Based on information from the National Retail Foundation, Fayetteville consumers will be spending $11 million on Halloween this year. 

Typically, 80% of all Halloween shopping, according to the NRF, will occur between now and October 16.  The remaining dollars will be spent in the last 14 days leading up to the holiday.

Nearly 53% of consumers in the Fayetteville are expected to participate in Halloween this year, each spending, on average, about $86.  This money will go towards the purchase of candy, decorations, costumes, pumpkins, and greeting cards.

Almost every type of small business in Cumberland and Robeson County enjoys a taste of this spending. This includes hardware stores, convenience stores, craft stores, fabric stores, thrift stores, florists, card stores, consignment shops, haunted houses, home decor store, bakeries, and, of course, candy stores.

To claim a significant share of this Halloween cash will require local small business owners to advertise.  The key to successful advertising is reaching as many Halloween shoppers as possible over the next four weeks.

After years of robust growth, there are some signals that point to an impending economic downturn. It is a part of the American business cycle. There have actually been more recessions in the United States than presidents (47 vs. 45).

A recession is a period of declining economic performance across an entire economy, frequently measured as two consecutive quarters. In other words: it's a time when most Fayetteville small business owners sell fewer of their goods and services.

What a recession isn't is a time for Fayetteville business owners to stop advertising.

Henry Ford once said, "The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time." There are many examples of companies that have proven this aphorism to be true.

Your breakfast cereal may be one example.

Small business owners who sell mattresses in the Fayetteville area might be losing sleep.

Last year, local consumers spent close to $17 million for new mattresses.  A recent survey conducted by Piper Jaffray indicates that many retailers believe  that the category will become even stronger during the last four months of this year.

The reason for the owners' sleep loss is that many customers are bypassing local stores and buying their mattresses on the internet. According to Statista, 37% of buyers are now purchasing from one-of-175 direct-to-consumer sites like Casper or from online retailers like Amazon. 

To keep customers shopping local requires advertising.

Advertising is critical to the success of every Fayetteville small business owner.  One of the most powerful elements of any advertising campaign is how many people it reaches.

Nielsen, the world's largest consumer insights company, found that advertising reach has a more significant effect on sales than branding, recency, and context.

There are many ways a local business owner can advertise. This includes traditional media like Fayetteville radio, local TV, and newspaper. It also includes online advertising options such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pandora.

They type of customer an individual business needs to reach depends on the goods and services the company sells. For instance, a daycare operator might want to reach households with young children. On the other hand, a real estate agent could be looking for consumers in the market to purchase a new home.

The charts below reveal how the different advertising options available to Fayetteville business compare in terms of the ability to reach customers with specific characteristics. This includes age, income, education, employment status, political affiliation, number of children, ethnicity, and planned purchases.

Every vote counts.  Many times the difference between winning an election and losing is a handful of ballots. This is true in races for almost every elected office, referendum, and issue on the national, statewide, and local level.

To win a modern election requires advertising. Successful advertising requires reach. In the Fayetteville area, the most potent way to reach voters is on local radio.

Last week, for instance, 92% of all registered voters in Cumberland and Robeson County tuned-in to a Fayetteville radio station.  This is significantly more than were reached by local TV, local newspaper, or the major social media site like Facebook and Instagram.

Next year, according to Nielsen, 18,311 people in the Fayetteville area will be getting married.  Assuming that those folks are hitching-up with each other, that means there will be 9,156 weddings. 

USA Today reports that the average cost for these pending nuptials will be $25,265 including (but not limited to) rings, dresses, tuxedos, flowers, venues, photographers, invitations, limos, and rice (or birdseed for the ecologically inclined).

This means small business owners in Cumberland and Robeson counties who cater to the bridal market will be competing for a share of $231,326,340.

Currently, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, there are 171,476 words in the English language. A handful of these words, Fayetteville small business owners can't use in their radio commercials. The Supreme Court of the United States says so.

Of all the words that can be used in broadcast advertising, however, there is one word that should be shunned: 'get' and all of its nasty derivative forms including 'got' and 'gotten'.  Here's why.

The typical 60-second commercial on Fayetteville radio consists of 160 words.  Depending on the station, each word in that ad could cost around $1.00.  It is important, then, that each word is carefully selected to engage listeners and then compel them to action.  This is especially crucial when using verbs. 

"One of the best ways of grabbing and keeping an audience is to use strong, descriptive verbs," says the Writing Center at the University of Houston.  'Get' is not that kind of verb.

This year, Fayetteville area consumers will spend $546 million in local restaurants and drinking establishments. There are hundreds of restaurants in Cumberland and Robeson counties hungry for a bite of that cash.

