RADIO REMOTE BROADCASTS and PRIZE PIGS

In response to my blog post about “prize pigs,” a Loyal Reader responded:

“The main purpose of an ‘in-store remote’ is to build awareness of a client or business and the service they provide. There is a core of listeners who apparently think they need every service under the sun but, after getting any free prizes offered and eating any free food, suddenly determine that none of these services are for them.

“You said, ‘Radio is the only industry I know that routinely denigrates its best customers.’ I don’t consider what I just described as a very good customer. Neither do clients. And that makes a follow-up sell even harder.”

When you invite listeners to attend, you do not say, “Please come help us build awareness of our client’s products or services.”

Instead you say:

“Come register to win a trip for two to the Bahamas!”

“Come meet the Morning Crew!”

“Lots of free food, fun and prizes!”

Meeting your client’s objectives is not your listeners’ responsibility.

If your remotes routinely are overrun by the “wrong kind” of listener, then that suggests either:

A) You’re not designing the remotes in a way that appeals to the “right” sort of listener. “Hot dogs, t-shirts and movie tickets” definitely appeals to “Prize Pigs,” and those incentives are wrong for most businesses. Instead, the incentives (i.e., freebies or prizes) should be targeted squarely at that merchant’s customer base.

If you’re at a car dealer specifically to promote mini-van sales, you should be offering something for parents to give to their children. A drugstore should offer free flu shots, blood pressure testing, electronic thermometers. A hardware store should give away an inexpensive yet valuable booklet — “200 EASY THINGS YOU CAN FIX IN YOUR HOME.”

The problem with following that tactic, of course, is that fewer people will come to your remotes — and most stations make the foolish mistake of selling the client on the quantity of the promotion’s respondents rather than their quality. Seventy-five regular, enthusiastic consumers of books should be far more valuable to a bookstore than 400 illiterate listeners who come for the free movie passes.

B) Your station is selling remotes to anyone who will pay, regardless of whether a remote is likely to be an effective marketing vehicle for that client.

C) Your station simply “throws in” a remote to clinch an advertising sale, without any thought given to whether it makes any sense for the client or for the radio station.

In truth, most clients would be far better served by a well-designed advertising campaign with a built-in mechanism for stimulating qualified in-store traffic than from a typical remote broadcast.

Here’s a good place to start when evaluating station promotional opportunities.