what the experience of your next customer is gonna be with you versus you know all the things that you can sell them. Right. So that is probably the biggest change over the last couple of years for for us and and how we try to keep this ever-evolving media landscape simple to navigate for local business owners. Because at the end of the day, no local business owner got into their field to say, one day I want to be a great marketer. It's kind of a necessary evil that you you need to do, so you might as well do it efficiently and effectively and not just be throwing bad money after bad money.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Right. It needs to do something. Right. Well, we're gonna talk about that money part of it later on.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

But what are what are the other services now that we're including uh with our well we have three there's a there's a million tactics and services and platforms you can use to identify and and generate leads and ultimately gain new customers. We try to keep it very simple. You have to have some top of the funnel advertising, messaging to emotionally connect with people and grab their attention and convince them that you are gonna solve their problems and and and provide what they're looking for. When you convince them of that, that'll

A Simple Funnel For Local Ads

SPEAKER_00 4:16

inspire them to go searching you out. Um and when they do go search you out, like we know right now, and there's a you know, there's a lot of talk about AI and all these other tools, but right now Google is the main search engine, yeah. So you gotta be in Google and you you have to they have to be able to find the message that inspired them to go searching for you in the first place. And I think uh a uh a pitfall that some local businesses fall into is they're focused on just the number of clicks or the number of of unique visitors or traffic to their website, and they're not really focused on highly qualified searchers, like people that want to buy now, right? Um that was all good and fun and dandy a couple of years ago. You were ahead of the times if you were doing that, but everybody's playing in that arena now, you know. But we call it the messy middle. Uh that when you tip that um hourglass over and you do click on someone's website, it alerts everybody else. Yeah. And and then it's just a race to the finish line of who can you know re-engage and re-invite them with aggressive and persuasive messages to let them know you're ready to help them now. So there's a ton of shiny bells and whistles and all sorts of funky new products that can do this and track that and and garner this many

The Messy Middle And Retargeting

SPEAKER_00 5:38

clicks, but at the end of the day, that's that's not the finish line. The finish line is getting them to actually walk into your store, uh, click on your website and fill out a form fill, call you uh on your phone, or if they get distracted and busy, just continue to search for you more often than they search for your competitors?

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Of course, of course. So then really you're you're saying storyline, isn't it? Isn't it a human people storyline connection? And and and how much do you see in your world that businesses are doing wrong? And how can you help uh kind of navigate those storylines to get those conversions?

SPEAKER_00 6:19

You nailed it, Mike. Um I I I think people have got away from telling their story and they've and they've gone to a a laundry list of of the products and services they have to offer and and and what they cost, and and I think the focus uh needs to be shifted strictly

Storytelling That Tracks The Buyer

SPEAKER_00 6:39

on the people versus the product that engage the people. So I think that's the maybe the biggest pitfall that uh local businesses are falling into is uh really telling their story, not to a mass audience, but to uh directly to their next customer. Like talk directly to the person, not a group. Right. Um and and with the tools we have now, with you know, display and targeting and retargeting, I could speak directly to that person that I'm following through the journey, which is where the storytelling should come in. The story is a little different at the top of the funnel versus the story at the bottom of the funnel when you're trying to get somebody to um connect with you at the top, you're trying to get them to choose you at the bottom. So if you're running, you know, vanilla evergreen generic messaging throughout your entire campaign, you're gonna miss the boat.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

So, what would you tell aspiring professionals the key to success in the sales industry and what you've got going on? Like know your prospects, client hero, like who their next customer is. That that that is all they need to do. Who their next customer is, don't ever ever abandon the buyer, don't push products, talk people and engagement. I'm actually this is the interns, Emily, the intern's question right here. Super smart. What what what did you say to that?

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Never abandon the buyer. That that is kind of our motto around here now is never abandon the buyer. Every conversation and every action that um a potential customer takes um is the focus of your marketing and advertising. It should be on the people that you are trying to convert to your next customer, not the shiny bells and whistles and tactics that could assist you in identifying them and moving them through the funnel. Right. Um so focus on the person and focus on the story on getting them to take the actions that you want them to take. At the end of the day, if someone sees your billboard or your TV commercial, your radio commercial, your digital ad, they're gonna take one of four actions. Yeah. Um they're gonna pick up the phone and call you, they're gonna click on your website and or your social media and check you out, they're gonna walk into your storefront because there's still a ton of businesses that have storefronts, or they're gonna search for you, continue to search for you until they're ready to make that buy-in decision. We lit right now, and this, you know, I don't know if you know Rheta from In the Black, but I still this I steal this from her, where she says, right now, business owners and we're all living in the attention economy. Like, how can you grab somebody's attention, hold their attention, and walk them through the consumer journey through telling your story at different points of their journey to let them know that you can help them right now. And that's where you tell them that you're local and you've been here 50 years and you got great staff. Um but if there's with that answer, I would just be focused on the people. Never abandon the buyer. The the the like we have a picture of for each one of our accounts on who that buyer is. Uh-huh. And every conversation and every tactic and every promotion and everything we put together that's part of the marketing campaign is with that person in our our mindset on how to move them through, yeah, move them through the journey.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Yeah. So what we're gonna do, John, is we're gonna have episodes. This is the teaser, this is the intro episode here, John. You didn't know that, did you? We're gonna have episodes that talk about what does a media buyer actually do? Or where should Charleston businesses spend their marketing dollars? Uh, do radio ads still work? Like these are all different episodes we're gonna talk about. Um, budget breakdowns, and we're gonna talk to Nikki and we're gonna talk to Alex maybe. We'll talk to you again, John. Uh, and we're gonna just rotate you guys through this kind of journey with these different episodes, helping our listeners with

The Upcoming Media Buying Series

SPEAKER_01 10:57

their media. What do you think about that, John?

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Uh Mike, I we've talked about this. I think it's great that you get the perspective of everybody on on our side, the the client services side, that touches that journey. Yeah. Including our media advisors that are out there bringing our philosophy and our strategy to local businesses, but how also our programming uh folks, our program directors and our on air talent and how they are talking to and engaging um with their listeners. Um so you know, you ask in there is like, does radio still work right? Like any media works if you do it right. Um and I'll be the first to say that radio kind of got away from what was really powerful for us as we were, you know, your best friend that came out of the speaker. Right. Um we stopped talking to the listener. We our commercials uh have become generic. Um sometimes our content is a little vanilla. And we are practicing what we preach on really figuring out what our listeners, what our clients want, yeah, and and give them specifically that, not just a blanket of stuff we think they might be interested in.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Right. Well, it's all about the needs, definitely. And it's all about asking the questions every Charleston business owner wants answered on the marketing side. And that's what we're gonna do. So thanks, John. Thanks, Mike. Yeah, that wasn't so hard, was it, Mike? It wasn't that hard. Um we were uh talking to John Hakeem. I want to say Hakeem. Why can't I say Hakeem? It's Hakeem.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

People call me Hakeem, they call me Hakem, they call me Johnny. I got a lot of names.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Oh, I just heard John John. I'm not gonna use John John's. That's just me though. But uh, anyways, John, uh what's your title here? I'm the director of sales. The director of sales.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Everybody's assistant.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Everybody's assistant. Does all uh good guy, good friend, and and works for a great company here at CMS. So thank you for your time and your sponsorship role here at the Charleston Marketing Podcast. Thanks, Mike. And uh I look forward to doing these episodes with you, Bon. It'll be fun. All right, listeners. We'll talk to you

John Hakeem’s Role And Closing

SPEAKER_01 13:20

soon. Thanks.