In Ep. 026, Tom talks with Angelo Fiouris from Altice USA. They talk about how Altice can help local business owners get their small businesses on television for a reasonable price. Gone are the days of outrageous minimum budgets for small businesses to run TV spots, Altice can work with YOUR budget to fit your needs. They also talk about why it’s important to set realistic expectations, and have a well-rounded marketing approach.
Show Notes
Angelo Fiouris Contact Information:
Email – Angelo.Fiouris@AlticeUSA.com
Phone – (732) 243-2904
Angelo Fiouris – Altice USA – Transcript
Tom: Our guest today is Angelo Fiouris from Altice media sales.
Angelo Fiouris: Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.
Tom: Angelo, glad you could join us today.
Angelo Fiouris: Psyched to be here.
Tom: Tell us what your role is with Altice.
Angelo Fiouris: Sure. So basically I’m an account executive, right? But what does that mean? I’m more of a consultant. I see myself as a guy that provides solutions to businesses that know they need help, and to businesses that don’t yet know that they need help.
Tom: I think you could probably count Mullooly Asset Management in that second group. We didn’t know that we needed help.
Angelo Fiouris: You might think that initially, but before you and I met, we had the appointment booked and I did a little research on you guys. And I went to your website and I looked at what you were already doing, and I said, “Wow, these guys are ahead of the game. They have a podcast, they have a blog. They’re doing things that most small businesses don’t do.” So although you thought you didn’t have any help, you were actually helping yourselves, but now you’ve got kind of the domination combination of TV with your digital efforts. So, you are farther ahead than you thought you were.
Tom: So do you want to talk a little bit about how we actually began working with you?
Angelo Fiouris: Sure. I mean, if I recall correctly, I got a call from your son Tim, or an email from Tim on the Friday of Labor Day weekend. I won’t forget that cause it was like 2:00 in the afternoon. And I said, “Wow, I’m not the only guy that works on a Friday afternoon before a holiday.” So, I gave-
Tom: He’s got slave driver for a dad.
Angelo Fiouris: Well, there you go, right? So, I gave Tim a call that afternoon and we made the appointment. Tim had filled out the online. That’s what it was. Yeah, yeah, that’s what it was, online. We requested some information regarding … so I had think about that for a minute, you notice.
Tom: But we met and we … So we met in early September and our ads we’re running at the end of October.
Angelo Fiouris: I think the middle of October we were live, like the third week or something like that.
Tom: Yeah, so it didn’t take very long to turn this whole thing around.
Angelo Fiouris: And it really doesn’t. You know, there’s this misconception that TV is this long, drawn out, expensive process to participate in, especially on the part of the small local business owner. Which, you know, maybe that reputation is rightfully earned because in the past it kind of was an inaccessible sort of venue for the local guy to advertise. But times have changed mostly because of technology, and we’ve been able to bring this thing down to the local level, and offer it at the kind of rates that as you well know, makes most business owners eyes pop out and say, “Wow, really? That’s all it costs?”
Tom: Yeah. It’s really very surprising. So I know one of the first things I said to you when we met was, “I don’t want to have my company displayed in some cheesy cable TV commercial.” And you want to talk about how you respond to something like that?
Angelo Fiouris: Yeah, of course. And you know, listen, we’re conditioned. We’ve been watching cable TV now as consumers for more than 30 years, probably 35 at least. And so we have seen the evolution of the local cable ad. Think about the ones you were seeing that showed up on maybe the four channels they used to insert on in the early ’80s. And they were the cheesy used car guys, the local pizzeria. It looked like it was done with the camcorder, shaky visuals, not really a clear picture, clearly not a national level type of production, and everyone wants to avoid that. As time has evolved now we’re 30 years into the technology, and stuff like that. Even on the local level producers are shooting in HD and 4K now actually, and producing the kind of commercials that … Some clients want the cheesy look, believe it or not, but we’re only producing that if they want it.
