Radio Sales Café

Happy Friday, everyone!

Here is this week's poll question:

Do you have professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.) in your market doing their own radio shows and/or their own radio ads?

If you have audio samples to share with us, we'd love to hear them.  Just click on the "upload files" link below.

Looking forward to reading your answers!

I love to have clients record their own ads... the BIG CAUTION in this type of ad... make sure they are speaking PLAIN ENGLISH!

I had a chiropractor that recorded his own ads... they talked about the "Altas orthogonal bone"   what is that?!?!

I TWISTED THEIR ARM and made them do ads speaking TO people about headaches, back aches and the likes.

This made a HUGE difference in the response! 

We encourage our clients to voice their own ads in all businesses.  We have Saturday morning programming that includes "infomercials" for a tour bus company, 2 financial planners and a green house owner - "the flower hour" which is probably among our most popular shows --it's a call in with questions etc... great following!

check out Saturday programming at wclo.com

I recently signed a law firm and suggested we use actual clients discussing their experience with the attorneys.  They had over 30 calls the first month and acquired 5 cases as a result of the radio campaign,  At my suggestion, they added our logo with mp3's of the commercials on their website home page.

We heavily discourage clients voicing their own commercials. We have professional voice actors that can do an infinitely better service and delivery for any client. We even discourage our on air talent voicing commercials as well.

We use a Production house; for several reasons.

• The creative integrity and entertainment value of our spot sets has to be maintained.
• Our commercials are written with acute attention to relevance to target, creativity, and yes uber-production value and reads. Announcers... announce... voice actors .. act. Huge difference.
• Clients wanting to voice their own ads are doing there business a disservice. However,. there are grand -fathered accounts that have been voicing their own commercials for decades; therefore they have  creative equity  and have branded their voice with the Brand/ product and or service. It works.
• We work hard making sure that every on air element of the stations programming and spot sets don't sound hay-seed or really chessily small market.
• and finally... in this day and age; a forward thinking creative team at any radio station has to know what will work, what won't and what is terrible radio and what isn't.  We work as a marketing agency that just happens to own two radio frequencies ( successfully so). That being said, I or my team are never afraid to call a spade a spade on bad creative. Face it, at the end of the day... the client is going to want to hold the station responsible for positive results. So if that's the case,, we'll accept the challenge... but that means we get control over the planning, execution and messaging for a successful result. 

Info- mercials..... Yikes!! that's the stuff that should never be on a music station. I don't care what they want to pay.. if they want to buy that type of time....... send 'em to the nearest am talk radio station. Or maybe they should open their own station,, and niche market to a select small audience on their own dime.

From Cindy Clifford (@DotDraper) on Twitter ("Voiceover gal/ morning radio gal. Pop culture/internet junkie. Loves advertising, MadMen and sharing stuff."):

Sorry to say, yes. It seems to be a great tool- appealing to their egos, but mostly just makes the station sound cheesy.

I agree no music infomercials, WCLO is news sports talk...

Sometimes it's appropriate and beneficial, but I coach them very closely.

I have professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.) voice their own ads if they can make it work - and in this category most can. However, I write the copy. Here's an ad for a vet that increases sales every time we air it.

I think it is a great idea to have the client voice the ad....it adds a personal touch to the ad, and a familiarity with the listening audience. A lot of our  advertisers have benefited greatly by  using their voice....