Radio Sales Café

Happy Friday, everyone!

Here's this week's poll question: 

Of your current sales projects, which ad campaign or promotion are you most enthused about?

Looking forward to reading your replies!

We are gearing up for the high school football season and looking for more "sportsboosters". Plus we are adding a live hour and half "After the Game" program. I'm excited!!

Every October we have a dual event which is my personal favorite. We do monthly radio auctions but in October we put together a "Mega" Auction. We've found that customers are willing to place that one really big item without much pushing because they realize the attention an event this big gets from listeners. We're able to bring in 10 times the amount of revenue on this auction that we bring in on a typical monthly one. We also really push for items to come back to the station so we can display them in addition to having them on our website.

The second thing we do in conjunction with the mega auction is we have a Halloween Party for the community and invite Parents to bring their kids down and then look around at the auction items while the kids are having fun. It's not only an enjoyable event for everyone involved (especially us), but it really seems to help with previewing the items and bids on them.

Love the auctions, we made tons of money too. But rather than display the items at the station, (which we felt would have little benefit to us), we promoted that they were on display at the clients' stores, thus trying to help drive more traffic to them. One year we had all the items on display at the mall, where we later held the auction. Mall paid for some promotional spots because they wanted to bring traffic there. By the way, RAB has EZAuction software; if you don't already have software to keep track of everything, contact them.

We have a great organization here called "Bringing Families Back". Each year they have a festival that focuses completely on meeting the needs of families. Last year there were well over 100 vendors and sponsors. This year they were looking for a media partner and came to me. I developed a campaign that uses print, internet, email, and radio. The print is coming through our trade partners. Instead of giving them a straight proposal, I offered them a partnership to revenue share this event. We use our assets to promote the event and even get to brand out name with this huge event with no risk to the stations. The Return on our investment will be huge.

This is a true win win for our group and this great organization.

I am really excited about the promotion that we just started this week. It is called "Fill the Freezer". Since I live on an island in Alaska where fishing and hunting are for many families necessary for survival, we came up with "Fill the Freezer". We got businesses to donate things that would help people put up stuff for the winter time...custom fish processing, a food saver, a meat package from a grocery store, etc and a small chest freezer to put it all in. So far we are getting great results and the prize package is $1,000.00 in value. You have to be the third caller to qualify for the drawing to be held later this month.

Julie M. Slanaker
KFMJ 99.9 FM