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#2 · (Edited)
Mixed feelings

MagicPoolSvcs said:
We recently recorded a 60 second commerical to broadcast in Central Florida.
Believe it or not, AM advertising is not that expensive.


Have your had any experience with radio ads ?


And here is our commerical :clap:
Feedback please...............

http://www.youtube.com/user/MagicPoolServices
Click to expand...
We did 600 tv commercials in 2008 on cable and got only 1 lead that was to clean a drain. I've had several friends do radio commercials and they did not get leads.

But, radio must work because we have plumbing and termite companies that run commercials all day long and they have been doing these commercials for several years. I spoke with two different plumbers at a plumbing company and both said they do 60 copper repipes every week from radio commercials.

I would not expect to get much from radio. In Los Angeles, a minute on a good station is $1500 to $3000. I was told you have to commit to a $500,000 contact to be on the John and Ken Show on 640 am.

I think tv and radio are the worst because your prospect had nothing they can see and hold onto. I don't think anyone will remember your commercial until after they hear is about 10 times. You may have to run the commercial 200 times to get people to hear it 10 times. Tv and radio may work well when you dominate the yellow pages by having a full page ad and you are the 1st to 3rd ad. When you run a commercial you get your message only to the people who are listening to that one particular startion and only those people who have their radio on. This leaves out about 99.89% of the population in that area, so the shotgun effect of reaching most of people you want to get to is very weak. You can do much better and be more effective with flyers, direct mail, and newspapers.

I would only advertise on the radio if I have extra money in my advertising budget I have nothing to do with. We have a budget of 10% of our gross sales.
 
#3 ·
#4 · (Edited)
Please PC, lets slow down......I do have some experience with radio, be it in another industry....

Magic Pool this is a big step. I suppose you purchased a block of ads for $1200 - $3500 ?? They run at different times so the cost per play is $20 - $50.......Am I close ??

The rep talked you into a 60 sec ad.......next time around believe me you'll go to 30 sec. Listen to other ads. The rep always wants 60 sec's. The first 38 sec of your add is fantastic......the rest is really fill...

You'll need to run the program for about 6 months or longer on a near top station to get the word out. We did AM and PM drive time, a few during the day, midnight was $15 and a highly rated evening show. The rep can show you who's listening.

Radio is just a piece of the puzzle. It does make you look like a big guy on the block. Good luck with it.

Previous / repeat customers are still the best reference. The trend now is to include a testimonial in the radio ad, as well as saying hundreds or thousands of satisfied customers in the area. If you stay with 60 sec put a testimonial in. It may be done / read in the booth with a different staff member or they may invite the customer in to the booth to do it.
 
#6 ·
Radio works but it's not as tangible as other forms of advertising. Most people won't tell you they got your name from a radio ad, but many times it's influenced them. IOW, it's more of a "Top of mind" advertising.

Stay away from 60 second ads. They're a waste of money. Stick to 30 second ads and 10-15 second snippets. A jingle helps. Drive them to your web site not your phone number. Also don' let the rep know what your demographic is, ask him to tell you what theirs is and get their arbitron ratings
 
#8 ·
Nothing works all by itself. We track everything and TV cannot stand on it's own, but everything else works better when we run TV. Radio takes a big, long term commitment.

IF I were to do radio, I would pick a talk show host to do live commercials and I would commit to two years, and not expect any results for 6 months. Anything less is just a flash in the pan.. or luck.
 
#9 ·
My question is how many people listen to A.M?

There is only one radio ad I can think of that I hear and they play on every break on nearly every station. The reason I remember them is because I looked into the company only to find out how big of a scam they were.

I guess depending on your market, and how many people it actually gets out to, it could work very well.
 
Discussion starter · #10 ·
BamBamm5144 said:
My question is how many people listen to A.M?

There is only one radio ad I can think of that I hear and they play on every break on nearly every station. The reason I remember them is because I looked into the company only to find out how big of a scam they were.

I guess depending on your market, and how many people it actually gets out to, it could work very well.
Click to expand...

We are using an AM station that broadcasts " Rush Limbaugh " :shutup:

That would be our primary democraphic.
 
#11 ·
Ditto on the 60 second ad, it seems you can say everything you want in 30... I don't know if running 1 60 second ad is the same cost as running 2 30 second ones but if it is I'd rather get twice the spots.

