Radio Sales Café

I gave a presentation to a group of four attornies yesterday morning and it went extremely well. They WILL buy and buy long term. It's pretty much a full service law firm, the oldest in our county, not ambulance chasers....they want to emphasize estate planning, but not million dollar estates. I will be presenting about four different commercials, probably :60's, the beginning of each message will emphasize/invite depending on the area of interest......estate planning, divorce, business transactions, real estate, accident and injury. Does anyone have any copy ideas or thought starters. Maybe a little catchy for divorce but more dignified for estate planning. I'll also be featuring their individual voices in the commercials. It's amazing the attornies and medical professionals who are turning to radio - check out Chris Rolando's Swiss Army Knife Training Series....and forget retail ....Thanks for your help !

Kathie- good job on the presentation! Something that is very important to keep in mind though- your rotation of commercials and share of voice. Let's say your stations has 12 sellable units, 24 / 7. That's 2016 sellable units a week. Now lets say that your law firm agreese to do 40 commercials per week BUT wants to rotate 2 different spots. Now what we have are to 20 spot flights...and the math does not look good: 20 spots in the flight divided by 2016 sellable units in a week and you are usinh less than 1 % of the stations inventory. Unless they are committed to run a long schedule, that would concern me. I would rather see more commercials in a flight that focus on one element for a couple weeks, them move to the next element and so forth.

I have always had great response running ads for attorneys Sat- Mon. It gives your client access to every "type" of day in the week (a weekday, and each of the 2 types of weekend days- Saturdays are much different for most people than Sundays) and it never ceases to amaze me how many things seem to happen or be decided on over the weekends that need an attorney's services. I found that running spots on a 24 hour equal rotation was a key to a successful campaign.

And speaking of that, almost every city / county has a "Bar" association (the attorney kind, not the drinking kind). The local bar association is charged with doing things to promote good will, pbulic relations, etc. They are the ones behind "law days" where the public is invited to go to the high school and have an attorney answer "legal" questions.

Often those are advertised in the newspaper in BIG ADS! Find out who heads the bar association in your area (there may be several) and make a pitch for Radio...it worked well for my teams when I ran stations.

Thanks so much for suggesting the bar association (there is a corner bar, Grayson's across from the courhouse) however, I'll certainly look into it and thanks for your scheduling suggestions.

Kathie

When you take your car to be repaired, do you take it to one place if it's a brake problem and another if it's in the power steering? Why would you go from one attorney for estate planning and another for business? The Swiss Army Knife approach is actually a very good idea too. These both might be good analogies for your law firm for an all encompassing ad, not for something of individual service appeal. The fact that they are full service, you might also wax nostalgic on the demise of full service gas stations, but there is one place (your client) that still offers full service, just like the good old days. There are a lot of ways to approach each segment individually. If you want some ideas for any one, let me know.

Kathie, I have have much experience with attorneys and I have two thoughts for you that can be combined to gain a long term contract with your local law firm. First, we syndicate a program called Point Of Law. It is a daily 3 minute vignette that covers actual entertaining, general interest cases and law suits that have occured. The program has been on the air since 1952 and every station that carries the program has carried it for many, many years...a testiment to how well it works for stations and their clients. Check it out at www.transmediasf.com/synd.html. Also, suggest to your local law firm / lawyer sponsor that the two of you put on a free “legal Clinic” once a month at a local restaurant and invite listeners to attend a “no-host” lunch and get answers to some of their basic legal questions for free. Sort of, “A little help from your friends at XYZ Radio and the law offices of XYZ.” Everybody wins. Your listeners get a little help in these tough times, the lawyer gets introduced to new potential clients (even if the listeners don’t respond to his ads) and you are bringing in a bunch of lunch traffic to the restaurant (the listeners buy their own lunch – possibly at a discount if the restaurant wants to be included in the promotion), and the station gets a great community oriented good-will campaign. You and the lawyer both become local heroes for helping people out. Plus, you can probably up-sell this for more money than just a straight sponsorship of the show itself. Give this a little thought and put your own twists on it. It doesn’t cost anybody anything and everybody wins. And by folding the restaurant in to this you end up with 2 sponsors instead of one. Give me a call if you have any questions Dave Adams 415-956-3118

I hadn't heard of Law Day before, so I Googled it and came up with a date of May 1 . . . is that the holiday/observance that you're referring to? I'm adding it to the Revenue Opportunities section of RSC; thank you for the heads-up!