Tom: Well, I had a client mention to me not that long ago, they’ve been looking for our TV commercial, and they finally realized that they had seen it a half a dozen times, and they said, “It’s extremely professional. It’s very slick. It’s really well done.” They told me in honesty, they were like, “We were looking for something a lot cheesier.”
Angelo Fiouris: Right. It blended in well.
Tom: Yeah. I’m really pleased with the way things worked out, and I’m sure you’re hearing that from other clients too. Why don’t you share with our audience a little bit about how you got started in the business?
Angelo Fiouris: Wow. That’s a kind of a long story. I mean, short end I always was creative in some sense rather, and this is a creative job despite the fact that I’m consulting or selling, so to speak. I was a graphic designer by trade, I guess out of school. Did that for a little bit. I wasn’t finding it all that stimulating, you know, and started to venture out. I met a couple people that were into like video production. I started hanging out with them, went on a couple of shoots, ended up selling some advertising in a variety of different sort of venues. A little bit of print. It was, you know, I’m talking about early ’90s, mid ’90s, which then eventually led to me doing other independent marketing projects. Then working in ad agencies, then leading up to getting into Altice USA, and selling cable instead of buying it like I use to.
Tom: Okay. I get it. How does someone like yourself get business? I mean, what’s the process? What do you do?
Angelo Fiouris: It’s like anyone else who is in a commission based kind of environment. Is it a challenge? Yeah, it’s a challenge because you kind of basically have to go find your own people, and what do I do? I was opening the local newspaper to see who was already advertising in print, and started calling them. Got a couple clients that way.
Tom: That’s probably the easiest leap.
Angelo Fiouris: It is because at least you’ve got people that they may shut you down when you call them, but at least there’s someone who’s already open to the idea of advertising. They don’t have to be convinced of that right. Now you just, on my part, just get them interested enough to hear how there’s another way to do things.
Tom: Have you ever had anyone that’s gone straight to ads on cable without doing other kinds of advertising in print?
Angelo Fiouris: Like that being their first foray, any kind of advertising? It’s possible that that has happened. Nothing really jumps out at me as any one client saying, “Hey, we started from nothing to started on TV.” I think most people have had some experience with something. They’ve advertised in the local suburban newspaper, or they’ve purchased a space in a local yearbook or put up a sign in front of their store, bought a billboard or something. So, they’ve tried something, but for whatever reason TV always seems like that inaccessible-
Tom: Why? Why is that?
Angelo Fiouris: The reason is because … Let’s go back in time maybe only five years, 10 years, and you would have had the conversation … You’d had been, “Hey, we’re interested in TV,” and then a rep like me would have come in, and you would have had the same conversation you and I had where we learn about each other. That rep would go back to the office, put together a schedule, and come back a week later and say to you, “Hey Tom, for you to reach the most people you need to be on USA, TBS, TNT, CNN, Fox News, here you go, eight grand a month.” And a small business owner like Tom says-
Tom: No chance.
Angelo Fiouris: Exactly. But that’s realistically how it was. And-
Tom: Add on top of that, the cost of putting together, shooting even a 30 second ad.
Angelo Fiouris: Right. That wasn’t including that.
Tom: Right.
Angelo Fiouris: So there’s another cost associated there. So this was precluding a lot of local guys, small businesses who could use the platform from participating. And so from that point on, they’re kind of conditioned to just shutting the TV guy out as soon as he walks in the door. “Hey, I’m from Cablevision,” or then Cablevision, now Altice. “Hey, I’m from Altice …” No thanks. “Hey, I’m from Optimum.” No thanks. “Hey, I’m from News 12.” No thanks. But, when you get them at least interested to hear our story, you know, then kind of they perk up a little bit, and are amazed at the availability now.
Tom: What really surprised me is that is exactly what I expected. I figured this was going to be a big budget item, you know, 4,000 or 5,000, $6,000 a month. And I just didn’t have any interest in it because it was not only a large expense item in your profit and loss, but it’s also hard to quantify. Do you want to just talk for a moment or two about some of the data you were able to bring to us when we were putting together a plan?
