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Self promotion on your station

Im curious to know if anybody has ran spots on their stations to promote themselves? Was it for you specifically, or the sales team in general at your station? Copy ideas?

Thanks everyone!

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Permalink Reply by Daryl P. McIntire on January 21, 2010 at 3:40am

David;
We run ads all the time....Promotional station ads that position our music...We have run recruitment ads for our sales staff that I as General Sales Manager have voiced. And we run customer testimonial ads with the clients themselves talking about why our station makes a great advertising partner. Send me your e-mail and I'll send you some audio samples.

Mac

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Permalink Reply by Brenda Ellison on January 21, 2010 at 12:15pm

Hi David,
we each do a :30 second commercial introducing ourselves and inviting potential clients to call us for marketing help. I think it is a good idea to personalize the message about each person on the sales team, and what better way than radio?

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Permalink Reply by Laurie Brown on January 22, 2010 at 6:08am

We do customer testimonials. The client records the commercial about how the sales person has helped them with their business and invites other people to use the radio station and to call the sales person he worked with to help them with their business. We run these commercials at $0, based on available ROS inventory. Great success, and a great way to get your name endorsed by a client.

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Permalink Reply by Julie Hein on January 22, 2010 at 6:20am

We do recruitment on the air for about any position. We also sell for a "greatly reduced rate" ads to each of our sellers to promote themselves. The reason for selling it to them is so that they can share with clients that they have skin in the game also. Each seller does a CNA-type analysis of themselves, who they love working with, who they have the most success with, etc. and all but one does their own VO. We can't say that we're making millions from the effort, but we've gotten a few call-ins. When you're cold calling, sometimes having heard you before warms it up. And current clients mention it a lot -- "hey, just heard you on the air".

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Permalink Reply by Paul Farina on January 22, 2010 at 8:28am

You should upload the picture of you passed out on the beach in Mexico on your radio staton website. That way clients know you can get the job done, even lying down.

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer Steele on April 17, 2012 at 7:31am

Does anyone have script ideas for these types of ads? I am worried about sounding desperate for clients. Especially since my market is tiny with 14 radio stations for a population of 50,000 people.

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Permalink Reply by Jack Walker on April 20, 2012 at 12:43pm

Start out with a fact that will blow people away. Delivery is slow, deliberate, and sincere.

"Have you ever heard of facebook? Facebook is fun. Radio reaches 8x the number of people in a week compared to facebook. 8x! Get serious about your marketing...."

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Permalink Reply by Greg Saunders on April 27, 2012 at 8:55am

I'm curious...where did you get that stat?

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Permalink Reply by Jack Walker on April 30, 2012 at 6:52am

I beleive it was either Roy Williams or RAB. It blew me away too.

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Permalink Reply by Ken Karns on Sunday

Jennifer when I worked at WBIG in Greensboro,we did a "Half price bargain fair"and included several of our already on air clients in this fair.Our on air clients liked it because they got a reduced rate on the promos and of course the station was tied into the promotion as well.We got alot of good feedback from listeners and our clients and it created interest to new prospective clients that heard the promos. We ran the promo's in AMD PMD and BTA.

In other words,we promotted the dickens out of this....The station didn't have all the synth equipment I had in my home recording studio.So I really did a number on these promos using flanging the voice and special effects using eq.Just a thought here for you.

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Permalink Reply by Rod Schwartz on April 21, 2012 at 1:25am

Thanks to Jennifer Steele for reviving this discussion. It sent me on quite a chase down Memory Lane, that proved enjoyable and rewarding.

Jennifer, I believe that you can easily create a campaign that exudes confidence and positive vibes, and accomplishes your goal of positioning your station's advertising sales department as high as you want to go. By all means, have fun with it, too!

Back in 1977, I was a young salesman at KAGE AM-FM in the small market of Winona, MN, owned by Jerry Papenfuss. The General Manager and my boss at the time was Len DeSomer, a former copywriter for J. Walter Thompson and a terrific commercial producer, from whom I learned a great deal.

Our sales department had been receiving sales training from the late Jim Williams for a couple of years and by applying what Jim taught us had grown from just two of us, Harry Hastings and myself, to eleven salespeople. (By the time I left in 1979, I think we were up to 15 salespeople.)

Len picked up a syndicated pro-radio promotion package called "Get It On Radio," that had been built around a short video, an engaging demonstration of the power of sound/radio, narrated by the prolific voice actor Paul Frees. The campaign also included a jingle package and other production elements designed for on-air use (more on this shortly), to support the face-to-face meetings with prospective advertisers and create a cohesive, multi-faceted marketing blitz for our sales department. We would take the compact video player into the prospect's office, play the short presentation, then follow up with demos, proposals, etc. It proved to be a great tool for us.

So, after reading your question, this episode came to mind and I hunted up an old tape reel I'd saved from my years in Winona, containing some of my favorite commercials and, as I'd hoped, some of the actual salesman-promotion spots that ran on the air as a part of the "Get It On Radio" campaign. I wrestled my trusty Tascam 34B reel-to-reel recorder, a machine I haven't used in many years, from a crowded storage room into my studio, loaded the reel and copied its contents onto a hard drive, reminiscing with a big smile on my face as I listened to all these tracks for the first time in 35 years. So, thank you, Jennifer, for being the catalyst of this adventure.

The three audio files below contain several tracks apiece:

1) The first file contains two cuts, one of the pro-radio jingle tracks from the "Get It On Radio" presentation, and a promo spot for the KAGE Sales Line, a dedicated telephone number for the sales department. As you'll hear (with a nod and a wink to Big John Small), the telephone number is featured prominently throughout the campaign.

2) The second file contains four of the individual salesman promos. These were all Len's creations with no input from the sales staff. We were greatly surprised when he trotted these out during a sales meeting. (As you might imagine, I received plenty of ribbing, from clients and media competitors alike, over my personal promo spot. But as top biller at the time, I had a "rep" to live up to! :>)

3) The third file contains three more individual salesman promos. I hadn't remembered the way Len mentioned all the surrounding communities that we served, but I think this was a great way to let business owners in some of the outlying markets know that we were thinking of them and eager to serve them.

The sound quality isn't the greatest. I suspect the path went from 33 1/3 rpm vinyl or 1/4" reel tape to broadcast carts, then back to reel...or maybe cassette, then reel. In any case, if you can get past the signs of age, the concept and execution are still worth considering.

P.S. Our radio brethren in the land of Oz, through their equivalent of our RAB, Commercial Radio Australia, have done a super job of creating pro-radio campaigns consisting of dozens of great promotional spots.

P.P.S. There's an entire section of Radio Sales Cafe devoted to Pro-Radio jingles, promo spots, and copy ideas, which you may find quite helpful.

Love to hear what you come up with!

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