Andrew..just a couple thoughts in my mind as I read your post. Get a couple of the college kids .. a couple of beds .. HOW LONG CAN A COLLEGE KID STAY IN BED .... A pizza place to bring them food, a distributing company to bring them sodas, water, whatever ... A clothing store to provide pajamas .. Your station would do a remote with interviews, etc ... You could do a contest where people guess on the time spent in bed .. Closest person wins big .. second closest wins kinda big, etc. If you have a home healthcare place you could have them come by and do health exams .. make sure they are still breathing, blood pressure, etc. ... Would be really great if the beds and kids were close to a front window where people on the street could see them.
Just some first thoughts ...
Andrew,
I have a client who puts 95% of his ad dollars into radio. With two universities in the market, BTS is an important time for his sleep shop. The attached spot is typical of the commercials he runs during August. We've done the "win a free bed" promotion for the past few years as a way of putting the store at the top of the list in the minds of students shopping for a bed. With several stores competing for the same dollar, it's been an effective point of differentiation and a way to encourage store traffic. We don't want them entering online; we want them coming into the store, where they can try out different beds, get questions answered face-to-face, and hopefully become new customers. Since my client's in-store closing ratio is around 75-80%, there's no question that qualified store traffic is paramount. My view is, anything you do or say on any medium (radio, online, mobile, whatever) ought to be designed to funnel prospects into the store (my client's website isn't set up for transactions, only information).
Would you be interested in hearing a couple of different furniture store owners describe their success with radio promotions?
In the first case, the store's success with the Heart's Desire Sale was measured in terms of traffic.
In the second, running a Marathon or 72-Hour Sale, the owner talks in detail about how much he spent on one week of radio and what he sold that week as a result. In 1975 dollars, he spent $5500 on radio advertising--on just one station--and sold $53,700 worth of furniture (at a 44% margin of profit) as a result. (To put Williams' notion of a strong radio budget into perspective: in today's dollars, that $5500 investment would be over $25,000; and the $53,700 in sales would amount to over $244,000!)
Both promotions, by the way, were run in February -- not exactly the biggest month of the year for radio.
Listen for yourself HERE; scroll down to Chapter 13.