Angelo Fiouris: Man, I’m glad you asked me that question, because just yesterday we were going over just another tool that we’ve been using to help pinpoint exactly where to find the people you’re trying to reach on the spectrum of over 100 networks that we insert on. So, simple data-
Tom: So insert … For people who are listening, insert is just drop an ad into the space.
Angelo Fiouris: Right. So when the television program you’re watching goes to commercial, then you’ll see like a … You’ve even noticed this where like a commercial will start, but then the local ad will come on top of it, and sometimes we will end, and then the other one will kind of be underneath-
Tom: Still see a second of the last commercial that should have been there, or something.
Angelo Fiouris: Right, or was there.
Tom: Yes.
Angelo Fiouris: So, that’s local insertion.
Tom: Okay.
Angelo Fiouris: So basically we get a couple of two times an hour or so depending on the network, opportunities to put our local advertisers into these networks. So, what do we do to put you on the appropriate networks? What we do nowadays is we use our set top boxes to provide us with information. Much like the Nielsen, which you might be familiar with, provides data, information, or ratings based on the small sample of boxes they have nationally, or even regionally. And then they model out what everybody’s watching. They’re pretty accurate, I guess, it’s the only currency that we’ve had to measure audience up until recently. So, going back to Cablevision, and now Altice, we’ve been using our set top boxes in a sense as Nielsen boxes, right? And every time a viewer or a subscriber in your household turns on their TV, that’s giving us anonymous information, telling us what are they watching? How long are they watching for? What channel are they changing to, from there and what are their habits over the course of their time as a subscriber?
Tom: So, can they tell that I’m watching Barney the Dinosaur when I come home from work?
Angelo Fiouris: Right. So let’s say you turn on the TV and you know you’re watching channel 13, I guess, is where Barney would be on, right? Public TV, we would know that you were watching … As long as you were watching it for more than five minutes, then we would know that it was … you know, we would use it as valid viewership information.
Tom: Okay, so a question pops into my mind. You go to a lot of local businesses and they’ve got news 12 on, and it’s on all day long. How does that skew the numbers?
Angelo Fiouris: It doesn’t, because any viewership that … First of all, we don’t count commercial accounts into our data that we’re providing our clients. So, automatically commercial viewership is not included. But let’s take what you’re asking me a step further and put it in the residential, right? You’re asking me what if the TV’s left on all day, pretty much?
Tom: And I’m sure that there are people who just watch News 12, or that weather and traffic channel.
Angelo Fiouris: Sure.
Tom: All the time, for hours.
Angelo Fiouris: Right. So, what happens is, let’s just say you put the TV on and let’s say you leave the TV on for your pets entertainment, and you go off to work for eight hours. If there is not remote control interaction within a five hour window, then all of that data gets wiped, and it does not count. Equally on the other side, if you’re not watching something for a minimum of five minutes, we don’t count anything less than that as part of the data.
Tom: So, the channel surfing all that stuff gets kind of filtered out.
Angelo Fiouris: It’s not like boom, TNT, boom USA, boom Fox News, it doesn’t work that way. You have to settle in for at least five minutes, become a viewer, and then maybe you move on.
Tom: Okay. That’s pretty interesting. And you can get all of that from the set top?
Angelo Fiouris: All from the set top boxes, and we’ve been collating this data for a couple of years now, and when you look at the results, it’s pretty easy to say, “Okay, this household has, you know, female, 30 to 35-”
Tom: Just by the shows.
Angelo Fiouris: The kinds of networks, the times.
Tom: So they don’t know the address, and the name of the subscriber, they just know like, “Okay, like we see people who are female in this age bracket. They’re watching-”
Angelo Fiouris: Basketball Wives, for example, on VH1.
Tom: Okay. All right, yeah.
Angelo Fiouris: Love and Hip Hop. One of the top rated shows amongst women. I’m not pushing any one show, I’m just throwing stuff out there where people-
Tom: What’s the name of it?
Angelo Fiouris: You never even heard of it. It’s called the Love and Hip Hop, and women in their 20s to mid 30s are watching this stuff in droves.
