Savvy: To be honest, I think a lot of other agencies handle a lot of other advertising also, not just radio, but the ones that do specifically handle radio seem to me, to apply their communications (with potential clients) using a very broad stroke of the brush where they go over everybody’s knowledge base. They throw their rates out there, just listing them very clinically, but not much other information is given. There’s no hand-holding, and no reassurance. People are just supposed to be okay with that, and buy. I believe there needs to be consultation as well, but from what I can see, many of these other agencies lack the personal touch that Radio Luv offers. I always like to talk to people on the phone and figure out what they need, what their goals are, and we talk about their business. It’s more like a partnership. I don’t see that with a lot of other agencies. I see a lot of brokering of time and like I said, it’s more like an airtime mill. The customer service aspect is like an afterthought for them; it’s not really a passion like it is for me.
Ken: I’ve done some radio in the past and it was with an AM station and that’s exactly what it was, it was a slot to fill and that’s all it was. They weren’t concerned about my business or even really what we were talking about as long as they could fill that spot with some paid airtime. That was their primary concern. It would be nice to have somebody that’s got a personal approach to it.
Savvy: Exactly and I always follow-up, like if a few months go by and I haven’t heard from somebody and I’ve already got their campaign running on x, y, and z station I go ahead and give them a call or shoot them an email and I say, “How’s everything going? Does your campaign need refreshing?” I might say, “Well if you want to go ahead with a new campaign and get some more air, I’ll just go ahead and throw in your production free of charge and we’ll make you a new one. What are you focusing on now?” This is the next step if they’re interested, we focus on what maybe they are promoting at the time, or if they have any giveaways or something they want to focus on.
If they are thinking about expanding their audience, we can get them on even more stations, then maybe they want to try different stations than the ones they had before. I always follow-up to make sure everything’s okay and make sure they’re happy and they know I’m there with them 110% of the time holding their hand the whole time. They’re never in it alone.
Ken: That’s nice. Is there a mistake that you see prospects making when they’re starting to look for radio advertising agency? How do you help guide them along to avoid making mistake?
Savvy: There are a few different kinds of approaches I get. There’s the approach from people who have never done radio advertising. In that case, we go through the gamut of the regular questions of what do they need and what are they hoping to achieve and their target audience and all the stuff, their region that they want to air on. With them, they more or less turn it over to me because they are new at it, so I go ahead and walk them through what I’m doing and explain everything to them.
Then there’s the second kind where they’ve already done radio advertising and either they have had a good experience or a bad experience. If they had a good experience with a radio station then they expect me to adhere to the same … They approach it as if they’re approaching the station and I can always tell when they have been experienced with stations before. It’s something I detect pretty much right away, but it’s okay of course I don’t discriminate against any customers. Once they learn that my approach is a little bit different, they can relax, once they realize it’s going to be a better experience than what they had before. However, that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes, certain customers are all about the numbers, numbers, numbers and they’re just really cut and dry. They want to know the grit, the facts. They don’t want to chit-chat. That’s fine. You can tell they’ve been doing this a while.
Within that second category of people that have had radio experience advertising, sometimes I get some very sad cases of people who have had bad experiences with radio advertising, and so I have a fair amount of damage control to do because maybe they had an air salesman lie to them saying that you’re going to get customers knocking on your door tomorrow. First of all, you never, ever say that. You never make promises that you can’t guarantee, and it would be foolish to guarantee people’s responses to an advertisement you’re going to run. This is something agencies and stations have no control over, and you should never imply that you can make that guarantee, because it’s impossible for any radio station or sales person anywhere to be able to guarantee that.
Results don’t often come overnight. And on that same thread, I wanted to touch really quickly on the fact that radio advertising works by “Top of Mind” advertising. You want to get your ad out there as many times as possible to get in peoples’ minds, so that when they do need that service, you’re going to be the first one that pops into their mind. I do have a blog on RadioLuv.com called “Frequency Matters”, where I blog about that. Any salesman in radio that tries to sell you on, “You’re going to get guaranteed results,” from this one application, that’s a red flag. Run away from that salesperson. Call Radio Luv.
