Profit From Radio Advertising With These 7 Keys

Radio adver­tis­ing is an often-​​overlooked “magic mar­ket­ing bul­let”. Done cor­rectly, it can increase your prof­its like magic. Done wrong, you can burn money at stun­ning speeds.

Here are the 7 Keys to Mak­ing a For­tune Using Radio Advertising.

Key 1: Use Direct Response Copy

Most radio ads use inef­fec­tive copy — they try to be funny, cute, or clever.

Don’t use these tac­tics, because they almost never work. Instead, use a direct response ad. A good basic tem­plate for such an ad looks like this:

1. Attention-​​grabbing headline.
2. Asso­ciate the lis­tener to the main ben­e­fit of your prod­uct or service.
3. Describe the offer in vivid language.
4. Re-​​associate the lis­tener to the benefit.
5. Make a direct call to action (repeat at least three times).

I rec­om­mend the call to action, when­ever pos­si­ble, be either a web­site address or a tele­phone number.

Once you have con­vinced the prospect to take one of those two actions, you can place them into your mar­ket­ing sys­tem to make the sale.

Let’s look at two exam­ple ads.

First, the “wrong way”…

Wrong Way (i.e., the “Usual” Way)

“Craft Mas­ter Jew­el­ers is proud to announce our 20th annual Valen­tine Sale! Come browse the enor­mous selec­tion of the finest dia­mond and gold jew­elry avail­able any­where. Come on in to our store at 1313 Mock­ing­bird Lane, and see for your­self as our friendly cour­te­ous staff helps you make the right deci­sion about what jew­elry to buy. We have ten­nis bracelets, soli­taires, and even cus­tom pieces avail­able. We have over 75 years expe­ri­ence and are eager to serve you. Call us at 555‑1212, visit our web­site at Craft Mas­ter Jew­el­ers dot com, or stop by the store at 1313 Mock­ing­bird Lane today.”

The prob­lems with the ad copy above:

• It uses a lot of cliché lan­guage that lis­ten­ers will instantly “tune out.”
• The ad is not about the lis­tener, it’s about the adver­tiser: for exam­ple, it uses phrases like “our store”, “our staff”, “we have”, etc.
• Too many options: ten­nis bracelets, soli­taires, cus­tom pieces, etc.
• Too many con­flict­ing calls to action: call the phone num­ber, check out the web address, visit the street address.

Now let’s look at an ad for the same com­pany, but this time done using a dif­fer­ent approach…

Right Way: “Direct Response” Style

“Atten­tion — men who still haven’t bought that Valentine’s gift. It’s not too late to make her glow with love for you. Imag­ine… a jew­elry craftsper­son asks you a few sim­ple ques­tions, and then cre­ates the per­fect gift of dia­monds or gold. All with­out the frus­trat­ing shop­ping expe­ri­ence, in a min­i­mum of time, and at the price you choose. Enjoy her sur­prise and delight… call Craft Mas­ter Jew­el­ers now at 555‑1212… 555‑1212 Don’t dis­ap­point her — delight her instead. 555‑1212.”

What’s right about the sec­ond ad?

• The focus is entirely where it should be; on the har­ried, busy, clue­less man who hasn’t bought his wife or sweet­heart a Valentine’s gift.
• The head­line speaks directly to the intended tar­get: specif­i­cally, “men who still haven’t bought that Valentine’s gift.”
• The body copy talks about ben­e­fits that are impor­tant to the men who are most likely to buy jew­elry: their con­cern over bud­gets, time effi­ciency, and the fact that they hate shopping,
• The sin­gle call to action (in this case, the phone num­ber) is direct, sim­ple, and repeated three times.

Key 2: Any Station Works, If You Buy Enough Ads

While it cer­tainly doesn’t hurt to be on top-​​rated sta­tions, it’s not nec­es­sary. The top-​​rated sta­tion is usu­ally has the most expen­sive ad rates.

You don’t have to be on the #1 sta­tion — there’s no rea­son you can’t adver­tise on any of the sta­tions in the Top 10 (as deter­mined by the Arbi­tron Rat­ings com­pany — find them at www​.Arbi​tron​.com).

When it comes to nego­ti­at­ing rates, here’s a handy trick: lis­ten to the sta­tion and make note of what busi­nesses adver­tise on that sta­tion. Then sim­ply call those busi­nesses and ask how much they’re pay­ing. While many will not share their rates, some will.

It might sound sim­ple, but this is a seldom-​​used tac­tic can get you the best deals with very lit­tle effort.

Key 3: Make Each Ad Contain Only One Most Wanted Result

Many radio adver­tis­ers will try to do too many things in a sin­gle com­mer­cial: get a men­tion in for their street address, their phone num­ber, their web­site, and their “spe­cial of the week”, and more.