Tom: Wow. So, I was going to throw out something like Oprah. You know Oprah reruns or something, but-
Angelo Fiouris: Yeah, no, not so much. Now women are watching a few different networks, and they’re all ones that men have probably never heard of.
Tom: You got me on that one.
Angelo Fiouris: Identification discovery, big place to find a women.
Tom: So, I have someone who mentioned that they saw our commercial on a channel I didn’t even know existed, and it turns out you learn a little bit about people when they tell you where they saw your commercial. They watched these murder mysteries, and there was some channel that our ad showed up on. I had another client who emailed me and said, “I saw you on during the Rose bowl.”
Angelo Fiouris: Right.
Tom: We actually had more than a few clients who saw that. I ran into someone last week who said, “Oh, I know when I turned on the Met game I’m going to see you.”
Angelo Fiouris: Yeah.
Tom: That is, first of all for us, it’s very flattering.
Angelo Fiouris: It’s great exposure too.
Tom: It really, really is.
Angelo Fiouris: Because, sports and news are the two things that people watch most, and watch live. Right? Then they watch all the entertainment stuff.
Tom: So, what is it that gets business owners to take the leap, and say, “I’m going to do this.”
Angelo Fiouris: Sometimes it’s just timing on my part. I happened to walk into a joint at the right time and teach the guy when he’s already open to like, “We need more business,” or, “We need to get the word out or something.” And then he meets me, and likes what I have to say and wants to learn more.
Tom: I guess, then, it helps that if a business owner knows their demographics, then you can … I mean, you spent a lot of time with us lining up like, “Okay, tell us about your typical client profile.” And we gave you two main demographics, and you were able to say, “Hey, you know, we think you should be on these channels here,” and put together a package for us.
Angelo Fiouris: Yeah. So, what happens is, you know, I’ll have a conversation, a meeting with the client, prospective client and get a real sense of who’s walking in their doors? Who’s calling them up? Who’s emailing them? Who’s looking at their website? I have some idea because I have experience dealing with a wide variety of businesses, but ultimately it’s that business owner that can truly tell me who he talks to every single day. Down to that, like we’d like to say in our office, the granular level. Okay? So, once I get a good sense of that, and I create a demographic profile, let’s just say for example, women, 35 to 45, household incomes of 75,000 a year plus, with the presence of children between the ages of four and eight in a household. We can actually narrow it down to those types of attributes, to then pull the appropriate programming from the amount of viewership results we see from those homes that fit your demographics.
We look for the things that make the most sense. We look for the things that are most economical, and the things that are going to give you the most impact, and try to combine and blend them together to make a schedule that focuses in on who you’re looking for in that house.
Tom: I walked away from our early stage meetings thinking that this was more like Google AdWords than anything I had seen before, in the sense that you could get pretty specific down to a certain age demographic. And say, “We’re only going to show your ads during these periods here.” So, my original thinking as a business owner was, “Holy Moly! These ads are going to run. Who knows when, and who knows what channel?” And I think like probably 85% of these ads are going to be wasted, but that’s not actually the case, is it?
Angelo Fiouris: No, it’s not the case, we’re really able to target things and narrow it down to the most appropriate networks, also taking your budget into consideration. You know, every client has a different kind of budget, and I’ve helped clients with budgets as small as 500 a month, and clients as big of budgets of 15,000 a month, and everyone falls in between there.
Tom: Yeah. I know when I started with you I said I wanted my budget to be zero, and we just kind of nudged it up a little above that, and we’ve seen results. So what’s something that you hear a lot from people, maybe a misconception or something they’re a little misguided about when it comes to advertising, or advertising on television?
Angelo Fiouris: Good question. So, the one objection that I seem to be faced most often is everybody DVRs-
Tom: Oh, and they skip through the commercials, right?
Angelo Fiouris: And they skip the commercials, so not only are they not watching live, right? This is the misconception, but if they are watching, everything’s recorded and we’re not getting the message in front of them. The truth of the matter is, our data tells us, this is from our set top boxes, that 91% of our viewership is live.
