Happy Friday, everyone!
Hard to believe it's already the end of November, but since we're there, here is this week's poll question:
Are you doing any new Christmas promotions this year?
If so, we'd love to hear about them! Looking forward to reading your replies.
For the past couple of years, we done "Sing for your Bling" - Listeners call in and "sing" the first verse of their favorite Christmas song. Even if they do it poorly, they win "Bling" ...a $200 Gift Certificate to a local Jeweler (the sponsor). The client buys the spot schedule, you trade the Jewelry prizes. Client gets cash ads and trade ads on-air. Sounds fun on-air. You can repeat this promo for Valentines Day.
We kick-off our annual "12 Days of Christmas" promotion on December 3 and it runs through Dec. 18 with a grand prize winner drawn on the 19th. This year we are asking listeners to go to our website to enter the contest (rather than listen for a sounder on the air and call-in). During each air-shift for 12 business days, the air personalities will draw a name from the website entries to announce on the air. When the listener hears their name, they call in to claim a "daily" prize. We are giving away a total of 36 daily prizes provided by sponsors who are participating in the promotion with one of 3 package levels. The grand-prize consists of one of each of the sponsored prizes PLUS a summer entertainment package including tickets to Cedar Point and Kennywood theme parks. Another reason we are driving listeners to the website to enter the contest is to encourage visitors to click on the "Christmas Gift Guide" where each sponsor has a logo posted with a link to either their business website or a coupon that can be printed and redeemed. The Christmas Gift Guide is an added-value component to the sponsor packages. We are only a little Contemporary Christian station but are giving away just over a $1,000 in sponsor prizes and theme park tickets over the 12 day period. The promotion has generated close to $4,000 in revenue specific to the promotion but also includes several clients who get the promotion as part of an annual contract. If you want to take a peek at the WNPQ "The Light" 95.9 "12 Days of Christmas" promotion go to www.thelight959.com. Merry Christmas!
We have several Christmas promotions each year. We always give away a couple dozen hams for Christmas dinners. Some of our clients sponsor them and the winners go into the businesses to pick up their gift certificates and say Thank You. We also have a traveling Christmas Tree. This tree travels to many businesses and is decorated with all kinds a hand made decorations and money. We place what we call Dillon Dollars on the tree. The Dillon Dollars can only be spent with local merchants. That helps local business. This year the tree has $200.00 in Dillon Dollars on it. Some lucky winner will get the money on the 21st, just in time to do some additional 'local' Christmas shopping. In order to win the tree, a person has to visit each business and sign up. Getting people into the store is my job. Having them purchase something is the job of the store owners/managers. We increase our Christmas revenue a great deal with these promotions.
We also have a great sponsorship for all our high school and college sports events. If you want to know more, Let me know.
Jo Ann Juliano
Owner
Hi Jo Ann,
I would love to hear about the sponsorships for your high school and college sports event. I have a local college on my client list that has decreased their advertising a lot this year and I need something interesting to bring his attention back to radio advertising. Thanks!!
Cheers,
Kari Green
We have an "Everything Under the Tree" promotion for December. There are two options for committment, Option 1 includes a one week ad buy and the client must provide a prize with a $50 value. The second option includes a three week ad buy and the client provides a prize worth a $100 value. Throughout December listeners will call in everyday when they hear the cue to call and they will be qualified to win "everything under the tree". On the 21st, we will choose a winner among our qualifiers, our morning jock will show up to the winner's house and deliver a big red sack full of all of their prizes. We had 12 sponsors buy this promotion and I believe we could have gotten more if we had started selling it earlier. If you have any questions, let me know!
Happy holiday selling
A rather new angle that I have taken this year is strictly a phone pitch campaign as it is inexpencive for each client I need to avoid spending to much time with any one customer. These are churches that normally do nothing, or very little on air. The goal of the campaign is to invite our listeners to go to church on Christmas Sunday. Rather than having a large budget from any one church, this is a small dollar from each church and get a large number of churches to get involved. I have the first half of the :60 pre-written with a Christian Christmas theme and a general invitation to go to your neighborhood church, So the first part is pre-produced with a music bed for the second part, so the production end of the buuilding is not swamped with recutting the same part. The second part of the ad is for the individual church to mention or invite people to their Christmas events. and ends it with saying something on the line of "but if ou cant join us, find a local church to celebrate Christmas with this Sunday". This is presented to the churches as an attempt to just get more Christmas church attendance in the community. It worked great for Easter as well.
Hi Daryl,
Do you have a script you can share and what amount do you ask a Church to typically give?
Thanks and what a wonderful idea!!!
Here is the basic of the program. The price for a church to be on can be stupidly low and at the same time the cost per ad can maintain rate card status. The trick is to get a lot of churches involved.
Customer:
:60 (:30/:30)
Merry Christmas! There are many takes on the Christmas season, but one thing that still remains…Christ is the reason for the season. Jesus Christ teaches us to give to each other. Jesus Christ teaches us to love each other. Christmas Sunday you are invited to celebrate the birth of history’s most controversial figure. Jesus came to show love and peace to the world. Every one of the churches in our communities invite you to come and experience faith, hope, and love this Sunday in celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.
After this the Church gives me information that I build a 30 second to fill out the :60.
Christmas Sunday Church Promotion
*Investment by each church: $Y for one station or $(Y X 2.5) for all three.
*Each participating church will be purchasing 6 Tap 2- commercials for a total of $Y.
*Grays Harbor Radio will then bonus each of them 9 more
*These commercials will all air December 16th-23rd.
*The above script shows the first :30 of the commercial and the second :30 will be dedicated to the participating church.
*The push of this campaign is to invite our listeners to go to church on Christmas Sunday. Primarily to go to a church and secondly to go to the sponsors church.
LOVE this one! I'm going to steal it for next year. Thank you for sharing!
We do our "12 Days OF Christmas Prizes" (using the site www.WinThisOnline.com this year to make it easier for us!)
The thing I'm MOST EXCITED about though.... We have a pretty big project that we started in September... the "2012 Christmas Wish Book" is a magazine style catalog that we sold to local businesses. We printed 10,000 copies and have been giving them out at local Christmas events. Including 4 local "lighted parades" where we made a float and walked through handing out hundreds at each event! I even gave some out at Big Box Stores on Black Friday morning (not all stores were cool with that)
I attached a PDF so you can get an idea of what it looks like. That was the BIGGEST issue during the sales process, no one (even some of my salespeople) knew what this was going to look like. So we are going to do more than DOUBLE the pages next year. I have already had clients call ME asking how to "get in" this next year.
I put together a budget for the project (attached) so you can see that this is a GREAT way to make some money PLUS help to promote shopping LOCAL by having a local focus in your sales pitch!
If you decide that you want to do something like this next year.... let me know. We can get you a dozen copies of the finished product so you have something we DIDN'T have... and example! ;o)
Thanks
John Small
Sunny Radio - Sioux Falls, SD
