Questions For Direct-Response Radio Advertisers

Radio ad maven and fellow blogger Rod Schwartz had this to say recently to direct-response radio advertisers:

If your product or service truly serves a worthwhile purpose, and provides a valuable solution to a significant problem…

And if your commercial message immediately engages a prospective customer, speaks authentically to a felt need, and genuinely resonates with that person…

…you will find it unnecessary, even counterproductive, to bludgeon listeners with endless, mindless repetition of your toll-free telephone number.

Why?

Because – surprise! – the person who really wants what you’re selling will remember you and will make the effort to find you and do business with you.

As a listener, I share Rod’s distaste for commercials that give the phone number ad nauseum. But I have a feeling that the folks who do these ads — the best of them, anyway — have a good reason they do it this way.

The best direct response marketers in all media — radio, TV, direct mail, etc — test the heck out of their copy. And there are only two things that matter to them in a campaign where the call-to-action is a phone number: number of phone calls, and number of sales that result from those calls.

My guess — and it’s only a guess, because I’ve never had a chance to ask someone who’s done the testing — is that they repeat the phone number so often because when they do it less often, they get fewer phone calls and make fewer sales.

There’s some logic to this, because in many cases the phone number is unique to the campaign, and can’t be found in a phone book or on Google. The product might have a web site, but it may not be related to the radio campaign. And if the customer decides to find the product in a store, that’s not the “direct response” the campaign is designed to elicit.

The most sophisticated marketers may be tracking results by station, by time of day, and by show. They may also be experimenting with, and tracking, other aspects of the copy and the offer

If the object of THAT campaign is to get people listening to THAT station to call THAT number, they need to do everything they can to make sure the listener remembers that number and calls it, rather than trying to track the product down elsewhere. Giving the phone number over and over again is one way to accomplish that.

The direct marketer’s job isn’t to entertain listeners, or make good radio. His or her job is to sell product. My somewhat-educated guess is that they pound the phone number for one reason: it works.

But I’d love to know for sure. If you do direct-response radio work for a living — the kind where the only response that counts is a phone call to a specific number — and you’ve carefully tested a variety of methods, here are the questions of the day:

  1. How many times does the phone number need to appear in a :60 to generate the maximum number of calls?
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  2. What happens when you deviate from that formula?

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Crackberry’s Sales Prevention Department

Here’s a story of what happens when a cranky customer and an inflexible merchant meet: both sides lose.

I’m a Blackberry user, willing (so far) to put up with the slow browser, lack of features, and iPhone envy. In return I get a physical keyboard and a comforting sense of the familiar.

I also have to deal with the fact that most of the really cool apps don’t come in a Blackberry version. So when I read about a travel app called Flightcaster, and learned that they make it for my dowdy old phone, I went right online to find and order it.

My search took me to a place called Crackberry. I pulled out my credit card and put through a $2.99 order at the Crackberry Store.

The next day I received an email which read, in part:

We are anxious to ship your order, however we need some additional information to complete the order process.

To ensure that only the authorized cardholder placed the order, we would like to verify the supplied billing information. Your order has been placed on hold until this verification is completed.

The following information is requested to ensure that the authorized cardholder placed the order. Please email or fax at least two of the following:

– Top portion of the most recent credit card billing statement showing, name, billing address and last four numbers of the credit card
– Photo copy of your driver license
– Photo copy of the front and back of the credit card before the order can be filled (optionally block out all numbers except first and last four)

My initial reaction was that this couldn’t possibly be real. It was clearly a phishing attempt from some nefarious individual intent on stealing my identity. But when I went on the Crackberry website, I found the same message in the “order status” section.

So I fired off an email to Crackberry Support:

…if you truly want a photo copy of my driver’s license and/or my credit card statement just to put through a $2.99 order – please cancel the order. Amazon doesn’t ask for this information. Zappo’s doesn’t ask for this information. Delta Airlines doesn’t ask for this information I spend a couple of thousand dollars on airline tickets. And I’m not sending it to you, either.

Before we go further, I’ll stipulate something that is probably obvious to the dispassionate observer: I didn’t need to go my-way-or-the-highway quite quickly. I could have politely asked for an explanation first. Noted.

But the support staff for an online retailer should be equipped to deal with the occasional customer who is quick to take offense.This one wasn’t.

I received an email from Jim B., a Crackberry “customer service specialist”, this morning:

Hello,

We have received your email request for the cancellation of your order. Your order has been canceled and a confirmation email has been sent.

Thank you,

Jim B.
Customer Service Specialist
Toll Free (888) 599-8998

On one hand, I’ve got to respect them. Crackberry has rules, and if a customer doesn’t want to follow those rules, they’d apparently prefer not to have the business.