Tom: That’s interesting.
Angelo Fiouris: Okay? Less than 10% is a combination of video on demand, and DVR, and then TV everywhere. You know, where you can log on and watch TV on your tablet, or your phone, or something like that. Small percentages, the reason is because live television still is a driver. The reason is news and sports. No one DVRs that. Maybe you record a game if you’re going to be out, you’re going to get home and you’re going to eventually get caught up live. But you’re not recording a game to watch three, four days later like you might be doing with a movie or something. But the reality is, people are still watching programs live because of social media. If they go onto Facebook they’re going to find out what happened on Walking Dead, and their night is going to be ruined. So they have to watch it live, or else at 10:00 they’re not going to be able to be in on the conversation just yet.
Tom: Interesting.
Angelo Fiouris: So things like that are drivers to keep people watching live, and they’re commenting while they’re watching. They watch a game, what do they do? They pick up their phones and they say, “Wow! What a home run.” The point is, is that our data is telling us. It’s not me making things up, it’s actual data that says 91% of viewership still is taking place live. And the other thing that we’ve learned is that most viewership takes place outside of the primetime hours. So, we’ve got 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM, right, which is considered prime time hours, but the majority of our viewership is taking place outside of those 11:00 PM to 8:00 PM the next night. People don’t work traditionally 9:00 to 5:00 as much as they used to do, so-
Tom: So what you’re saying is you don’t see a big drop off like at midnight, or maybe even 1:00 in the morning?
Angelo Fiouris: Well, naturally there’s a drop off. I mean, the majority of people still do go to sleep and try to get a normal night’s sleep. But what we have learned though is that viewership doesn’t plummet just because it’s 12:30 AM, or 1:30 AM. In fact, what we’ve learned is you on networks like places like Food Network, or HGTV, very popular places, expensive places to advertise too I might add. Places like that have maybe a 40% drop off in audience after midnight from compared to prime time, but the rates drop like 75%. So, if I told you, Tom, I can give you 45% of the prime time audience on Food Network, an hour after primetime for 80% less of price. What are you going to say to me? Give me five, you’re going to say.
Tom: Yeah, yeah, pretty good.
Angelo Fiouris: So, it’s just one of those angles that we use the data to find places to give your commercial more impact when it airs.
Tom: Pretty good.
Angelo Fiouris: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom: Tell us some success stories. I mean, there’s got to be some stories that have really worked out, really worked out well.
Angelo Fiouris: There’s been a few. So here’s one for you. I have a client, I throw him a plug, All Americans Gymnastics. They’re down in this area. They’re in Ocean, Ocean township and it’s a gymnastic school. You know, you send your kid, they learn gymnastics, they compete a little bit. Maybe they get to a higher level, but it’s a good play and kids of all ages go. Right? So we met, they gave me a, you know, outline of their demographic, who they’re really trying to reach, and we put the total audience participation application that we use into play for them. They weren’t a big budget client-
Tom: Well, I’ve also got to think that a gymnastics place, I mean they can’t be advertising for people in ship bottom, you know what I mean?
Angelo Fiouris: Right.
Tom: So, you got to get … You know, geographically you’ve got to tighten up the circle, which is really … I thought this was fantastic. I’m sorry, I’m interrupting.
Angelo Fiouris: That’s okay. No, you’re not interrupting. That’s a good segway, because I did neglect to say that the zone where she was located, we were able to really offer her a really localized zone where her commercial was not going to be seen in places too far away to generate any business. So that’s another a big highlight of what it is we’re doing. We are able to minimize or give you as big an area as you want to hit as well. So for Jan over at All Americans Gymnastics it was a matter of bringing up her numbers, right? So she started with me first quarter of last year, and we did all the data and stuff. By the end of the year we had her up and running, had a commercial made, a very professional looking commercial, not cheesy. And she started running, and you know, checking in. She’s like, “Okay, people are saying that they’re seeing it,” she said.