There are some great ads that just play all the time on my AM station, like Jeff Hyatt the termite guy... and Mesa Garage doors.




If I had termites in my garage doors I'd definitely call them both!
 
#12 · (Edited)
I want to see how Chris does. I have never had any contractor I have dealt with ever tell me radio paid for itself in initial sale or lifetime value of client.

Its just too narrow of a ad medium to try with random spots unless you are running ALL THE TIME. You truly have to hit the mother load of playing exactly when someone is looking for your service and that almost never happens. Plus most go in thinking its going to ring the phone right after the commercial airs when in reality its ALL about branding and never direct response. But they dont sell that to the client. They sell phones ringing and techs going out doing jobs and collecting cash. Be ready to get disappointed and have less $ in the bank.
 
#13 ·
Limited experience, here's what I can say

Concurr doing 15 and 30 second ads. I've tried very limited radio twice with my current business and broke even both times. My market is about the #100 metro area, but at the time I was doing a mobile service (bringing samples to the homeowner).

If you are "producing" the ads yourself, i.e., not using an ad agency, you should get at least a 15% discount off their rate sheet. If you commit to a run of X number of ads or X months you should get a discount. If you use an ad agency you won't get the 15% discount, but they should do all the work and plan your campaign - in exchange they get the 15% as commission. In other words, you pay the regular rate (less any discount for longer contracts) but you don't pay the ad agency, except MAYBE a talent fee for recording the ad.

You can look at ratings for various stations, but the reps ought to show them to you, or your ad agency should. It should give demographics (age, etc.). Ad rates essentially reflect the listnership and demographics.

You will often, thru your rep or ad agency, get a "special" when they are trying to fill unsold time - they can't inventory it. Remnant time can be very cheap. At one company we ran ads on a reasonably popular country station that was as little as $2 per spot. Downside is you may not have a set time these ads run. May be 11 am, can be 3 am. You could find a remnant special and buy a lot of cheap remnants on all the stations the company has in your market.

REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT. My budget won't let me do enough ads, so I have been trying other methods. But the reason you hear a Lowe's or HD ad every hour on every station is to saturate the market so when the aveerage person is in the market for something they have they are the only place that comes to mind to go look. Your job is to get people to automatically think of you when in the pool services market.

Read "guerilla marketing' thread re: repeating ads. Marketing people say people need to absorb your name minimum 3 times for it to stick, but we only notice 1/9 of what we see/hear, so that's 27 exposures needed. But people will only hear a portion of your ads, so if someone listens to your station(s) and hears 1 of 10, that's 270 spots needed. And to get as many people as possible it means running on lots of stations. Say 5 stations, and if the average person hears 1 of every 20 ads, that's 540 spots x 5 stations or 2,700 spots before you should start to get anything like a real measure of what it might can do for you.

Have your accountant compute a break even analysis. Basically "cost of ad campaign" divided by gross margin per average job = number of jobs you need to pay for it. See if that is reasonable expectations.
Good luck, and I'd be interested in results you get.
 
#14 ·
At any given point during the day (or evening) -- you are marketing your services to a small "slice" of the overall pie (since every major city has MANY radio stations.. and at any given point only a small percentage of their audience will be listening). And only a small slice of that slice will be interested in your offer. Unless you find someone to give you an incredible "deal" on the cost of the ads I think it will rarely cost justify.

I hope I am wrong in this case as it looks like Chris has already commited money to this test.
 
#15 ·
True, but...

alanmoore said:
At any given point during the day (or evening) -- you are marketing your services to a small "slice" of the overall pie (since every major city has MANY radio stations.. and at any given point only a small percentage of their audience will be listening). And only a small slice of that slice will be interested in your offer. Unless you find someone to give you an incredible "deal" on the cost of the ads I think it will rarely cost justify.

I hope I am wrong in this case as it looks like Chris has already commited money to this test.
Click to expand...
This is true, but the same is true of virtually all mass advertising. Which is why those of us with small budgets have trouble getting our message across and in the mind of the general public.

I did an anlaysis based on a rate sheet for local stations here and for me to do what they call "ultra efficient brand building" using a 1 year committment, on 3 stations (actually 4, one is an AM/FM that carries the same programming part of the day), to keep my advertising at the percentage of gross sales I expect it to be, the results would have to be significantly more than what I really expect it can do. And their "ultra efficient" doesn't give nearly the saturation I think I need.

