TV Advertising: Linear or Streaming? | Ryan Sheehy

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simplifi TV. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Ryan Sheehy, Director of Digital Training and Strategy at Townsquare Media, Northern New England. He has over 18 years of leadership, sales, and marketing experience. He has worked in markets such as Buffalo, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts, and some of his passions include family, sports and movies. He currently resides in New Hampshire with his wife and three children. Ryan, thanks for joining us. Ryan Sheehy: Thank you for having me, David. David McBee: All right, so your agency does both traditional and digital, right? Ryan Sheehy: Yep. Yeah. A little bit of everything. David McBee: Great. So I want to ask you what role you believe traditional advertising plays in our digital world? Ryan Sheehy: Yeah, I think it's an important one. It was a big reason why I actually came to this company that I work for. I've worked at other organizations where we didn't really have those megaphone platforms, so to speak, to be able to blast from the rooftops about the clients that we're working with. And as I've dove into it over the years, I've learned that it has a major impact on a lot of the digital things that we can do out there. I've always equated it to the Home Depots of the world. Why do they still have TV and radio and those traditional media types? You hear a commercial, you can see the visuals of that company. But then when you look at it on a local level for a lot of the types of advertisers that we're talking to, it boils down to building that brand equity, trustworthiness and making sure that you are that recognizable. That and even in better scenario, maybe they are getting directly searched by name at that point. I've talked to businesses over the years that funnel a lot of their funds into search directly. And I always think about if you have company B doing that, company A who does radio, TV, social media, display ads, whatever it might be, on a surface level, you look at a consumer perspective when they see those companies in a search result, who is going to be more trustworthy and recognizable? Who's going to have more brand equity in the marketplace? I've always believed that the answer's fairly simple there. So I think traditional media when it's done right with the right kind of frequency, it can have a major impact on those things and make your investment into the other parts, like search as an example, go a lot further. Everyone's always looking at ROI, return on ad spend, whatever you want to call it. If you truly want to make sure your investment is going far, you need to be investing wholeheartedly into the, I know this is probably another topic we're going to talk about, but full funnel. How are you building a consumer journey in the marketplace with your marketing? Have to- David McBee: All right. Well let's just shift right into that full funnel conversation. How do you do that? Ryan Sheehy: That is a million-dollar question. I think under, and obviously budgets. I'm not naive to think that budgets don't come into play and you have to sometimes pick apart the things that you're able to do based on the budget you have access to, I understand that. But as much of a diversified media plan as you can have, I think putting it all into search is not the answer. I think any one solution by itself, and I've always posed this question to others when I'm talking about this. Does anyone media, TV, streaming TV, social media, search, does anything have a hundred percent mind share? The answer is obviously no. People don't spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week on, especially search engines. If you're using it right, you should be on it for 10, 15 seconds and moving on to whatever you're looking for. So to me, full funnel has always been whatever you can afford having a strong mix in. If that means traditional types like TV and radio, yeah, I think there's a right way to do those things. I think you need to make sure that you're aligning yourself with the right demographics and geographies that make sense for your business. But they also have a major impact on the other digital aspects of what you can be utilizing. So to me, it's literally just having a strong medium mix across all the different devices and things that we as consumers have access to today. David McBee: All right. So since we're talking digital and linear advertising or traditional advertising, what do you say to an advertiser when they want to do TV? Should they do linear TV or should they do streaming TV? Ryan Sheehy: I mean, again, budget's going to come into that. But I think if you could afford to do both, a medium mix is very complimentary to one another. My household hasn't had a cable box in it for over five years. Do I watch some aspects of traditional TV even through streaming platforms like your standard channel four, channel five access for football and other stuff? Yeah. News once in a while, not the way I used to, but still once in a while I do. And then I have other platforms that are the free services that our kids watch TV and we get commercial content too. But then you take the next person household over and they still have a cable box. So I don't think, again, going back to not one of these platforms has 100% mind share. I think having the mix, if you can afford to do it, is always going to be more impactful than just honing in on streaming TV or just traditional TV. People bounce around and attention spans are shorter than they've ever been, and I don't think it's because humanity is getting dumber. Some might debate that, but I think it's because we have access 24 hours a day, seven days a week to these devices. I got a tablet and my laptop while we're doing this call. I think we have greater access than we've ever had. If you can afford to be diversified, it's always going to be a stronger play than just putting your eggs into one basket. David McBee: So, that's kind of your big message, isn't it? Full funnel, digital, traditional, as much as you can afford to get into as many places as you can get? Ryan Sheehy: I believe it in my bones. It's tough because do I have hard facts, I looked at Google Analytics or I had this report that told me these answers? Not necessarily. I think looking at multiple assets of reporting that we always have access to, whether it's Google Analytics or platform analytics, depending on the platform you're utilizing, I think there's always a story that you can learn from. I have seen a partner of ours that had been doing radio advertising that took a brief pause for a period of time, see their brand name start to diminish and pay per click advertising. That's not coincidence. Success leaves clues and that was a major one. That was a big tell. Now granted, this client was very happy with what they're doing, very busy, but it's something that we took a mental note of and we're monitoring, but it was correlation to making a change in your marketing strategy, your full funnel plan that you previously had. You can see those things. You can look at Google Analytics and see your organic and direct traffic diminishing when you stop some of those platforms. So I think there's always something to look for, but you can get too granular with some of that, as we've talked about in the past. I think it's what is the storytelling me? Don't just look at one thing. What are the moving parts combined and what is the things that we can learn from this to get better as well? David McBee: That reminds me of a quick story I'll just share. In Google Analytics, you've got to know what to look for. I remember we ran this wonderful display campaign for an advertiser and she just wasn't sure if it was working or not. We looked in Google Analytics and previous to the campaign, her name, her business name was like her 190th most popular keyword. And then after running the campaign, her business name was her third most popular keyword that drove traffic to her website. And I just had to explain to her what that meant and how powerful the display ad campaign actually was. Ryan Sheehy: You're making yourself more searchable in the marketplace by your name, not by the products and services that you, which you also want to be known for. I don't disagree with that. But the dream is to be Home Depot. You know when you hear that music play, you picture that orange color in the background, whether you're seeing it or not. Those things have an impact. Whether we want to believe it or not, they do. And I've seen it in some of the stuff that you're talking about. Absolutely. David McBee: Absolutely is right. All right. Before I let you go, do you have a book that you'd like to recommend? Ryan Sheehy: I have to say my favorite for a while has been anything Simon Sinek, currently reading Leaders Eat Last. I don't know if you're familiar with that one or not. I just love his perspective because I don't think it's necessarily widely adopted in our, in any industry for that matter. It's about putting others first, which I've always been a big believer in being educational, informational and helping others, which I take very seriously from a consultative perspective. I've read Start With Why, Find Your Why. There's a bunch that he has that are outstanding. He has TED Talks, but Leaders Eat Last is the one that I'm eating right now, eating, reading right now, and it's phenomenal. It's great perspective on just being in these kind of roles and leadership roles. David McBee: Perfect. I'll put a link to it in our show notes. Ryan Sheehy: Awesome. David McBee: Well, Ryan, thank you very much for being with us today. I appreciate you. Ryan Sheehy: Yeah. Thanks for having me, David. David McBee: And thank you guys for joining us on Simplifi TV. I'm David McBee. Be awesome and we'll see you next time.