By the end of the quarter when we did our review, she had said that their numbers were way up from the quarter the year before, and she had also noticed that, I guess as a byproduct of the schedule we had put together for her, she had noticed an influx of a segment of the demographic that she had never gotten before. She was suddenly seeing young Hispanic kids coming with their parents, and signing up for the program. She had never gotten-
Tom: No kidding.
Angelo Fiouris: So, maybe inadvertently somehow through our, you know, data and looking for households with children, right, that fit the age that she was looking for we latched onto something somewhere, and got the attention of Hispanic kids that lived in the area but didn’t know there was a gymnastics program available for them.
Tom: Pretty good.
Angelo Fiouris: Pretty good one. And she’s still on. She’s on a break right now, but she’s coming back by the end of the summer to start up for her fall program.
Tom: That’s great.
Angelo Fiouris: It’s okay to take a break by the way sometimes.
Tom: Well, I would guess with something like that, when summer break, you know, kids are out of school, it probably works better even for the parents if they can get it all together during the school year. So that makes sense.
Angelo Fiouris: Yeah, exactly. So for some businesses it makes sense to pull off at times, and maybe reduce your investment, and other times maybe you beef it up or whatever.
Tom: So, these are real local businesses.
Angelo Fiouris: Right. These are not big box stores. This is mom and pop, really mom and pop. I deal with a local kennel in Freehold. This lady came to me last April, she started out as like a $500 a month client in April. By the time we got to July, her calendar was-
Tom: This is three months.
Angelo Fiouris: Right. For boarding and grooming, by her third month she’s booked solid. She didn’t have any open space for the rest of the summer.
Tom: That’s pretty good.
Angelo Fiouris: Yeah. Her grooming business increased as well, and she’s stayed on as a loyal customer. She’s referred other clients to me. She’s one of my, as we like to say in advertising, she’s one of my biggest evangelists. She toots my horn more than I toot my horn.
Tom: That’s great.
Angelo Fiouris: I love that.
Tom: It really is great, and I know that I’ve been telling our story to other business owners as well, because it really was an eye-opener for me because I fully expected to walk into the first meeting to say, “Hey, thanks for coming by. I’m really not going to listen to you, but I’m just being polite and-”
Angelo Fiouris: It still happens.
Tom: It really turned out to be a good meeting and a good way to begin. So, what else? Some other success stories you can talk about.
Angelo Fiouris: Let’s talk about … I want to think of one that has some real impact. Oh, Valerie’s Barber and Beauty, here’s another one.
Tom: Okay.
Angelo Fiouris: Valerie is a lady who’s great. She was referred to me as well from someone else who had had success. She does hair restoration for men and for women. She’s a private, small, does it like out of her studio, which is like attached to the back of her house. And she has like a wealth of experience in the industry, like 30 years worth working for the big box type of hair restoration places that you’ve seen on TV. I’m not going to name them. Okay, but you know the ones, she works for them. But she branched out on her own for quite some time, and her process is the same as the big guys, but at a fraction of the price. That’s really her driving point.
Tom: She’s got a good story.
Angelo Fiouris: She got an excellent story, and her story is-
Tom: And I’ve seen her commercials. When you pointed them out to me that’s when I was like, “Oh, okay. And I’ve seen her commercials running all the time.”
Angelo Fiouris: A lot, see her commercial. Yeah, and her investment is not like some massive, you know, $5,000 a month investment-
Tom: It can’t possibly be, yeah.
Angelo Fiouris: It’s impossible for her to sustain that. But her investment has grown since she started with me a year ago, April. Her spend is double of what it was a year ago.
Tom: Wow.
Angelo Fiouris: Yeah.
Tom: That’s great, so you see the results and you say, “Okay, you know what? When you find something that works, you’re going to pour more money into it.”
Angelo Fiouris: You know what was good about her too? She’s a very involved client. What do I mean by that? We were off for three months. She was targeting women. We got some great results. She said, “Can we change the schedule to target men now?” So we had like a re-optimization meeting. We completely re-optimize to go after a different group, and we had success while still kind of targeting the other group at a small level, but then had success bringing in a whole another segment. Let’s go after the guys now. So I did for her, kind of what I did for you. Sports, Sports, sports, sports, sports, right? And we found the men clients, who are now walking around with happy with heads of hair, and not a depleted bank account to get it either.
