Tag: radio advertising

Some Do’s & a few Don’ts

Writing for Radio Tip #372

DO

Use music and sound effects: Remember you’re painting a picture in the mind of your listener. Help them with sound effects of water dripping, thunder crashing, car horns tooting,and fans rooting.

Proofread your Script: Write, read, write and read again. Take out as many words as makes sense. It’s way better to have a shorter script then a fast paced overly wordy script.

Use a CTA/Call to Action: At the end of your script make sure you write out what the listener is supposed to do. Go to a website, visit a store for a sale, go to an event this weekend. Whatever you want the listener to do, make sure you tell them. It can be early on in the script as well. But do make sure you repeat it at the end.

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DON’T

Squeeze too many words into your script: When 40 seconds of script goes into a :30 script, the listener has no chance of doing what you want them to do. Even with tons of reach and frequency, if your ad is a sped up announcer blazing through too many words, your campaign will not work.

Use trend Phrases: If I ever hear We’re in this together ever again, OMG. This saying came out in May 202o early on during the pandemic and it’s still being used 8/17/21. You can convey this same sentiment with other words. Be creative. There are many other ways to tell the listeners; We’re in this together. Use them.

Use the same voice that’s on 70% of the other commercials on the station: You want to stand out. When one person is voicing all the commercials, they tend to sound alike. Use a different voice. Try a lesser known DJ or maybe a friend or family member. The production director and the equipment used in the studio will help them sound professional.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
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What Makes an Effective Radio Commercial

Radio: A Powerful & Entertaining Medium

The Video below is a quick and informative splash of what makes an effective radio commercial.  Take a Look-See and find what pops back at you. If you feel you don’t have time to watch it today, Here’s what I saw when I watched it:

Engaging, Entertaining, Emotional, Simple, Be On Point, Original Thinking, Honest, Funny, Pure, Powerful and Paint A Mental Picture.

Radio Is Happy!

Listed below is a portion of an article I just saw on the Huffingtonpost.com site.  Reported on their site by Lucas Kavner. It bascially says People are really happy when they listen to the radio.  That would mean, to catch people in their best moods, one of the best places to place your commercials would be on the Radio! See below for most of the atricle or click on the above Huffingtonpost.com site for the complete story.   Have a Happy Day!

A new study commissioned in the U.K. by the Radio Advertising Bureau concluded that listening to the radio makes people happier than watching TV or surfing the Internet.

1,000 Britons participated in the study, using their smartphones to respond to questions about their media consumption and emotional responses at various times of the day.

“On average, when consuming radio, happiness & energy scores increase by 100% and 300% compared to when no media is being consumed,” the study found. But happiness increased most when that media was the radio.

Radio is a kind of “lifestyle support system,” the authors wrote, which helps people feel better as they go about their days. Many respondents didn’t realize how important radio was in their lives until they had participated in the exercise.

To Michael C. Keith, a professor at Boston College and a leading scholar in history and electronic media, these conclusions come as no surprise.

“Why else do people listen to music radio, other than to get enjoyment out of it?” he asked HuffPost in an interview last week. “People don’t listen to radio to be depressed, certainly not when it comes to entertainment radio or music radio. The whole idea of listening to radio is to gain companionship and, at the same time, enjoyment.”

 

Big Blow Ups Rule in Seattle Advertising!

Yo Vinnie "Pass me the Salt"

I’m in Seattle for about 4 days this week and I’ve been noticing a lot of Balloon/Blow Ups Advertising in Town.

I Saw Vinnie over at the Duck Tours,  a GIANT purple ape and a Paul Bunyan at a used car dealership, Huge Ice cream cones on top of an Ice Cream Store and Big Yellow Hot Air Balloons tethered to the ground at another used car dealership and some pretty usual yet very High in the sky Yellow, Red and Green circular balloons.

It seems Seattle is pretty infatuated with these big balloons. My thoughts on them are:  They seem to catch attention IF and only IF you are driving by them. And they seem to catch my attention.  The only thing that is really wrong with this type of advertising is many places let their balloon shapes get dirty and kind of ugly which can give your business a worse image instead of more customers. they are pretty expensive, thus if you do this type of advertising, please budget in for a new one every few months or at least once a year so that they will look good.

The Radio Advertising in Seattle was pretty good, the good spots that I heard told a topical story and I could picture the scenarios happening in my mind.  The spots that didn’t do to well had way too much copy in them and too many cluttered words read way too fast.

A billboard I noticed Said “Advertise here..250,000 people see this Billboard each Day” I liked that a lot, many times us in media forget that one of the best places to advertise about ourselves is with our own media.  A few years back I let my employees run 20-30 ads  a week about themselves and also during their “ad” week they were spotlighted on our internet sites.  Each Account Executive received an additional 1-5 calls each week that they were on and we had a 20% closing ratio, thus we DID make money from running ads on our own medium. Congrats to the Billboard company!

