Radio Sales Café

Any ideas for Valentine Day promotions?

I was hoping someone would ask this.

We've been doing something the past few years that kind of fizzled out.

I am always looking for something new to do...so that's why I posted this. Here's a couple of ideas for you that we have done in the past.

Rent the movie theater for the night and give away tickets on the air by 2's.

I posted this one on the Jewelry idea... give away a diamond hidden in a cinnamon roll. This one is fun!..

"Great Diamond & Ice Melt-Down“ Valentine’s Day Promotion Listeners qualify by registering at sponsor locations then listening to hear their name on-air to be a finalist at the "Great Diamond & Ice Melt-Down.” As qualifiers arrive to the finals event, they receive a clear plastic cup with a CZ or a real diamond frozen in the ice. The water levels in the cups are at different levels so they melt at different intervals.  When the ice melts, finalists take their stone to the prize table. The jeweler views the stone with his loop and checks to see if they have the real loose diamond. There are numbers on the bottom of the cups that match even more prizes from our co-sponsors do each of the 40 or so finalists win a prize.. Jeweler also gave all finalists a jewelry cleaning kit and a discount offer on mountings.  

We are actually going to do a Billboard Proposal...We are working with a local sign company and we will make this a yearly promotion. We plan to help someone propose in a 'BIG' way! With this...we'll tell people about this promotion that we are doing and how we will market it - because this we are a new station, we know that this promotion (if done right) will drive listeners to our station...from the competitor. The proposal will happen on the morning show the Friday before Valentine's day (because it falls on a Sunday this year). On the days leading up to V-Day, we will be offering businesses the opportunity to purchase spots, with the proposal package, as well as give away a prize on air. We will take submissions from husbands, wives, moms, dads, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc. and reading them on air - asking for people's nominations as to why their spouse/boyfriend, etc. is such a great person! These are great to hear on air...melts the heart and we had some kids last year call in for their mothers and fathers which was awesome! It was great for us and generated extra revenue and allowed businesses to promote what they have going on and be part of something big!

What a neat promotion!

We have a Valentine drop off at a local grocery store for "Cards for Kids at Heart", paid for by the drop off locations. Then they are gathered up and taken to the area Senior Care facilities to be shared with all by a local ministry - Dessert Ministry. It's a great 'feel good' with thousands of valentines delivered!

Our station is sports/talk, so we're doing an online gift guide to help guys get great gifts for their ladies. New idea featured every Monday thru Thursday with a email summary sent to our database each Friday. Four week promotion, 16 featured item days. Each individual day is sold to a sponsoring company and they suggest a suitable gift idea for our audience to get their significant other. Category exclusivity can be had by purchasing a minimum of two feature days.

I like!

We are doing a promtion called All You Need Is Love this year. We are starting the first monday in Feb with airing the love song of the day. we will accept call ins to register for a daily winner and a grand prize winner . We re a Contemporary Christian station and we are using scriptures about the love of God as the intro for the songs. 10 business sponsors each providing a daily prize and a grand prize from a hotel for a sweet heart weekend. sinple and easy to sell.

In response to the local merchants’ desire for an advertising
package that targets Valentine shoppers effectively and efficiently,
The xxxx radio group and the xxx local paper have designed the Valentine’s Day Extravaganza!
Two medias coming together to show the luv with a unique opportunity to market your business this Valentines with both radio and print.


• Your business will receive 30x :30 commercials on all five stations each Month January February and March and 20 Valentine’s promotion with name mention as sponsors each week prior to Valentines Day.

• Your print display ad will be placed in the xxxxx paper the first two weeks in February for your Valentine special. A special center fold section in full color will feature your business.

• In addition there is a second level of sponsorship available for 6 sponsors who would like to be featured in the valentine showcase on one of the week days prior to Valentines Day. From noon to 1pm each day we will broadcast live from the place of business and invite folks to come in and record their love message LIVE on the air during the hour showcase.
Sponsors will also carry the “Dedication Forms” at their place of business. Listeners will be prompted to come to your business to fill out their love lines and leave it in the Valentines box.. The message on the “Dedication Form” will be read on the air Feb 13th and Valentine’s Day every hour from 6am to 7pm on all five stations.
Your Business Will Receive:
30 messages on each of our five stations each month January February & March
20 Promo’s with name mentions the week prior to Valentines Day
Promos directing folks to sign up at your place of business
Love line sign up box at your location
2 full color business card size display ads in the xxx paper center section

TOTAL INVESTMENT: $xxx.00 each month

Thanks this was a great idea I used it to pitch to a client with a few adjustments and Im thinking it will be a huge success. I sold the idea to just one jeweler instead of many sponsors since we already have a Valentines promotion ont he street. Thanks again

I would be happy to explain. We are in a small market of 50,000 people TOTAL in our area of Alaska and we own five stations in one group with only one other radio station in town playing an oldies genre so we don't have any real competition with them. I also consider myself a Marketing Consultant rather than a radio sales advertising rep. So with that I always am there with a client with the intensions on selling them on radio but I make myself a resource to that business when I talk about and make suggestions to all the opportunitys in our area that they can use for little to no money. Because it is out of the norm for a sales rep to do that now they look at me differently than any other sales rep thats come by before.
OK on with the answer to your question:
Two papers in town one is big and has national news and some local and the other is a weekly publication very well written with print ads spread gracefully through the paper and has content of real things happening in our area.
Business is slow or lack of in the entire community because of the resession. The bigger paper is , for lack of better words, 'crap' and it is not in the best interest of my clients to be spending their marketing dollars in that paper and obviousley I would rather them spend it with our radio group. So I created this package to take revenue away from the big paper and buddy up "show the luv between two medias" and sold the idea to the smaller local paper, we basically are renting space and doing all the sales and providing all the business card size ready print ads to the paper for them to creat a special section in turn gives MY client more value for their buck wich is the most important to them right now. We pay the paper a set amount that doesnt take away from us for each sponsor and we get the majority of the profit. It comes down to do we want nothing from our market or something, I would rather have something.

Here is something we're using for romantic situations--fine dining, jewelers, upscale shops. This is the full sing; provided in multiple mixes. It's customized with announcer. Hope this helps. Please contact me if you're interested!

There are various levels of ice - so some melt quicker. We were at a restaurant - so a few ordered a cup of coffee and poured on it to speed it up. Others rubbed the cup between their hands. People ate dinner. etc... We had a nice flow of people going up to the main table to get their gems checked.
The benefit of having several sponsors? Each sponsor puts in 5 $20 prizes so everyone wins something.
Good luck!

Sure. Good luck!

LOVE this idea - thanks so much for sharing.

We do the ice and diamond promotion at Christmas. It's a very fun promotion.