What Bug-A-Way Pest Control Of Joplin, Missouri Can Teach Marketers About How Advertising Really Works: Be Known Before You’re Needed
Click here to view a 14-minute video of the key findings.
Click here to download a PDF of the slides.
How can any business be around for over 20 years and nobody know them?
Simple answer: If you don’t make your brand “easy to mind and easy to find.”
Today, advertisers are obsessed with the science of measuring short-term sales effect. The priority is on converting existing demand rather than creating future demand. The focus is just on the 5% who are in market, not the 95% who are not.
The meeting that caused Doug Hansen’s heart to sink; no one could name his company
Local business owners were in attendance at a BrandsFormation© BrandKamp (sponsored by Zimmer Marketing) in Joplin, MO. Chuck Mefford, BrandKamp leader, asked the group to think of a pest control company and name it. Doug Hansen, the long-time owner of Bug-A-Way Pest Control, was stunned.
Not one person named his company: “I’m sitting there with a 100 to 125 people and not one of them could name a company besides the national companies. It set me back. Out of all these people, as long as I’ve been in business, for over 20 years, why have they not heard of my name? All the advertising we have done and to not have anybody realize that Bug-A-Way Pest Control was a company here in Joplin!”
A concentration of AM/FM radio and memorable ads were the keys to Bug-A-Way Pest Control’s significant growth
Doug and his son Rorie knew things had to change. They pulled back on their print and TV advertising and focused their investment on entertaining AM/FM radio ads with an addictive jingle, “Customer satisfaction is our number one goal at Bug-A-Way Pest Control!”
To understand the magnitude of the brand Bug-A-Way Pest Control built with long-term advertising on AM/FM radio, the Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group® commissioned Quantilope to conduct a study of 150 consumers in Joplin, Missouri in January 2026.
Bug-A-Way Pest Control places a strong number two in unaided brand awareness
Consumers were asked, “When you think of pest and insect control services, which ones come to mind?” Respondents had to write in all the brand names they could think of. They were not provided with a list of firms.
Bug-A-Way Pest Control has gone from zero unaided awareness to beating Terminix and placing a close number two to Orkin.
Why local retailers have to continually advertise: People are moving into your town who have no awareness of your business
The Quantilope study also measured aided awareness by providing consumers with the names of local advertisers. The longer people have lived in the area, the greater the awareness of Bug-A-Way Pest Control and a number of other well-known local businesses.
Generally, two-thirds of people have lived in an area for ten or more years. About a third have arrived in the last ten years and are much less aware of local businesses.
61% of consumers who have lived in Joplin for ten or more years said they were aware of Bug-A-Way Pest Control. 46% of consumers who have lived in the area for less than 10 years said they were aware of Bug-A-Way Pest Control. Nearly two times as many long-term residents were aware of Superior Roofing (43%) compared to people who moved to the area in the last ten years (22%).
This is great lesson for local retailers. Your business might be famous, but every day new people move to town who have never heard of you. This is a crucial reason to continuously advertise your business. Also, advertising memories fade.
In most advertising categories, the number one brand consumers recall is “don’t know”
Consumers were asked to name Joplin brands they could recall on an unaided basis for a variety of different retail categories such as boat dealerships, eye doctors, lawyers, powersports dealers, plumbers, roofing, hardware, auto dealerships, accounting, and tax preparation.
“Don’t know” is the most common response for most of the categories measured for unaided awareness. For example, when asked to name a firm that specializes in roofing, 33% said “don’t know/none.”
Every advertiser has two jobs: Creating future demand and converting existing demand
Creating future demand is “being known before you’re needed.” Creating future demand is advertising to that much larger group of consumers who are not in the market and are not ready to buy now but will be in the future. The goal is making them feel familiar with and positively toward your brand in order to get them to gravitate toward them when they enter the category.
Converting existing demand is advertising to that small group of consumers who are ready to buy now and capturing as large a share as possible of them. It is estimated only 1-5% of people are “in the market” at any one period of time.
Converting existing demand and creating future demand require different creative/copy approaches and different media strategies
Marketing effectiveness expert James Hurman writes, “Converting Existing Demand is most efficiently achieved by tightly targeting those ‘in the market’ with rational messaging of product and price information that persuades them to choose our product over others.
Sales event or promotional copy does not work on the large group of consumers who are not in the market and not ready to buy now. Creating future demand is about creating positive memories.
Across all stages of the consumer journey, Bug-A-Way Pest Control has strong brand equity
Bug-A-Way Pest Control’s usage of AM/FM radio advertising has built a dominant brand.
Bug-A-Way’s unaided awareness (20%), ad recall (28%), and brand favorability (25%) are very strong. Impressively, nearly one of five people (18%) in Joplin have ever used Bug-A-Way Pest Control. A whopping 29% say they would use Bug-A-Way if the need arose.
AM/FM radio advertising works: Among AM/FM radio listeners, Bug-A-Way Pest Control’s aided awareness is +5% greater than in the overall market
Bug-A-Way Pest Control offers a master class on creating future demand and how building a brand is the main driver of long-term growth and profit
Les Binet, the legendary “godfather of marketing effectiveness”, explains how advertising works:
Easy to mind, easy to find
By patiently investing in brand building advertising to create future demand, Bug-A-Way Pest Control of Joplin has made their service “easy to think of and easy to buy.” Their lighthearted and humorous ads have “created positive feelings and associations” with “broad reach ads that people find interesting and enjoyable.”
In the end, Bug-A-Way Pest Control’s lesson for marketers is that advertising is not just about manically measuring short-term performance. It’s about “being known before you’re needed.”
AM/FM radio worked for Bug-A-Way Pest Control: They’re now famous
Rorie Hasen, the second-generation leader of Bug-A-Way Pest Control, says, “Radio had paid off for us more than TV advertising ever did. I hear more people saying, I’m hearing your ad on the radio. They’ll sing us the jingle! They’ll tell us, we heard John on the radio. We can remember the jingle, all right!”
Key findings:
- Bug-A-Way Pest Control offers marketers a master class on creating future demand and how building a brand is the main driver of long-term growth and profit.
- AM/FM radio advertising worked for Bug-A-Way Pest Control: They’re now famous. Bug-A-Way Pest Control has gone from zero unaided awareness to 20% and a whopping 29% of consumers in Joplin say they would use Bug-A-Way Pest Control if the need arose.
- Through its long-term use of AM/FM radio advertising, Bug-A-Way Pest Control is a strong number two in unaided brand awareness. Across all stages of the consumer journey, Bug-A-Way Pest Control has very strong brand equity.
- Every advertiser has two jobs: Creating future demand and converting existing demand. Bug-A-Way Pest Control excels at creating future demand.
Click here to view a 14-minute video of the key findings.
Pierre Bouvard is Chief Insights Officer of the Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group®.
Contact the Insights team at CorpMarketing@westwoodone.com.