That’s con­fus­ing for the listener.

You must decide in advance: what is the pur­pose for your ad? What is the Most Wanted Result you need to get from your ad?

You need to choose: you can ask con­sumers to visit a web­site, or to call a phone num­ber, or to visit your phys­i­cal store… but if you try and ask for all those results in a sin­gle ad, you’ll likely get none of them.

There can be only one Most Wanted Result for each ad you run.

Key 4: Don't Let the Radio People Write Your Copy

Here’s a dirty lit­tle secret of the radio busi­ness: over 95% of the ads are writ­ten by the sales­per­son or by a DJ! In fact, the major­ity of sta­tions do not employ full-​​time copywriters.

Do you really want a sales­per­son or DJ writ­ing your copy?

(The answer is, “NO”.)

Even if the radio sta­tion (or ad agency) has a full-​​time writer, chances are the writer will be more inter­ested in writ­ing “cute” or “award-​​winning” copy, which almost never equals “sales-​​making” copy.

Don’t let the radio peo­ple write your copy. Write it your­self, or hire a copy­writer who is well-​​versed in writ­ing direct response-​​style radio copy.

Key 5: Never Work With Children or Comedians

For some rea­son, many radio adver­tis­ers feel com­pelled to try mak­ing their com­mer­cials “cute” or “funny”. It almost never works.

Using a cute kid voice almost always means the lis­tener will focus only on how cute the voice is… and they will be dis­tracted from lis­ten­ing to the ad’s intended message.

Using humor in your ads is a bad idea because: it’s hard to be funny. It’s even harder to be funny in a way that cre­ates a ben­e­fit pic­ture in the listener’s mind.

Bot­tom line: when you decide to elim­i­nate the cute and the funny ads, your ad might sound a bit “bor­ing”, but will be much more likely to bring you the cus­tomers, leads, and prof­its you desire.

Key 6: Buy Everything But "Drive Time"

Radio sales peo­ple love to sell com­mer­cials in what’s called “drive-​​time” (i.e., the hours each day most peo­ple are dri­ving to and from work, usu­ally 6am to 10am, and 3pm to 7pm).

That’s because (a) they’re easy to sell, and (b) drive-​​time spots are the most expen­sive spots on the radio sta­tion — so the com­mis­sions for the sales­per­son are bigger.

When your bud­get is tight — or when you are test­ing a new com­mer­cial to see how effec­tive it is (the response it gets) — I sug­gest a dif­fer­ent strategy.

Buy com­mer­cials every hour out­side of morn­ing and after­noon drive times (morn­ing drive is the sin­gle most expen­sive adver­tis­ing real estate on almost every radio sta­tion; after­noon drive is next).

You can nor­mally get these com­mer­cials at a great dis­count. In fact, ask for the com­mer­cials from midnight-​​6am as a “free bonus” for buy­ing the others.

Quite often you’ll get them free — or at least for dirt cheap rates.

If you have a bit more money, or if you tested your ad and it seems to be work­ing well, try buy­ing one com­mer­cial in each drive time (morn­ing and after­noon), at the same time every day (so the same peo­ple hear the same ad day in and day out).

If that works, you can expand your buy­ing into other drive time hours.

Key 7: Use This Secret Tactic Ignite Your Ad Response

The most pop­u­lar time-​​slot on most radio sta­tions is the morn­ing show, which is usu­ally on the air Monday-​​Friday, 6am-​​10am.

These are the hours dur­ing which the sta­tion almost always has its biggest audience.

Lis­ten­ers tend to be most loyal to a station’s morn­ing per­son­al­i­ties and DJs.

If you can get inter­viewed on the morn­ing show in a favor­able light, it can put the rest of your adver­tis­ing on steroids. If the audi­ence thinks the morn­ing show likes you and your prod­uct, it’s as if you’ve been endorsed by the show. This can be an enor­mous boost for your sales.

You can often make a morn­ing show inter­view a con­di­tion of your adver­tis­ing con­tract. One cau­tion: make sure you are not being “forced” on the morn­ing show’s host(s).

Being inter­viewed in a sar­cas­tic or unfa­vor­able light can be worse than no inter­view at all.

Win the host(s) over to your cause, make them like you, and you’ll enjoy the halo effect of a true endorse­ment by the radio personality.

What to Do Now

You now know more than 93% of busi­ness own­ers about the right way to adver­tise on the radio. Put the power of what you know into action!

Radio can build your busi­ness quickly, increas­ing sales and prof­its lit­er­ally overnight.

Put these 7 Keys to work for in your radio adver­tis­ing cam­paigns, and start enjoy­ing increased sales and profits.

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