(COPYWRITING) Clear & Simple Calls To Action

8-7-2013

Clients, advertising agencies, producers, broadcasters, and writers (me included), have all done it. It?s a common, but detrimental mistake: Including more than one call to action in a commercial.

Multiple CTAs can work in print and can occasionally work on TV, but attempting it on radio can delete your effectiveness.

It happens when we mistakenly assume that people are poised, writing instruments in hands, awaiting the vital information that will change their lives. Most of your listeners are engaged in other activities ? driving, talking on their cell phones, working, cooking, performing craniotomies?

Giving them a choice of ways to respond is a bad idea. Hopefully your message is compelling enough to make them want to respond. Now, make it easy for them.

When you?re advertising consumer products, the task is fairly easy. These products are usually available at many locations. People need only ask for the item or have the message that you?ve reinforced in the commercial brought to mind at the point of purchase.

With other kinds of advertisers there are several response vehicles to consider. The listener can call, vote, write a letter, visit a location, attend an event (concert, seminar, free demonstration), or visit a website. Often, in an attempt to cover the bases, we include them all. It?s like throwing several objects to someone simultaneously. Rather than catch even one, they?ll lose focus and catch none. Toss just one object to them and they?ll probably catch it.

You only have 60, 30, 15, 10, or 5 seconds to elicit a response. Don?t confuse your audience. Narrow their choice of responses to one.

Only minutes ago I left the recording studio having recorded a series of radio spots for a major national advertiser created by a large international advertising agency. The spots included two calls to action: a 10-digit non-memorable phone number and a moderately long URL. Both repeated twice. In my not-so-humble opinion, including both will reduce their response rate significantly, but in this instance I was only the hired voice, not the advertising consultant.

If a website and/or telephone call (this should be rare) are the only ways for a prospect to respond, then create and air two versions ? one with the phone number and one with the URL. See which pulls more responses. It?ll usually be the one with the website.

Don?t include both in the same commercial. Dividing the mind will divide your results.

To learn How To Sell More On the Radio Using Stories, visit
http://www.hedquist.com/stories

Jeffrey continues to discover ways to help you help your clients make money at Hedquist Productions, Inc. Phone 641-472-6708. E-mail jeffrey@hedquist.com. For your free subscription to our idea-packed newsletter visit http://www.hedquist.com.

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(SALES) A Simple Consumer Needs Analysis Clients Love

8-2-2013

Local direct decision-makers often find broadcast seller?s Customer Needs Analysis forms awkward, especially if you?re the third media rep this week that?s asked them to help fill one out. Many business owners would rather snack on wasps than help you fill out a lengthy form. The best way to get the information you need from local direct clients is by asking good questions and then listening very carefully to responses during the course of normal conversation.

Here are seven questions you can ask to get the information you need for a great custom proposal. Even though I may already know the answers to many of these questions, I like to hear the answers from the client?s lips. By listening carefully to their responses, I learn a lot about what they know (but maybe aren?t advertising) about their business?as well as what they know and don?t know about our business.

1.   Regarding advertising and marketing, what are you doing or what have you done in the past?
2.   Why are you doing it?
3.   Who are you trying to reach?
4.   What do those people you?re trying to reach know now about your business?
5.   What do you want those people to know?
6.   What is your average sale?
7.   What is your gross margin of profit?

Again, even if I believe I already know the answer to any of these questions, I ask it anyway. I ask so I can listen carefully to their responses and determine their level of ignorance or sophistication about marketing, advertising, and my station in particular. I am looking for holes in their perceptions. I?m looking for correctable untruths that they may have about advertising, or about my station. I?m also digging for the client?s true strengths and weaknesses, as well as her perceived notions of the strengths and weaknesses of her competitors. I will use this information to create commercials that will really get consumer?s attention.

When I ask about her average sale and her gross margin of profit, I?m getting information I can use to calculate return on advertising investment and show her that advertising on my station is a good calculated risk, not gambling. I?ll also use that same information to manage her expectations about results on my station.

Later, I?ll put what I?ve learned into a concise one- to two-page proposal that the client will understand and appreciate.

Here is an example of a conversation with a business owner. She owns a gardening center. 

