To ensure success, every Southwest Florida business owner needs to advertise.

"Think you have a great product?" asks the US Small Business Administration. "Unfortunately, no one’s going to know about it unless you advertise.”

The SBA goes on to say, “Advertising, if done correctly, can do wonders for your product sales, and you know what that means: more revenue and more success for your business.”

There are dozens of ways for local small business owners to advertise. By most metrics, the best way to advertise is on Fort Myers radio. These measures of effectiveness, however, are often obscured by the glimmer and glitz of newer technologies. 

To help reduce the glare that often blinds business owners to the potency of advertising on Fort Myers radio, here are the top five things many local business owners get wrong.

Forty-percent of contractors nationwide report that they have turned down jobs this year because they don't have enough skilled blue-collar workers. In Florida, over one-third of contractors say they would add 25 more employees this year if they could recruit qualified candidates.

The labor crunch isn't confined to construction. Overall, half of all Southwest Florida employers say they are having difficulty hiring enough blue-collar employees to fulfill the increasing demand from customers. This includes truck drivers, plumbers, HVAC technicians, electrical workers, machinists, metal workers, landscapers, janitors, and mechanics.

SWFL business owners can benefit from a study by The North Carolina Works Commission. The NCWC found that the recruitment efforts of many employers in that state are failing because they depend on hiring strategies from a time when qualified candidates were plentiful.

These failing strategies include posting on job boards like Monster and Indeed; publishing employment ads in local newspapers; and pleading on social media pages. Some small business owners still depend on hanging help-wanted signs.

What many local business owners on the west coast of Florida have discovered is that the best way to recruit blue-collar workers is by advertising on Fort Myers radio stations.

In 2003, Cadillac was the first automotive brand to make satellite radio standard in all of its new vehicles. Oldsmobile would follow a year later.

Today, there are 117 million cars on the road with satellite radio installed. 

So, have Southwest Florida drivers ditched their favorite Fort Myers radio stations in favor of music from space?  No!

According to Nielsen,  satellite radio has had no effect on the number of people who tune-in to Fort Myers radio stations each week.  For that matter, Pandora and Spotify (now owned by Sirius/XM) have not affected local radio listening either.