Formats

Demographics, Ratings, and Cost Per Prospect

Ratings don't say much either. They are a snapshot of the moment in time during which the ratings were taken. Afterwards, tastes may fluctuate, people move into and out of town, or a new station may come onto the scene and take everyone's audience.

The point is, you should try to determine which station will reach the demographic YOU want but more importantly, reach the BUYERS you want. For example, here in the town I live, we have 10 radio stations to cover a listening population of 100,000. The top two radio stations fluctuate each year. One is a Modern Country station aimed at the 25-34 Country audience, the other is a Contemporary or Top 40 station reaching females 18-25. Currently, the Contemporary station is holding down the Number One spot with the majority of listeners tuning it in throughout the day.

Now, let's say you are selling home furnishings to an upper scale, affluent audience. Which station would you choose? It's hard to tell with just demographics and ratings, isn't it? Well what if I added that fact that the Modern Country audience tends to have an average of 30% more discretionary income than the Contemporary audience? Now which station would you use?

These factors are extremely important when deciding which station to use. It does not matter which station is number one, ONLY that the station or stations you choose reach the audience you want to reach. In this case, I would recommend that my client use the Country station because, even though the overall audience is smaller, the people it does reach are in a more tenable position to buy the furniture.

This factor is what some people call "Cost Per Prospect." It is a variation of the venerable "Cost Per Thousand" used by many stations to illustrate how much it costs to reach 1,000 listeners. It is very important for you to determine not the cost per thousand, but the cost per prospect. This is how much it costs to get one new prospect in your store based on the advertising you run. Afterwards, you should try to determine the cost per customer, or how much it costs to convert that prospect into a customer, again, based on the cost of your advertising. Once you determine that, you can easily see how much each commercial really costs. You may find that while you are only paying ten dollars for a spot on a station, you're only getting one prospect for every three times the spot runs... a cost of thirty dollars per prospect! If that person buys only twenty dollars worth of merchandise from you... well, you can do the math.

(For a more detailed look at demographics, ratings and cost per, read Jay Levinson's excellent book, Guerrilla Advertising.)

Production

Please, all kidding aside, use the station talent or better yet, hire a production company. They know what they're doing. If your budget won't allow that and you must use the station, try not to have the spot written by the sales rep. If possible, have one of the station announcers do it. This may sound strange at first, but if you consider the fact that sales reps are usually writing for a couple of dozen clients at any given time, you can see where a fresh approach may help. Also, the announcers are on the air at least four hours a day so they have an idea of what sounds good and what doesn't because of immediate audience feedback.

Regardless of who writes it, however, make sure it is effective and sells your product. We're not looking to win awards, just sales. "If it doesn't sell, it's not creative." Also, look into using sixty second commercials as opposed to thirty second. In case you weren't aware of it, a radio commercial is sold by the minute so every other time unit is a percentage of the sixty. So a thiry does not cost you half of a sixty. Instead, it usually costs 70-80% of the sixty and a fifteen second liner usually costs about 30-50% of the sixty. If you look at it this way, you can see how buying a sixty is actually less expensive than buying thirty. If you are accustomed to buying thirty second spots, think of it as buying one thirty and getting a second for just two or three dollars more. Look into that.

Cost

What can you do to stretch your radio budget? Trade is one excellent way of doing this. With most stations usually engaged in some sort of on air promotions, free products or services to give away are always welcome. Some stations will go as far as giving you all the air time you need in exchange for your freebies while others will only trade a part of the air time and require a cash buy as well. You will have to negotiate that with your station rep but you can usually work out a deal that is beneficial for both. Another way to stretch your budget is to negotiate for late time hours. Increasingly, more and more people are working swing shifts or overnight shifts so you can't always reach them during "normal" listening hours. Ask your station sales rep to throw in some free overnight and early morning spots in addition to your buy. Most will and you can actually double the amount of exposure you have without doubling your budget.

Radio P.R.

So how do you go about effectively using radio for a P.R. campaign? First of all, realize that unless a station is an all talk station, they will rarely dedicate more than five minutes to any particular non-music program. Some stations do have longer newscasts or special events programming such as Presidential speeches but this is rare. With that in mind, don't send a station news director or public affairs director a fifteen minute news feed. He will more than likely use your tape for something else. (Like recording music to listen to in his car.) Instead, use sound bites.

Edit the speech, press conference, etc., before you give the news director the tape. This will save him the hassle of having to do it himself and you can usually choose the material you want covered. An alternative to this is to invite the news director or public affairs director to the event you want covered. Nothing brightens up someone's day like getting a chance to get out of the studio for a little while and something like this is just the excuse. Remember that most stations will not use the recorded material on air, however, so don't be surprised if the material is transcribed and read live. Better yet, provide a transcript, if possible, with important quotes highlighted. You improve the odds of the really important material being used.

As I mentioned earlier, many radio stations will throw in free publicity to their existing clients but they will also use that as an incentive to lure new customers. Use that to your advantage.

If you are going to advertise on a particular station and have an event you would like covered, have the station send an announcer to cover the event. This doesn't have to be a full blown remote, however. In my market, one of the stations I worked at has Red Carpet events. One of the more popular announcers goes to the client's event such as a ribbon cutting or ground breaking, and does a brief presentation either over the phone to record for later use or live on the air. It doesn't cost the client anything and creates a certain amount of increased store traffic. Check with your sales rep to see if something like that is available.

Another fantastic way of gaining free or inexpensive publicity is to host a show. For obvious reasons, this works best on all talk stations but can be modified to work on music stations as well. (For example, a station I worked for would have a client, a stock broker, call in an opening and closing market report. This would allow us to have up-to-date financial information, which many of our listeners appreciated, and it positioned the client as the leader in the field. If you offer a service such as that, try a similar arrangement. The client was given free, live opening and closing liners prior to each report and he bought only a small amount of advertising time in exchange. Try it.)

A call in show can do wonders for a business trying to establish itself in a marketplace because it automatically lends credibility to the business. Most listeners are loyal to their chosen station and when a show is broadcast on "their" station, there is instant credibility in the host. Try setting up a weekly call-in offering solutions to your prospects' problems. For example, a garden supply store could offer free gardening advice to listeners who call in. An attorney or CPA could do the same. And of course we've all heard medical and automotive call in shows, haven't we?

The idea is not to make money right away, but to try and convert those callers into patrons of your business. It really does work and can increase your business' success dramatically. Ask your station sales rep about such an arrangement.

Well, I've covered a lot of material on how to use radio more effectively in your marketing and P.R. efforts. I'm sure that in your particular case, some other factors will arise which will require some creative negotiating on your part. Just don't be afraid to negotiate aggressively. The beautiful thing about negotiating air time is the fact that a station HAS to use that time otherwise it's gone forever. If you're patient, you can get some real bargains when advertising on the radio.