Radio Sales Café

I am in a small market that still has daily and weekly newspapers. We find a ton of businesses still going 100% print. We're thinking of putting together a "switch pitch" Something like take your Q1 print budget and spend it on radio and we'll match it!! Or something along those lines. I am wondering if anyone has done this before? I am specifically looking to take print dollars and turn them into radio dollars. 

If you have done this before, how did you regulate it?? And was it successful for you?

TIA for any suggestions!

Melinda

Hi Melinda,
This has been a pesky issue for radio for decades but there have been successes. I'm not ccertain if my approach in major markets will work for you, but I think it's worth considering.
1. Timing is essential. These print commitments are almost always done a the beginning of each near year. That means any conversion campaign needs to launch early the year prior to the results you want. This time is required for value-added relationship building. Competing with perception and tangibility is no easy task.

2. Target category leaders who are accessible and who you BELIEVE (not think) that you can influence. Be sure the categories are qualitative strengths within your audience profile.

3. Design a campaign for each specific target that effectively utilizes remnant inventory to drive traffic for the advertiser. Be sure the campaign is sustainable for at least a month.

4. Creative is essential. No matter who produces it, it has to resonate with your audience and have a compelling call to action. This is not the time to be just cute.

5. Go into it with clear performance metrics that the advertiser can sign onto. This enhances the conversion opportunity at the end of the campaign.

6. Be sure key competitors know about these campaigns as they begin to gain traction. It'll drive them nuts because we still live in a "me too" world.

By the way...This is an investment on your part. A month of strategically placed FREE "starter campaigns" can convert to years on new revenue that was once exclusive to print.

Roy Williams wrote a GREAT column a few years back comparing the effectiveness of radio vs. print. If the print ad was on Wednesday and costs $1,000 he waited several weeks and spent another $1,000 on one Wednesday with exactly the same copy. Radio beat print 14-1. He repeated this in a few other markets and got the same results, 14-1.   

Melinda,

In my experience, and as a general principle, advertisers who switch from all-print to all-radio will get better results, all other factors being equal. Are there exceptions? Of course.  But I do not believe that they disprove the rule.

Decades ago the RAB suggested this method for demonstrating to a heavy newspaper advertiser how he could add radio to his print without spending any additional money:  using a weekly full-page ad as an illustration, the rep would draw one vertical line two columns in from the right, and a horizontal line several inches above the bottom, turning the full page into a 2/3 page ad.  According to then-current research (conducted by Starch-Roper, I believe), the difference in ad-noticed/ad-read scores between the two different sizes was negligible, but the cost difference allowed the advertiser to purchase a respectable ad schedule.

Then we started getting sales training from Jim Williams, who abhorred the idea of "media mix" and believed that Radio didn't need the help of newspaper to provide a healthy ROI for the advertiser.  He advocated going after the whole budget, believing that dollar-for-dollar and time-for-time, radio advertising will at least equal if not outperform newspaper.  He urged salespeople to get advertisers to buy radio the same way they bought newspaper.  For example, if an advertiser spent $500 for a print ad that ran in one day, he should buy $500 worth of radio in one day--using the same content as the newspaper ad, usually price-and-item--and compare the results of those two scenarios.  Comparing $500 spent in one day of newspaper to $500 spread out over one month on radio would not have the same impact.  I can attest to the effectiveness of this approach when I began using it in the mid/late-1970s, when the focus was on direct response and not so much on branding.  It was radical at the time, but it worked to open relationships with print-heavy advertisers and turn them into aggressive radio advertisers.  (Click on the "Jim Williams" link above to hear some fascinating case studies along these lines.  I'll search for some others and share them with you when I located them.)

Keep us posted, please!

I saw some recent research (RAB, I think) that stated a full page ad was only 1% more effective than a half page ad.