Advertising Agency (Products & Services)
Products & Services
Overview of Product
BlueIsland's featured product will be an Internet website dedicated to being a "one-stop" advertising exchange for buyers and sellers of advertising spots. BlueIsland.com's provides a way for buyers and sellers to make more efficient decisions, thereby reducing transaction costs. BlueIsland's first stage rollout will be dedicated to reaching the highly fragmented buyers and sellers of advertising space in the $17.7 billion radio sector.
Product Architecture
BlueIsland.com will be an attractive, easy-to-use, and informative website designed to make each user's experience familiar and enjoyable. The site will be divided into two sections: buyers and sellers. The main page will showcase BlueIsland.com's value to customers, offer a news corner with articles and current events in the radio advertising industry, a demonstration site, a membership option, partner information, company information, and BlueIsland.com advertisers. The user will then have the opportunity to enter into their relevant area.
Membership
To access free basic services, BlueIsland.com visitors will be invited to join as members and complete a brief membership form. If interested in becoming a qualified buyer or seller of advertising space, members will be asked to complete a brief financial information form and authorize governing terms and conditions. This process will enable BlueIsland.com to establish a direct deposit account with the buyers' or sellers' financial institution. In addition to basic services, buyers can obtain access to value-added products and services, like competitive analysis or ad monitoring, on a cost per transaction basis.
Radio Station Services & Benefits
Services
The seller portion of the website will contain information particular to the needs and interests of radio stations. Those who have registered their station with BlueIsland.com will be presented with a customized home page with information particular to their individual station. They will have the ability to select from the following options:
Radio Station Data—The radio sales manager will edit and update the stations' descriptive information, including advertising space, times, radio promotions, advertising rates, and discount packages.
Online Sales Calendar—This service will allow radio sales agents to update the availability of spots for sale through BlueIsland.com. Once a spot is sold through BlueIsland.com, it will be immediately removed from the market. This will provide a real-time snapshot of available spots for sales agents. A station will also be able to view the schedule of sold spots by parameters like times, industry, and buyer demographics.
Promote Special Offerings—This option provides radio stations the ability to send special promotional offerings to target BlueIsland.com customers. These could include discounted sales of unsold spots or other promotional packages. The sales manager will be able to target these ads to particular individual clients that have purchased in the past or to customers who fit a certain profile or to all BlueIsland buyers. Those requesting mass broadcast will require the approval of BlueIsland staff before transmission.
Reporting—BlueIsland will provide the radio stations the opportunity to obtain a wealth of information about their customers and their purchasing habits. For example, a sales manager will be able to obtain demographic and purchasing data about the types of companies purchasing their ads. BlueIsland will also provide reports on numbers of "matches" their station's profile met, the frequency of purchases resulting through BlueIsland, and other information about their clients and competition.
Benefits
Radio stations will enjoy significant advantages by accessing a third online sales channel, including: sales cost savings, access to new customers, free marketing, customer research, and real-time radio buying trends.
Cost Savings: BlueIsland.com will also enable radio sales managers to reduce their cost of sales and administrative costs, which currently represents 28 percent of sales. Typically, a radio station has a small sales staff to field calls from potential customers, answer questions about demographic profiles the station reaches, create various potential rate plans, and many other additional administrative duties. By listing this information with BlueIsland.com, they will not have to constantly field requests that can usually be answered on their information section of the website. Typically, the sales staff is engaged in a constant relay of faxing and phone calls in order to secure a single sale, causing the cost of customer acquisition to be unnecessarily high. A common problem is a sales manager's ability to screen out good leads from possible "information hunters."
Valuable Customer Data & Analysis: BlueIsland.com allows stations to gather better information about their specific and potential customers. Since all buyers utilizing the system will register with their business specific information, radio stations can better understand their customers' and non-customers' needs and buying habits. As a result, the radio station can respond quickly to opportunities and threats. This information, which is currently not systematically collected, will prove valuable market data for the radio station's competitive marketplace.
New Market Opportunities: Radio stations will be able to quickly react to market demands by changing their prices, offering promotional packages, and offering discounts for unsold ad space. Radio stations can trace purchase histories of their past clients and promote appropriate promotional packages to a much more targeted market. Due to the timeliness required of this disposable commodity, this savings in efficiency could ensure a station from losing revenues from unsold space. In addition, the 24-hour availability and borderless reach of the Internet will enable radio stations to access a much wider range of customers than ever before. Also, because BlueIsland.com's search function provides buyers with stations that meet the customer's needs, BlueIsland.com is helping to drive new buyers to the radio stations.
