The latest issue of my Radio Advertising Letter explores the principle of Specificity and features my critique of a radio commercial designed to attract more advertisers to that radio station.
This post is for my subscribers to use to add their own comments, thoughts, objections, examples, etc.
Comments on this entry are closed.
I recently called and recorded some of our top clients for a series of sales Advts. I simply rang the client to talk about their advertising and didn't tell them until afterwards that it was recorded then asked for their permission to use it. I have found that very effective in getting "real" responses. Takes a lot of editing but that's where the finished product shines
I like yours Dan. It's just how we try and do ours.
@ Rob – that works but we've found it more effective making a “big deal” in having selected clients come to our station and let the AE meet up and catch up with them, and then lead them into the recording studio (better audio quality than on the phone) to do their testimonials (most of them come prepared with a piece of paper and they talk and talk) and then we ask them our list of questions we’ve formulated over the talk back and get the specifics we want them to talk about. We have had some really quality lines come from our clients.
But we’re still dying for a client to start one of our testimonials with “I thought radio adverting was a waste of time…” or some other equally dismissive statement, as it would really prick the ears up of our listeners…
Thanks for posting my/our promo – I think. While the criticisms about the wording and form would seem to make it a better promo, our goal was to simply create a context for our station that focused on results as the true measure of whether a station works for the client.
In all, there were 7 of these messages. The similarity among them was to be the drumbeat of our station call letters and measureable results. The difference between each of them was to be a unique story of results for businesses who would be obvious frequent users of our station. The goal: help business owners – ones on the fence about where their next ad dollar should go – to associate our station with results, and either call to find out more or be more responsive to a call from one of our AEs.
Once in front of one of those clients, we could then start the conversation of why their past advertising experiences hadn't produced the results they were expecting… start talking about how our news/talk/sports format was foreground not background radio… and, since most would be direct clients, how our results-focused creative services department would sharpen the focus of their messages on convincing customers that their products were the life-changing solutions to listeners' everyday problems and long-term goals.
When the economic seas got rough, I'd like to think this mantra of our station and results – after being hypnotically planted in the minds of our business owner listeners – caused current clients to stay the course while we helped new ones find a reliable compass.
Did our station succeed? I suppose it depends on how you measure. Although we didn't get to 100 percent of our profit plan goal for last year, 98% of goal still might sound pretty sweet to a lot of folks.
Thankfully, we continue to have station that people feel they need to listen to, a client base that trusts we're focused on their success, and a management that sees the value in sending me to all-day seminars with Dan O'Day and other gurus.
Thanks for the post!