Our packages came out earlier than that, and we bundled together high school sports with the NFL, some 7P-1A rotators and Notre Dame men's basketball. Took four products that weren't selling out, and have three or four new advertisers on board as a result.
"My budget is committed" in this case means your package price is too high, or they're not seeing value in it. You're not going for traditional advertisers, it's mom and pops with kids and friends who play, and businesses who serve kids (dentists, colleges, pizza places, auto parts, buy here pay here cars).
Try selling it for two years now so you have less work to do next year and can focus on new prospects. And get those football programs to see who's spending the $.
We just began selling packages this week. It's a 50/50 of retailers and non-traditional advertisers. We offer several levels of sponsorship, from in-game ads only to 6A - 7P schedules. We haven't packaged NFL with it before, but that sounds like a good idea, since we have a hard time selling that out.
We usually sell the packages in July and August, but I'll offer it to new prospects at any time during the year. Even our most expensive package is rather affordable.
We sell ours August to July and dont usually have many problems with the "budget is already spent" excuse.
In your case I think you would need to build them a regular annual contract and build the sports into it to start in August/September. That way the dollars are already committed. Does your management allow you to add a sports sponsor mid season? So if they start in January on a regular contract, maybe you can start them in the sports at that time too?
It's an excuse. Simply put - most businesses don't really have a 'budget' and for an emotional buy like HS sports it's totally emotional. If you sell a year out, you'll hear "I haven't set my budget yet..." If they have the 'heart' for local sports a budget isn't the issue...if they don't, they aren't going to buy any time of the year.
We've found HS Sports to be less compelling each year...and are not doing it this year at all, but instead are doing a High School Sports Report during the week that is both better for the audience and more salable (or that's the theory).
We are in a college town (Div II) and have always packaged college football, men's basketball and hockey with the city public high school football and boys varsity basketball, Detroit Lions and Michigan football - it was over 120 total. And too much for us logistically. NO ONE bought the sports package for the college stuff so we have dropped that this year. Few bought the package at all until we included free airtime to be used between August and March - then we quadrupled the # of sponsors. We have 3 tiers in the Aug-Mar pkg - 1= 3-5x in-game plus 100x :30 bonus (split by fixed %'s over 3 stations)... 1 = 2x in-game plus 75x :30 bonus (split by fixed %'s over 3 stations)... 1x 1x in-game plus :30 bonus (split by fixed %'s over 3 stations). This is billed monthly - total cost amortized over the 8 months regardless of how many games in any given month so the advertiser has a fixed amt and can budget accordingly. Bonus airtime runs M-S 6a-12m. All sponsors get o/c, inclusion in promo schedule and website listing. This year we are changing the HS football up - moved it from the AM/FM newstalk station to the much larger country signal, sending stringers to the other games in the ISD and airing live updates throughout the local HS start-finish coverage. We target advertisers with this per Christian Carlson (below) and almost all sponsorships are sold in July-August. Few come on board after that - tho we pick up any local high school team going past round 1 in the playoffs for football and basketball and always sell the HS hockey playoffs separately in the spring.
Question: we have inquiries from some locals re: why we don't carry or highlight girls HS basketball. We do have at least one school in which the girls often outperform and outdraw the boys. Does anyone have any success with girls HS basketball?
Bob you must think like the school districts in order to sell them. They mainly start their budgets from August, with that being said for capturing the high school sales you have to shadow them and the potential sponsors for this to work... Our format is sports talk and we cover three high schools and two colleges once you get in there is nothing like it good luck.
Dr. Prince
OBN-Radio
YES... In fact we have found that girls sports is more supported. We cover volleyball, basketball and softball and sell out much faster than boys athletics...
Dr. Prince
OBN-Radio
Our company, ScoreboardMobile (http://www.scoreboardmobile.com), lets stations publish local scores to mobile devices in real time -- and sell mobile banners, coupons, etc. alongside the scores. We're an affordable monthly subscription, and we offer 2 months free to Radio Sales Café members. Please let me know if I can be of help in your high school sports sales efforts. 678-905-1730 [email protected]
We bundle all our sports into our Sports Club. Advertiser gets two 30s in each game we broadcast. That includes our HS Football, boys and girls High School Basketball, Kansas University Football and Basketball and the Kansas City Chiefs games. We also added KU and Chiefs Coach's programs and rotations in our CBS and Fox Sports programming at night.
It's a $60 per month, one year commitment and we get a very strong respnose out of it. Sell sports once a year and the only thing that is extra is if the high school teams go to state playoffs.
I am in a really small market in Alaska and I have found the only way to sell sports in my town is by the season and by the game. The best deal is if they sponsor the whole season of games for each of the 3 sports we do...basketball, baseball and football. I work with the school and get the roster of kids participating. I talk to the coaches and ask them for suggestions on who might be a good sponsor. Then I target businesses owned by the kids family and friends. I usually sell out of games before the first game of the season. Only 3 of my local businesses sponsor all 3 sports. We tried carrying Mariner's baseball which was completely a bust. We couldn't get enough sponsors and our listeners got upset with the number of games per week so now we focus on high school sports and All Star Little League baseball.
Would you please send me how you have your package looking? Although it seems a bit low I would like to see how you have it structured if that's ok? We do a LIVE Liner Special @ $106.25 a month and we get a pretty good response. NO PRODUCTION WORK... (Smile)
Yes, very inexpensive. But the tradeoff is 12 month contract and many of the sponsors (much to my chagrin) want Generic ads so not much in the way of copy changes. The goal is to get volume rather than a few large sponsors, any of which who might cancel would be hard to swallow. We did have to change things a little this year as our MLB Team went thru the roof in rights charges. We dropped them and added CBS and Fox Sports network shows which I think might be an even better deal since they are year round.
Our pitch is pretty simple.
1370 KIOL Sports Club
KC Chiefs - KU Jayhawks - Iola Mustangs and Fillies - Sports Talk
** 2 - 30 sec ads in every Iola High School Football and Basketball games (Including Post Season)
** 2 - 30 sec ads in every reguolar season KU Football and Basketball games (Including Post Season)
** 2 - 30 sec ads in every Kansas City Chiefs games ( including Post Season)
** 30 sec ads placed in Chiefs and Jayhawks coaches shows on a rotating basis
** 150 20 sec ads per year placed in our Sports Talk Programming
Total Price is $60 per month September thru August - 12 month agreement
I think it is an extremely good deal. In the past, other stations I worked for either sold it on a
season's basis for High School sports and did College and Pro Football as separate plans. We would also sell game of the week games on the Internet Stream. But it involved a lot of time calling and re-calling where the Sports club is once a year effort and is a nice base plan for our advertisers.
THANK YOU... Very Helpful, whenever you can please call me @832.213.8824
Bob, I worked with a guy, Paul Howard at WV Radio who was an annual HS sports sales machine. He sold many of them (probably 5-10 year round). All to small, local mom and pop's at $300-$500 per month (we were in market 160). Included spots in the games and promo mentions. His secret was the he didn't pitch the biggest advertisers, he pitched the smallest.
Gregg's Bio | Inbound. Digital. Design. Marketing Junkie. '80s Moonwalker. I create advertisers for radio stations. | Creator of The Award-Winning Radio Sales Website.
Thanks Gregg, working on that right now... I am currently running a 12 month commitment special to our local mom and pops for a flat fee of $225.00 per month... ALL LIVE LINERS!!! We have added 20 new clients!!!