Free Marketing: Finally, BlueIsland.com will promote the radio advertising industry through a nationwide educational advertising campaign. Participating radio stations listed on the website will benefit from BlueIsland.com's promotion and capital investment.
Buyer Services & Benefits
Services
Buyers will be presented with a user interface that is customized to meet their needs. Buyers will also enjoy the following services and benefits:
Research Stations—Buyers can conduct research using the BlueIsland radio station database. Buyers can search by several criteria including station demographics, price (average cost per spot), specific region or city, listener reach, music format, and other criteria important in making purchasing decisions. The search will result in a listing of all station matching the criteria and the customer will be able to select stations they wish to continue using for further research. In addition, buyers will be able to select "value-added" research like competitive analysis (What is my competitor doing?) and niche customer segments (Help me reach the online customer).
Plan Campaign—Buyers will begin to plan their media campaign, selecting specific radio stations, availability, cost data, and discounts as parameters. A buyer can create a variety of different customized ad campaigns or select one of BlueIsland.com's prepackaged options. Ultimately, a buyer can save this campaign to buy later or they can execute a "buy." If a buyer decides to buy, they enter into the buy phase of the service.
Buy Media—This option gives the media buyer a fully functioning transaction center to actually purchase ad spots. After selecting the options, a buyer can proceed to "check out" or close the deal. To complete a transaction, the media buyer must have verified financial information linked to their membership. Once a purchase is made, the buyer's account will be debited for the amount of purchase and will receive an invoice and confirmation number. The spots purchased will also be immediately removed from sale on the exchange. An e-mail notification will then be generated and transmitted to both the buyer and seller, confirming the transaction.
Create My Spot®—A buyer will be provided the option to build their ad online. Specific packages and prices will be offered as alternatives to using traditional production houses. A variety of example voices will be available for a user to choose from to build their ad. After submitting the copy of the ad text, BlueIsland will create a selection of three digital ads for the buyer and make it available for review online. A buyer can select from the ad online and submit it to BlueIsland.com for final delivery to the radio station.
Client History—The buyer will have the opportunity to track past schedules and purchases made with BlueIsland.com. A ROI calculator will provide the ability to observe actual benefits of advertising on the radio and include estimates of cost savings achieved by using BlueIsland.com's service.
Monitor My Ads®—This value-added service enables buyers to monitor whether a radio station actually executes the correct ad "on the air." This is a valuable service among the small business market and is currently not offered by a traditional advertising agency.
Benefits
BlueIsland.com provides buyers tremendous advantages over the conventional methods of procuring ad space. The most substantial of these benefits has to be the efficiency and time saved in the process.
Increase Advertising Cost-Effectiveness: Through BlueIsland's search engine, a potential buyer will be able to better screen and target those stations that enable them to reach their market. This will increase the cost-effectiveness of advertising expenditures.
Convenience: A buyer will be able to search all radio station information including demographics, reach, and pricing at the click of a mouse. Typically, a business seeking to find information about particular radio stations would have to call every station they have an interest in purchasing space from. Through BlueIsland.com, they will not have to contact every station or purchase a costly database to evaluate the demographic profile, reach, and pricing structure of radio stations. All of this information will be provided in a convenient easy-to-use place. This will greatly reduce the amount of faxing and phone calls necessary to make a purchasing decision. In addition, BlueIsland.com serves as an account manager and repeat buyers can access their client history to simply repeat the past purchases for a future campaign.
Discounts & Buying Power: BlueIsland.com aggregates the buying power of small businesses and provides and automatic 10 percent discount below market rates, a benefit reserved primarily for major companies. Potential buyers will receive notification of ad sales and other promotions the radio stations are offering. This will enable customers with smaller advertising budgets to take advantage of opportunities to advertise at discounted rates.
Independent Information: BlueIsland.com also allows those new to this medium of advertising to learn more about the potential of radio. Many of the businesses that may want to advertise on the radio are simply not educated in the language or process of actually securing ad space. BlueIsland will allow a new potential customer the ability to educate themselves, screen potential markets, get costing estimates, and become more informed in general about the powerful nature of radio advertising.
Expansion Opportunities
BlueIsland.com will be able to expand its operations in the following ways:
- Targeting new customer markets
- Selling other advertising media, such as TV, print, Internet, and billboards
- Transmission of final ad spots to and from buyers and sellers
- Joint ventures with small business software packages such as QuickBooks to further integrate the back end process of the buyers and sellers
