Radio Spots

Jan 30, 2009 7:05 pm

I usually do direct mail to fill my seminar seats, but I have a buddy that works for a local radio station and he thinks I could get a better response rate from a radio blitz the week before the seminar.

  What do you guys think?  Has anyone tried radio spots to fill up a seminar?
Jan 30, 2009 9:47 pm

[quote=etj4588] I usually do direct mail to fill my seminar seats, but I have a buddy that works for a local radio station and he thinks I could get a better response rate from a radio blitz the week before the seminar.



What do you guys think? Has anyone tried radio spots to fill up a seminar?[/quote]

And I bet if your buddy worked at a TV station he would think you would get a better response rate from a TV blitz. Funny that.



Here’s the thing - the key issue isn’t the response rate alone. It is how much it costs you and how much actual revenue you generate. Any mass medium like radio or TV may increase the response rate, but it may cost more to generate the response than you earn from those who respond, especially if you are not running lots of seminars in lots of locations.

Jan 30, 2009 10:07 pm

I dig that.  But I don’t think he would jeopardize our relationship (I’ve know him for over 15 years), to sell a couple of grand worth of airtime.

My thinking is to just test it with the same amount I would spend on direct mail.

I would typically spend about $1500 mailing out to three or four thousand people.  That would ususally garner me between 25-50 people in a room.  From that I’d have about 10-25 buying units (if husband and wife both attended).

These radio spots cost anywhere from $10 - $30 per 30 second spot.  If I ran one every hour for 5 days 16 hours/day, the cost should be about $150-$200 per day, or $1000 total.

I’m interested to see if radio might give me the same amount of people or not.

Feb 5, 2009 5:56 am

The only way to truly find out is to test it. Track the results carefully, and make sure the message is the right one. I met a guy recently who sunk 6 months of time into radio and got one account out of it. Not a good return. But it could have been his message, too, who knows?



I used to do a lot of direct mail, and the only way we learned what worked and what didn’t was to test, re-test, and then test again.

Feb 5, 2009 6:08 am

I’ve done seminar with direct mail for about 7 years and have always had very good, consistent results.  I currently have 4 advisors that work for me and one of them suggested doing some radio spots to advertise a seminar we’re having in a few weeks.  I figures, what the hell - let’s give it a shot.

  $2,000 for 90 45 second ads each day on two very targeted to the demogrphic radio stations for 4 weeks.  Used a sperate 24/7 automated toll free number to split test the direct mail versus the radio...   Ready for the results:   33 households from the direct mail (6,000 pieces - about $3,000) 0 phone calls from radio ads   I wouldn't wast my money if I were you.  If you do, please share with us the results as I'd be interested if you have similar results as I did.  Oh, and TV is equally horrific - fyi.