Salesperson: Regarding marketing and advertising, what are you doing?
Client: We use the newspaper and the Yellow Pages.
Salesperson: Why are you using those mediums?
Client: Because they work. We?re doing couponing and the people come in with the coupons.
OBSERVATION: All media work. We?ll deal with that later. And, I wonder how much of her advertising is dedicated to price only? She can?t win long-term against her price-slashing national discount competitors. Maybe in the future we can focus her advertising on creating value for her products and services and less on cutting her prices.
Salesperson: Who are you trying to reach when you advertise?
Client: We?re trying to reach everybody we can.
OBSERVATION: No medium can reach everybody and we don?t have to. Just a percentage of those people who will buy plants and garden supplies this week.
Salesperson: Helen, those people you?re trying to reach?what do they know about your business now? [At this point the client usually begins to open up. I start to observe some of her frustrations.]
Client: We have a good reputation and we sell good stuff but we?re steadily losing business to Lowe?s, Home Depot, and Menard?s. And it?s hard to compete with all of their advertised low prices.
Salesperson: Helen, what do you want people to know about your business?
Client: Well, our soil in Southwestern Michigan is different. And, we don?t sell things that don?t grow in Southwestern Michigan. They sell a lot of stuff that just won?t do well here with our weather and our soil.
OBSERVATION: Here come some golden nuggets I can use later in commercials.
Client: And we have a horrible unemployment problem in Michigan. Whenever possible, I only buy from Michigan growers and Michigan vendors, so we can keep jobs here in Michigan.
OBSERVATION: What great commercials these statements are going to make. And, we can focus value propositions like these, instead of trolling for bottom-feeders that would only buy her because of price.
Client: And, we don?t have one of those great big parking lots. There?s plenty of free parking at the door and we even help load up your car for you.
Salesperson: What?s your average sale?
Client: Considering everything, about sixty dollars per customer.
Salesperson: What?s your gross margin of profit? Is it keystone (50 percent)?
Client: Actually, it?s a little higher than keystone, about 60 percent.

Great. Now I have the information I need to come up with a custom proposal. It will include a long-term creative strategy as well as a long-term schedule. My budget will be created from real numbers, which include her average sale figure and her gross margin of profit.

We?ll deal with how to write these proposals next time.

Paul Weyland is a broadcast sales trainer, author, and hired gun. Learn more about bringing Paul into your market by visiting www.paulweyland.com or by calling him at 512 236 1222.

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SM's: Set Simple Rules For High Performance

by Sean Luce

My previous article entitled: ?Ten Reasons I failed as a Sales Manager? received an interesting question from one of Radio Ink?s readers. Before I respond to the question, let me state that I made all of those mistakes as a sales manager. The key is to learn from those mistakes. I had some outstanding mentors early in my career who allowed me to make the tough mistakes. They knew that those mistakes would pay big dividends down the road, and they did.

Dan Watts, a sales manager from Cincinnati responded with a question many managers are faced with every day ??you identified the problems. What are the solutions??  Dan goes on to ask ?How do you discipline?especially when sales are pretty good, but basic simple rules like being on time, CRM , list maintenance, skipping staff and 1 on 1 meetings with iffy excuses are being abused?? Dan continues, ?I certainly don?t want to threaten to fire performers or even demotivate them, but there needs to be some level of expectation on simple rules.? Reason number one in my last article was:  Don?t let the sales reps manage you. I want to discuss how to avoid that pitfall because most of Dan?s concerns center around that reason.

The key word Dan uses is simple rules. The simple rules apply to the sales staff regardless of whether they are above or below their sales goal. Since my sales staffs were mostly above budget, I attribute our success to some simple standards that were set. Confession: In a Sean Luce sales meeting, I locked the door at 8:00am. Outside of a medical emergency or natural disaster, the door remained locked.  Locking the door was about respect. I had a three strike rule. If the rep was late to three sales meetings, they were fired. One might say that was a rather dramatic action for just missing sales meetings, right? If there are no standards for a sales force, then count on under performance in achieving sales goals. In my experience, a successful team expects a certain standard. By the way, I do not recall ever firing someone for breaking the sales meeting ?Team? rules. The staff really set our team rules-much more than I ever set them. 

Regarding timely paperwork, I used the three strikes rule once again.  For example, our weekly sales planners were due by noon on Monday. The great performers turned the planners in on the preceding Friday. Not everyone is a ?great rep?, so I allowed some planning time on Monday morning. However when a rep arrives on Monday morning without any preparation for the week, the manager has a bigger problem than timely paperwork. Once again, I do not recall ever firing a rep on our team for late paperwork. Yes, there was the instance or two where the paperwork was late, but never three times. My job as sales manager was to see that those standards or simple rules were being met and enforced.