Today’s Social Media Update of Variousness…

First off, I’d like to say that a successful social media advertising campaign would benefit greatly by using traditional media-be it Radio, TV, Newspapers or Billboards (where legal).  And I dont just say that because I work at a radio station.  Just imagine how many more people will come to your blog, twitter or Facebook page if they were hearing or seeing it advertised somewhere else. Me, personally I would love to have an outside source of advertising for my own blogs. Yes, my SEO is getting better and yes more and more people are coming to my sites, but it’s a slow process.  Buy some traditional media and watch your social media number soar, but please make sure you buy enough of it to work, have the correct creative for your ads, they match the place they run on. AND include your “Call to Action!!” 

And check these nice radio listening numbers out that I didn’t make up:

On a typical Day, of people ages 12+
71% listened to over the air local radio
24% Visited Facebook
9%  Used Twitter
10% Visited Youtube
Sources: comScore Inc Ratings for March 2011:RADAR 108, March 2011, persons 12+, 24 hours.
 

Some up to date as of today things going on with Social Media:

Foursquare & Twitter:   Mashable lets us know that foursquare just released version 3.3 for iPhone. I don’t have it yet, so can’t tell you if it’s any different.  All I really want Foursquare to do is not let people who have never been somewhere be the mayor of that place! Yeah you Sara. She is the may of Media Shop 808 which I own and work in and she has never ever been in my area.  i tell you I will get my mayorship back before the end of the Summer! Mashable also wants to let us know that Jerry Seinfeld sent out his first tweet today. I don’t really care much, but I do find it interesting that Rihanna just passed up Lady GaGa as the Gal with the most fans on Twitter.  I bet GaGa does some sort of outrageous stunt this weekend to get her numbers back up to number 1!  and last bit about foursquare-they will soon offer deals with LivingSocial, Gilt and they are in talks with Groupon.  Me personally I dont much care, I’m trying not to use my credit card. So, until they get a groupon card similar to the iTunes Cards, I wont be using the 50% off offers. By using my credit card on anything, it ends up costing me way more than saving 50% on it today.

Google+s Speed of Adoption is quite quick. It’s expected to reach 20 million by the end of the weekend and so far most of the users are of the male gender. Ladies-might be a good place to meet some men.

Pandora is set to unleash its new site powered by HTLM5

LinkedIn has passed MySpace for US visitors, becoming the #2 Social Network with twitter not too far behind. Note to Myspace-even after you lost a bunch of your supporters, when you changed the way it looked you lost the rest of us-way too confusing and too much white space. I’m a color person myself.  And last thing for MySpace-it was my favorite social network and I still enjoy it sometimes to find and talk to bands, but get those crazy, blurry Girls out of there, they aren’t my friends, I never said they could be my friends, they aren’t real, and every time i go on your site, they pretend to say “Hi” to me..when all they are doing is trying to hack into one of my email accounts. Get rid of them. TU

And lastly, Look out for Spotify-Be the first on your block or in your office to be on the US version of this UK site. They claim you need to be invited to the site for their US beta version if you have a high Klout score, but after a bit of googlizing, I found them easily at spotify.com and requested and invite. I’ll let you know if I get invited.  If I do, I hear they have millions upon millions of songs from around the world and supposedly they are all free. We’ll see. Until next time, you can find me this weekend on my phone via voice or text:  808 479-9928  24/7.. I usually don’t sleep much on the weekends..well a bit during the day..LOL

There’s only 11 minutes of Real Action in an NFL Football Game!

Yep, There are only about 11 minutes of real action in an NFL football game.. according to Tom Asacker speaker and author of “opportunity Screams-Unlocking Hears and Minds in Today’s Idea Economy”.  Can you believe that?  only 11 minutes and a game goes on for at least 3 hours if not longer!!

What does this mean to you and me in and regards to advertising? 

1.  Make sure you keep the SHOW in Show Business.  Whether it’s a football game, a radio remote at a car dealership or even your window display at your store.  Make sure you are providing your best version of your product or service at all times.  It maybe your 10th remote this month, but for your next customer, it might the first time they ever see you in their life and they are looking for you to perform, entertain and be on your A game.  A few quick and easy rules I require my people to do at remotes:  NO Eating at the Booth, NO Whispering to each other/gossiping about who did blah blah to whoever at wherevers.  Of course, wear your correct clothes and make sure that they are clean, smell good and fit. Do SMILE. DO talk to people as if they are the most important person in the world. Answer any and every question they may ask. If you don’t know the answer find it. And above all have fun or at least LOOK like you’re enjoying yourself!