Unfortunately, many of the restaurants that are here today will be gone tomorrow. According to FSR, a trade magazine for the restaurant industry, 60% of restaurants fail within their first year. Eighty percent never make it to their fifth anniversary.

CBI Insights studies why small business owners, such as local restaurants, fail.  Reason number eight is poor marketing and advertising.  Good food and friendly service are not enough to make a cash register ring.

Two things are remarkable about voting day in 1920.  It was the first time, ever, women could participate in the selection of the U.S. President. It was also the first time live election results were broadcast on the radio. Not to mention, it was also the first radio broadcast, ever.

The voters' choice that night was between Warren G. Harding  and James M. Cox.  Both men had derived their political power as successful newspaper publishers.  It is quite ironic, then, that one of these men would reach the highest office in the land on the same night that the nascent radio broadcasting business began its takedown of the newspaper industry.

Nowhere is this takedown more apparent than locally, where Fayetteville radio has become, by far, the advertising medium with the largest reach.

The first radio station in Fayetteville went on-the-air in 1939.  Sixty-five years later, Facebook inaugurated the social media era.  Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, and hundreds of other sites quickly followed.

As social media matured from a novelty to part of consumers' daily rituals, some Fayetteville business owners began to experiment with advertising.

By every key advertising metric, though, Fayetteville radio remains the best choice for a small business to market their goods and services. Here's why.

In 1930, the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation put the first car radio on the market. They called it the Motorola. This in-car entertainment would setback a Fayetteville consumer about $120 which would be equivalent to $1200 today.

But, if you had that kind of cash, you would be able to cruise around in your Ford Model-A, DeSoto, Packard, or Studebaker and hear the music of the day from radio stations in Charlotte, Raleigh, or Atlanta. It wouldn't be until 1939 when Fayetteville would have its own stations.

Today, there's a radio in almost every vehicle on the streets of Cumberland and Robeson Counties. Despite the competition on the dashboard from other sources of entertainment, AM/FM radio remains the dominant choice for in-car entertainment.  This is great news for local business owners who depend on Fayetteville radio to market their goods and services.

Suppose you woke up one morning and found a 100-year-old machine in your basement. You soon discovered that every time you put a dime in the machine, one dollar came out.  How many dimes would you drop in that machine?

Good news for Fayetteville small business owners: such a machine exists and you probably have one in your car, at work, at home, even on your phone. It's called local radio.

Over the past few years, Nielsen has conducted over 20 studies to determine what type of return-on-investment (ROI) a business can expect from radio advertising.  Although the results varied by industry, the average company generated $100 in sales for ever $10 invested.  Turning dimes into dollars.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of WFNC, the first radio station in Fayetteville.

Since 1939, Fayetteville small business owners have depended on radio advertising to market their goods and services to local consumers.  During the next 12 months, these consumers are expected to spend $7.1 billion.

By any measure, radio is still the best way to advertise in Fayetteville. Last week, for instance, significantly more consumers tuned-in to a local radio station than watched local TV; read a local newspaper; or logged-on to Pandora and Spotify.

To buy radio advertising effectively, there are some terms every Fayetteville small business owner should know.  Here is a list of helpful definitions.

This year marks 80 years since WFNC became the first radio station in Fayetteville.  From that time, small business owners in Cumberland and Robeson Counties have depended on radio advertising to market their goods and services.

So, it is a fair question for a 21st-century business owner to ask: Is Fayetteville radio is still relevant in the life of North Carolina consumers?

"You wouldn’t know it from all the media coverage focused on streaming video and streaming music," said media expert Doug Schoen in Forbes Magazine, "but recent Nielsen data shows radio actually has the most reach among American media consumers." 

Last week, for instance, significantly more local consumers tuned-in to a Fayetteville radio station than watched local TV, read a local newspaper, or logged-on to a streaming audio site like Pandora and Spotify.

If you were one of the 288,946 adults who tuned-in to a Fayetteville radio station last week, it is likely you heard a commercial for Indeed.  That's because, last week, Indeed, the world's largest online job site was also radio's biggest advertiser.

The reason Indeed invested so heavily in radio advertising is that they have far more job openings posted on their than site than there are job-hunters to fill them. 

This is not unlike the predicament of Fayetteville small business owners who are also having difficulty finding and hiring qualified candidates.

What Indeed has figured out is that there are not enough unemployed people or disgruntled workers looking for jobs, especially among those in white-collar professions. So, the company is looking to attract what human resource experts call the 'passive job seekers'.

It turns out that advertising on Fayetteville radio is also  the best way for any business owner to recruit, hire, and retain those passive, white-collar job seekers.