Happy Friday, everyone!
Here is this week's poll question:
Does your station trade for travel/vacations? How do you use the travel: advertiser perks? sales spiffs? listener contests? How do you procure your travel?
Looking forward to reading your answers!
Call Roger Fray at Sun and Fun Media in Sanford Florida. They trade with many stations 800-735-0060. http://www.sunfunmedia.com/
We purchase the trips through a local travel agent, that purchases time on our station. It's not a trade, it's more like an exchange of checks...and there's a good reason for it. When the airline drops a flight, and strands a family in Honolulu and the travel agent is not the reason for the 'screw up', they work as diligently for this 'paying customer' instead of this 'trade-out deal'. Usually trades are made with less than 'quality' carriers / hotels / events. Be careful on who you pick.
Fun and Sun Media is good if you live in a large market but for smaller markets like ours with lower spot rates, their barter requirements are way too high to make sense. We only use flyaways for larger contests and work with our local airport. Instead of trading/bartering commercials, we include them in all recorded promos, live mentions, print advertising, etc. making their promotional value received at least 4x the cost of tickets. They also spend cash with us for the promotion and since fly dates are sometimes not exact, they give us ticket vouchers in a pre-determined amount for the winners!
Smaller markets require some creativity to utilize contesting with travel. We have found local clients with helicopters and clients who utilize jet leasing. We than develop campaigns that drive listeners to enter to win into their business.
Private jet flyaway from a small market into a larger market to see Fleetwood Mac is a great contest
We typically go thru a local travel agent to coordiante all aspects of the trip. There are ocassions when we barter with an out of market hotel or work with the local airport for promotional consideration.
We work with a local travel agent, usually for promo mentions, sometimes partial trade. Lately we have given a travel voucher so the winner has more flexibility in destination and timing. Our best travel prize was in 2001, with a nod to the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" we flew the winner to Jupiter (FL). We worked with the Chamber of Commerce in Jupiter, who loved the idea and helped arrange dining and other activities for our winners. The point is with a little creativity you can go beyond the travel agency booking process and make the experience extra special.
Nope. We've stopped doing business with ANY organization that buys other mediums but wants to go cashless with radio.