2.  Make your Creative Creative:  If there are only 11 real minutes of real action in a football game and someone is DVR’ing it.  If your TV commercial isnt enticing, creative, fun, interesting, has a great first line or two-No one’s gonna watch it. They’ll skip on through to the 11 minutes of the real action of the game and watch someone else’s commercial if it’s all or any of the above. People don’t want yackety yack information, give them something they want like some more Show Biz, engage them, connect with them emotionally, entertain them, make them laugh, relate, do something different.  One time made a TV commercial where the talent talked for a few seconds then the sound went off, just in case I put some fun lines in print underneath while my expensive  24 seconds played on with the two guys moving their mouths with no sound coming out.  And ended it with a cute, fun, quick call to action.  It was different, it didn’t win any awards, some of the bosses and even the talent didn’t quite get it, ya know, even the production company questioned it. but People didnt fast forward through it, they STOPPED what they were doing to check and see if something was wrong with their TV and then watched the commercial. Going from Good to great just takes a few more minutes of think time.  Next time your need to write a commercial, take that time to do it great or find someone who can.

3.  Watch Peyton Manning play football:  He know’s that there are only 11 minutes of real playing time. Just watch him in action, he shouts, he bobs his head, he waves his arms, he gets pissed off, he gets happy, and he does all of this with no time off the clock.  He is a showman and a really good player too. But first and foremost he gets it-He does the SHOW Business. 

That’s all for today, I’m trying my best to entertain and give you something fun to read at least every other day, but today I really need some sleep. From what I hear, I have sleep apnea and who knows, maybe I only get 11 minutes of sleep each night, when I think I’m getting 6 hours. 

Hit me up with suggestions, comments, questions you may have later tonight here or @scottmackenzie3 on twitter  or tomorrow at:  alohabros@gmail.com

The 3 ingredients for a succesful Radio Campaign

Hello,

When I meet new people and ask them “What kinds of advertising have you done in the past?” I get many different responses-TV, Radio, Newspaper, Blogs, Facebook, Garage Billboards etc.  The people who answer with “Radio”, I go on to ask them “If it worked?”  some say yes and some say no. I’d like them to respond “yes” 100% of the time I ask, but this isn’t always the case.  This leads me to today’s subject-“The Three ingredients needed for a succesful radio campaign”  These are:

1.  The Correct Radio Station:  (The Correct Station/Who are you talking to?): Ask yourself-Does this radio station reach my target demographic?  Does this station have enough people listening to it (Cume) for a decent amount of time (TSL)  Does the product or service I have fit the demographics and psychographics of this stations audience?  Make sure that the station you are advertising on makes sense and fits what you are selling or no matter how many commercials you purchase-your radio won’t work.

2. The Correct Message (The Creative or lack their of): Do you have a fantastic first line in your commercials creative?  Does it stand out within the set of the other advertisers? Does it include a “Call To Action?”  Will it be effective on the radio station that you have chosen to air your ad on?   we can go into good/great creative on another post. But remembering these key elements will help you craft your script.

3. The Correct Frequency (How many times your target hears your message):  This is Key for your radio advertising to work.  Radio is a frequency medium.  If you’re customers aren’t hearing the ad enough, it wont work with the best creative and the biggest and best, most highly rated radio station. The best campaigns have both vertical and horizontal freqeuncy-6a-7p/Mon-Sun. Getting your message out all day each day and throughout the week.  OES/Optimum Effective Scheduling is the recommended amount.  However, some of my clients just dont have that much money to spend.  Thus, I recommend choosing one or two specific day parts, maybe 6a-10a and 3p-7p or just 6a-10a and concentrate your commercials in that certain daypart(s).  Thus, hitting the same people enough times for your ads to work.  Some research we’ve heard over the years is that people need to hear something at least 3 times for it to stay in their minds.  But with all the messages we hear and see everyday, I suspect the research might be a bit old, probably best to hear it at least 6 times. 

 Another note:  If you do radio advertising or TV or really anything else, remember that all of your results wont happen in the weeks that you are on the air.  There can be a lag of a week or two or even a month before you see all of your results.  Just take an example from your own habits.  Say you hear something 3 or more times the week of May 30th.  And you really like the ad and what they are offering, but because it’s a short 4 day work week, you have a lot to do, then your weekend gets busy. The next week the ad may not run, but you remember that you want to buy that certain something.  And you go out and buy it on June 17th in time for Fathers Day. Well, its been two weeks since the last ad ran.  Even though the ads aren’t running anymore-they still worked! 

Today’s Websites to check out are:  Krater96.com       and     Mashable.com

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