Tom: Yeah, that’s really-
Angelo Fiouris: because they were able to connect with Valarie.
Tom: Yeah. That’s really great.
Angelo Fiouris: Yeah, those are great stories.
Tom: Yeah. What are some of the things that you zoom in on when you’re meeting with a prospective client for the first time? What are the hot buttons that you want to talk about? I’m guessing a business owner, or a company has a good idea of what their target market is, it’s going to help.
Angelo Fiouris: Yeah, absolutely, and I think most business owners have … Actually, let me backtrack for a second. I’ve asked clients or prospective clients, “Tell me about your typical … Who’s your wheelhouse client?” I don’t know.
Tom: Yikes.
Angelo Fiouris: That’s a scary place to start, because if they don’t know, I don’t know. And then I don’t have the focus I need to kind of take them down the right path. So then I have to start asking some questions. Who makes the phone call? The man or the woman? Oh, the women usually calls. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere, and I’ll write female. How old is that lady? And then I get them start to think, because they do know who their customer is, but they’ve never thought about it.
Tom: They’ve never outlined it, yeah.
Angelo Fiouris: And then that creates a muddled kind of approach to trying to bring customers in. If you’re not focused on who you’re trying to talk to, then you’re talking to nobody.
Tom: Yeah.
Angelo Fiouris: You know, so you really have to get that message fine tuned and honed so that it’s hitting the areas you need it to.
Tom: What do you think people should expect when they start advertising? They’ve never done it before, whether it’s in print or on TV. I mean, how do you temper their expectations when we’re getting started? Because it’s exciting, you know, like you get your whole family to like sit at the TV and watch. “Wait, it’s coming on. It’s coming on. It’s coming on.”
Angelo Fiouris: And then there it is, it’s awesome.
Tom: And there it is, and it’s like, “Okay-”
Angelo Fiouris: And then what?
Tom: Yeah. When does the phone start ringing?
Angelo Fiouris: Right. Well, it doesn’t happen that first day that it airs. I promise you that, unless you have some sort of amazingly special offer that’s only one day only, you know, and that’s a rarity. And the first thing I would tell, and I do tell everybody, one, given it time. Minimum of three months, but you know, I like my people to try to stay on for six to really let it take root. Nothing’s going to work overnight. Will you get some calls the first two, three, four weeks? Yes sure, it could happen. I have a client, the Little Gym of Sea Girt, they’re right across the street from you. They started with me Labor Day weekend of 2015, before October they were getting calls.
Tom: That’s awesome.
Angelo Fiouris: And that happens. It’s not an everyday occurrence with a client, but it’s sometimes just happens that the message is just received very well, and just timely, and appropriate and it generates some quicker interests than say something that’s going to be a little more long term. Like, you’re not a quick fix sort of product, you’re a guy that needs to get your message out all year long so that the person who would then realizes they need your services is already familiar with you by the time they need to make that decision.
Tom: Correct? Yeah. It’s a long lead time for us, so much longer pipeline than some other businesses, but it does work. So Angelo, this has been fantastic. Tell us how people can reach you.
Angelo Fiouris: I could go on all day about this stuff too by the way. There’s a couple different ways you can reach me. You can email me angelo.fiourius@altisusa.com.
Tom: You better spell that.
Angelo Fiouris: Yeah. A-N-G-E-L-O-F-I-O-U-R-I-S @alticeusa, that’s A-L-T-I-C-E U-S-A.com.
Tom: So, to angelo.fiouris.
Angelo Fiouris: I think it works without the dot too, but it says a dot on my card, so I just make sure I get it out right. Or you can call me a 732 243 2904, that’s my office line.
Tom: Okay. Fantastic. Angelo, thanks for coming in and doing this, it’s been great. I always learn something during these podcasts, and you’re a fantastic guest.
If you would like a PDF version of this transcript, please follow this link for a download!