Account list maintenance should be simple, also. The rep fills out a claim form for an account, and turns it in to the manager.  If approved, the account was the property of the rep who claimed it. The formula is simple to follow. On sales meetings, my responsibility was to put together a sales meeting the team would want to be on time for! If a sales manager is driving to work thinking of that morning?s sales meeting, then they need to cancel the meeting. It is not fair to the reps. My sales reps wanted to be at the meeting, and they wanted to be there on Lombardi time.

Vince Lombardi the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers stated that you should show up 15 minutes early to meetings. Next to their paycheck, I wanted each week?s sales meetings to be the highlight of the week for my reps. I started working on our sales meetings two days before they occurred. Each rep always participated in the weekly meetings in some fashion. On some weeks, a rep could have a major part in the meeting if they were trying to advance in the company in a management position.

To answer the final part of Dan?s question about respect and expectations, I turned to Debbie Pantenburg, General Sales Manager at Horizon Broadcasting Group?s Bend, Oregon property. She says, ?? it starts at the top. Managers have to earn respect through their actions and coaching. A manager cannot play favorites, must work in the field, do the dirty work, plus the strategic high thinking, and coach professionally. When the sales manager is the example setter, only then is it fair to ask the salespeople to be on time, to turn off the cell phone in a meeting, and submit paperwork on time. Giving respect, earns and demands respect in return.?  Finally, my rule of thumb was to make sure that I never asked a rep to do something that I would not do or had not done. It was the simplest rule, but the most important one.

Sean Luce is the Head National Instructor for the Luce Performance Group in Houston, Texas and can be reached at Sean@luceperformancegroup.com

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Simple And FREE Steps To Promote Your Online Streaming

by Kerry Brewer

The great thing about streaming your broadcast online is, anyone, anywhere can listen. With the tremendous number of listener sites, Pandora, competing stations, etc., you can?t expect your listeners to always remember they can listen to your broadcast online or on-the-go, so you have to constantly remind them. It?s just like anything else; you have to promote it if you want to reach market penetration. So, what are some ways to get the message across about your online streaming?

On-site banners and buttons ? Don?t make your online player link hard to find, or it will never be heard. Create engaging banners/buttons that aren?t lost down below the fold of your website. Make sure they are close to the top, as part of the header, or obvious navigation and not crowded out by clutter. Everytime a visitor lands on your website, you want to make them want to click that listen live button. It should literally jump out to greet them and be one of the first things they see. I?ve come across many station websites that display their ?listen live? button way at the bottom of their site, or embedded in a row of navigation links too small for the naked eye to see?and as the saying goes, ?out of sight, out of mind.?

On-air mentions ? Have the DJs consistently mention your online streaming as part of station ID and promo. Run :15 second promos and special news updates ROS. Run contests and promotions, like having weekly drawings to win concert tickets displayed only on your player, or chat live with the DJs on air, promote song requests via your players. Consistently doing this will create habit for your listeners, and may listen online more frequently once they experience the interactivity. Promote not only your online stream, but your ability to stream to all devices, like Androids, iPhones, BlackBerrys, etc (assuming you have them, and if you don?t, you should). And hey, driving traffic to your website doesn?t hurt either! You want all your air listeners to know that they can listen online simply by going to the station?s main website and clicking on your ?play now? or ?listen live? button that?s prominently displayed.

Promote your streams on social network sites ? You shouldn?t hide the fact that you have an online stream, so post it everywhere you can. Social network sites are a great, fun way to share stuff with friends and fans. Use your station?s Facebook page to promote your online stream, put the link in your bio, and occasionally include the link in status updates to remind ?likers? that they can listen to their favorite morning show anywhere from any desktop or mobile device. Tweet about upcoming guests on the show and share the link in case listeners won?t be near a radio. Social networking is a great way to extend your listener base, as I?ve stated in previous articles. You can gain listeners from across the country . . . or across the world! It?s great catering to your local listeners, but it?s even better when you can extend your reach around the world. Friends will see friends sharing your live player, and those friends will see those friends . . . well, you get the picture.

Giving listeners the flexibility to listen when they want at any point in time is what gives you an advantage, but you must promote, promote, promote. Otherwise, how will they know? You need to consistently remind them and offer interactive ways to listen. I look at stats every day from stations that have a streaming application, players, mobile apps and all, yet aren?t promoting them and have a scant handful of listeners. In this case, if you build it, they will come . . . but only if you tell them about it. And like everything else that we know to be true about radio, repetition in the market equals credibility!

Kerry Brewer is Sr. Managing Director at Securenet Systems, a leading provider of online streaming services to the worldwide radio industry. He can be reached at kbrewer@securenetsystems.net or on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/kerrybrewer.

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