THE BACK PAGE MARKETING Profitable radio advertising BY JAMES THOMPSON “Back pain? No problem! Call Main Street Chiropractic for all of your chiropractic needs, locally owned since 1989. When Your Spine’s In Line, You’ll Feel Fine!” Recognize the for-mat? Just add a cheesy jingle, and you have 90% of all chiropractic radio commercials in North America. You’ll need to do better than that. The average Canadian is exposed to an estimated 4,000+ ads per day, all competing for attention in a me-dia-saturated world, and the majority fall into this category of ‘copycat mar-keting,’ which leads to countless com-mercials that sound exactly like the one above. Radio is worth getting right. Despite the introduction of satellite and cloud-music services, traditional radio is still very effective. According to a 2018 Numeris report, radio continues to reach 85% of Canadians aged 12+, and the average listener tunes in to ra-dio a whopping 16.3 hours per week. Radio is still the best way of reaching people while they’re on the go— do you read the newspaper or browse social media while driving? Definitely not. would I act and talk like my commer-cial does?” Imagine you had a potential client in your office, desperate for a solution to their pain. How would you win them over? Would you make jokes and sing songs—or would you immediately offer to educate them on how you can fix their problem? How about your delivery? Would you blast your mes-sage in a booming announcer voice... or just speak like a sincere professional who’s willing to help? The answers to those questions are obvious if your goal is to help the client and win their trust (and their business). This is intuitive for many business owners, but then they completely forget about it when the radio station sends the commercial over for approval. There is a dangerous myth that ra-dio advertising can’t be tracked, and your ad rep might even encourage you to think of radio as a “branding tool” where return-on-investment is tossed aside. While it’s true that tracking performance is harder with radio than certain other media, there are still plenty of ways to test and measure your campaigns. The advice in the past was to use special phone numbers or text tracking – and that can still work – but there’s a way that fits even better with a complete marketing plan today: make a valuable free offer and count how many people claim it. strong benefit to the reader is very ef-fective. Write a useful resource that would interest your ideal customer. Give it a strong title, like “7 Steps To Restore The Pain-Free Back Of Your Youth,” and then ask listeners to visit a specific website or URL – separate from your main practice website’s homepage – to claim the free report in exchange for contact information. (Don’t forget Canada’s Anti-Spam Law.) You can then nurture these pros-pects with follow-up marketing over the long term, and monitor how many free report downloads translate to customers with a Customer Relation-ship Management (CRM) technology. You’ve accomplished two things at once with this strategy: one, you’ve provided value to the listener before they ever meet you, and two, you’ve tracked the effectiveness of your radio advertising. This approach will easily beat jingles and clichés, and if it doesn’t, then keep testing new offers, new time slots, new stations, and new commercials. 1. Make it about the listener. Commu-nicate VALUE above all else. 2. Production value is overrated. So, radio works – but how do you Don’t shoot for “wiz-bang” enter-tainment. Skip the jingles (or cut differentiate yourself from the throngs them very short), speak in the most of copycat local advertisers and actu-ally make your commercials pay off? normal tone possible, turn down Many business owners answer that the background music (or remove question through entertainment: puns, Leverage your expertise it completely), and don’t worry loud music, ‘funny’ scenes, and canned Instead of playing a jingle or talking about “sounding like a radio ad” – jingles, but that’s what causes listeners about your location, laser-focus your it’s actually better if you don’t. to rush for the dial between song radio commercial on something action-3. Follow this tested advertising for-mat: Problem: Identify your listen-breaks. You’ll avoid many advertising able, like a valuable free offer. This er’s pain point. Agitate: Make the mistakes if you ask yourself this ques-could be anything, but a short, compel-tion: “If I was in front of a patient, ling informational report that offers a problem hurt more – talk about why it’s worth solving, and soon. Solve: JAMES THOMPSON IS a former radio salesperson and author of Profitable Radio Advertising and Offer a convenient way to ease the ProfitableRadioAdvertising.com. Visit his website for free chapters from the book, local advertising pain. Talk about where they can get articles, and more. it (your special website). Three quick tips Advertising is selling on a large scale 30 Canadian Chiropractor February 2020 www.canadianchiropractor.ca
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