However, using some different campaigns than their "ultra efficient" that number can come down to 1/3 of that number. Remember, they want to sell lots of spots at stated (premium) rates. YOU want as much bang for your buck as possible - the two don't really mesh. You have to make them play your game, because otherwise you have to be a bottomless pit of advertising money.

As a rule of thumb, 2% of the market is maybe thinking about what you have to offer at any time. You have to be in their mind when they are thinking about it. Which means constant marketing, which is expensive. Why do you think the box stores advertise on every station every hour?

People don't go there because they are good or cheap, they go there because they have heard so many $%^& ads that the public THINKS of them and no one else when they are in the market, and THINKS they are cheap, even though they aren't.

If HD or Lowe's had our advertisng budgets, they would be out of business in 3 months if they had to get by on ability and pricing. The trouble with mass media is they have geared rates to what the TOP of the media buyers will pay. In other words, the big boxes, car companies, major grocery chains, etc., are big, often public with lots of capital from stock issue, dominate media and rates are geared to them. The rest of us are basically screwed unless you can get an effective campaign on the cheap or manage to get big enough to afford adding mass media as we grow. And since a) radio & TV can't inventory "time," and b) they can't sell every 15 seconds at premium rates because there aren't enough of the bottomless money advertising pits, you can sometimes make a deal. But this is a LONG TERM thing, as described above with the likely number of ads you have to run.
 
#16 ·
I have used radio for 4 years and it works. Price of the spot means very little. You're basically paying for the number of people listening, much like you would a TV show. It depends on the hours of the day, and the show. I've not seen any return on FM stations. My feeling is that people tune out the commercials or switch stations to hear another song. AM is the only way that I will go in the future.

You need to find stations and shows with engaged listeners and demographics that meet your needs.

I buy the two most expensive time slots on the stations I use. They cost more because more people are listening. You gain credibility by being on those types of shows.
 
#17 ·
grahaminteriors said:
This is true, but the same is true of virtually all mass advertising. Which is why those of us with small budgets have trouble getting our message across and in the mind of the general public.
Click to expand...
That is not entirely true. There is ONE medium that allows the "little guys" to play with the "big boys" and thats paid search (PPC).

Your ads are ONLY SHOWN when someone is looking for what you provide and you ONLY PAY when someone goes to your site. If done right, its the most cost effective means to attract new clients. If done wrong, you will lose a small fortune in the process.

Campaigns that run extremely well in the contractor industry are:

Decking
Fencing
Pool companies
Roofing
Entry Doors
Painting
Remodeling (kitchen, bathroom, basement, addition)
Plumbing (if budgeted correctly)
HVAC (if budgeted correctly)
 
#18 ·
I think radio is a must for a residential service company. When I try to think of the major plumbers, electricians, siding guys, and roofers in my area, the ones that come to mind are the ones the advertise on the radio. There is alot of ground work to lay before going on the radion. Customers need to start "seeing your everywhere" once they hear you on the radio. I don't know if radio is suppose to generate leads as much as its suppose to support your YP, PPC, Flyers, etc. I have never called a company off an ad but many times when I am google a service and see that company I think "hey, I know them."

We have never advetised on the radio. So I don't know, but I think its worth it if you have solid program up and running already.
 
#19 ·
Good train of thought and I can understand the thinking. The difference is most people are not in their truck, car or listening to any radio station that muich on any given day to randomly hear that ad.

You hear them because you're out riding from job to job listening to the radio.

Radio is about branding. So is TV, billboards, newspaper ads or online banner advertising. A contractor would be better off spending their money on an activity that (1) is their target market and (2) is looking for their service AT THAT VERY MOMENT. Radio doesnt do it effectively but if you have extra money to throw around because you like it when your friends said they heard your 30 second wallet drainer on the radio, have at it. :party:
 
#20 ·
Same thing as alan said.

I can name a lot of companies that advertise on the radio throughout the day but then again, I also have it on for 10 hours. How often does anyone else have the radio on?

Now in these days, most people have ipods or sirius radio. I dont see a huge value in radio advertising unless you are going to do it so much that your ad becomes annoying to people.
 
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MagicPoolSvcs
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