Electronic Retailer - June 2011 - 49

BY BILL SULLIVAN

CHANNEL CROSSING: RADIO

Super Charge Your PI Call Volume With a Remnant Radio Buy
If you are into per-inquiry (PI) radio, this article is about an alternate money-saving, money-making advertising approach that will be of special interest to you as it has been to advertisers across the country. Simply put, that’s because this article explains how remnant radio time costs less and generates significantly more calls than PI radio time. Here’s why: As you probably know, most clients prefer PI buys because they see it as a no-risk deal – they only pay for results based on the number of calls their spots generate. That sounds good. But they don’t consider the risk of not having any control over which times their spots will air or how many calls will come in daily and weekly. They don’t consider that the return on their PI investment depends on chance. One might say, “That’s no way to run a business.” On the other hand, with remnant radio buys, the client can develop solid metrics. The client, through a remnant radio ad agency, can arrange and pay for airing a schedule of spots during certain hours of the day to optimize its telemarketing company’s hours of operation. After, say, a week, a metrics will determine the exact number and cost of the calls and enable a similar schedule of spots and costs to be repeated during ensuing weeks on additional stations. In this way, unlike PI radio, remnant radio buys give clients an estimated control over where and when their spots will run, a close estimate of how many calls they will generate and how much the campaigns will cost. We ran a work-at-home campaign last year with a $400,000 budget that delivered an average cost per call of $8. That’s 50,000 calls from radio listeners who were true work-at-home prospects. The client knew when and how many calls to expect from remnant radio and set up its telemarketing accordingly to convert the optimal amount of prospects to customers. In my agency’s experience over the past 25 years, remnant radio buys on stations around the country have delivered the highest volume of calls at the lowest cost. For example, we ran a natural cures book for three years at an average cost of $2 per call. We have run many such remnant radio schedules that delivered more than 10,000 calls per week at equally low costs. We ran a remnant radio campaign last year for a grocery coupon company that delivered an average $1.50 cost per call. When the client spent $15,000 in a week, it received 10,000 calls. The client’s ROI was predictable and scalable. The telemarketing company was pleased to keep its telemarketers busy with that call volume as well. Most PI radio ad agencies will not accept such low payouts and will not deliver the call volume if they did accept it. In short, we’ve learned from many years of experience that remnant radio buys can deliver a much greater amount of calls than PI. But, as we always remind readers about trying new DR radio methods, be sure you get the help of professionals who are fully experienced in remnant radio buying, as well as first-rate DR radio specialty telemarketers. Bill Sullivan is the president of William Sullivan Advertising, a full-service agency that specializes in DR remnant radio and TV. He can be reached at (973) 379-8555 or at bill@williamsullivanadvertising.com.

June 2011 | electronicRETAILER

Electronic Retailer - June 2011

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