But here’s what could have happened: Jim B. could have explained the situation (rampant fraud? a problem with my card number? something?), started a dialog, and tried to see if there was some way to accommodate a customer.

If we’d worked something out, and I got the app, we’d have a relationship going forward. Crackberry might have received further orders from me in amounts much larger than $2.99.

In addition, I’d have been a great referral source: I’d have shown off Flightcaster to my colleagues who travel, and told them where I bought it. More customers, and more revenue, for Crackberry.

Instead, it stops here. I don’t have the app;  Crackberry doesn’t have my money, future business, or referrals. We both lose.

Are there “customer service specialists” on your staff? How do they handle cranky customers?

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Email Phil Bernstein here.

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Never Eat at a Place Called “Mom’s”…

Not long ago, I met with an auto dealer in the Midwest who was looking for a new advertising strategy. I asked him what the current dealership slogan was, and he said “A Place You Can Trust”.

I advised him to dump that slogan as quickly as he could, because:

  1. It insults the industry by implying that dishonesty is the normal state of affairs.
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  2. Nobody believes you’re trustworthy because you say so in an ad. In fact, such a claim may actually make a customer less inclined to trust you.

I was reminded of this conversation when I read about the arrest of  auto dealer Seven Maynard Gronli in Newberg, Oregon. According to authorities, Gronli

…falsified and forged documents and then presented them to DMV in order to illegally obtain titles for previously “junked” vehicles. After forging documents, Gronli then sold vehicles with clear titles.

The name of his dealership? Integrity Auto Sales.

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Email Phil Bernstein here.

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When “Editorial” and “Advertising” Don’t Talk

Rod Schwartz’ RodSpots Blog has a lovely example of what happens when “news” covers a story about the dangers of alcohol, and the sales department closes a deal with a bar.

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A Budding New Advertising Category

This isn’t a new product, but it’s a new advertising category for most of us:

The category is medical marijuana. For most of our lives, it’s been against the law everywhere in the country. But in the past few years, a steadily increasing number of communities have decriminalized the possession and use of the drug for certain medical purposes. In those communities, “dispensaries” have sprung up to handle the demand.

Guess what? They want to advertise! Print publications are taking the money, and some broadcasters are beginning to accept it as well.

Here’s how the New York Times put it in a recent article:

What would happen in the many communities now allowing medical marijuana had been a subject of much hand-wringing. But few predicted this: that it would be a boon for local newspapers looking for ways to cope with the effects of the recession and the flight of advertising — especially classified listings — to Web sites like Craigslist.

But in states like Colorado, California and Montana where use of the drug for health purposes is legal, newspapers — particularly alternative weeklies — have rushed to woo marijuana providers. Many of these enterprises are flush with cash and eager to get the word out about their fledgling businesses.

“Medical marijuana has been a revenue blessing over and above what we anticipated,” said John Weiss, the founder and publisher of The Independent, a free weekly. “This wasn’t in our marketing plan a year ago, and now it is about 10 percent of our paper’s revenue.”  It is hard to measure what share of the overall market they account for, but ads for medical marijuana providers and the businesses that have sprouted up to service them — tax lawyers, real estate agents, security specialists — have bulked up papers in large metropolitan news markets like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver.

It’s not just the alternative weeklies who are accepting the business. Respectable mainstream dailies like the Denver Post and The Bozeman Daily Chronicle are also running ads from these businesses. As print continues to struggle, more newspapers are likely to decide that it’s silly to forgo the revenue.

Is it time for television stations to think about the once-unthinkable? Perhaps. There is significant evidence that society’s view of marijuana is shifting. Some state legislators, strapped for cash, are looking at  a variety of legalize-it-and-tax-it schemes. And a follow-up article in the Times discusses a related, somewhat ironic phenomenon: families in which elderly parents, suffering from cancer and other illnesses, are now asking their boomer kids to bring them the drug to ease their symptoms.

Here are the states in which medical marijuana has been decriminalized: Alaska, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. Each has its own rules, regulations, and quirks. You can find a basic summary here.

I recently discussed the issue during a television station sales meeting, and learned that one enterprising AE had already put two clients on the air. Perhaps it’s not surprising that this station is in a college town…

If you’re an ad rep, you should talk to your manager before you start cold calling, if only to save an argument later. Find out whether the subject’s been discussed, whether your station or group is willing to take the business, and what restrictions there would be. Do not ask if you can do trade.

And keep in mind that even if the answer’s “no” today, it might turn into a “yes” if your local daily paper starts making good money on it.

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Email Phil Bernstein here.

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