Ten Immediate Radio Sales Ideas

Ten ideas to get you into the Owner/GM office and make a sale this week

Large companies run very powerful contests that sometimes get lost in the mail.  You can build powerful, immediate programs for this week’s sales by running local events along side these national contests.

1. Find an event that works with a local merchant.  Start with Mr. Sweepy®.  Prospect thru his 803 active contests.
2. Think of a local event to build on a national program (see our sample ideas below)
3. Call a local merchant and present your idea to immediately leverage the national event.
4. Offer your program with spots, a local web contest, and a traffic building on location event
5. Repeat often.

Here’s 10 events running now that you might combine the national event with a local contest on your radio station.  Add an on location

1. LOCAL BOAT DEALERS – Fram Nordic Boats 22’ Evolution Speedboat $64,999 – National Sweepstakes supported with a local merchant “My Boat” picture contest.
2. LOCAL OFFICE SUPPLY MERCHANT – FedExCup Global Golf Sweepstakes 5-day vacation package.  Got FedEx drop off in the store?  Support the national event with a contest for the best looking four-some pictures.
3. LOCAL DRUG STORE – Rite Aid Cool Cash Sweepstakes $10,000.  Support the national sweeps with a local merchant prize drawing.
4. LOCAL DRUG STORE – Hershey’s and Walgreens Sweeter Summer Giveaway Sweeps 26 – $500 certificates … support the event with a local my sweets picture contest and on location candy sampling event.
5. LOCAL APPLIANCE DEALER – Sony Pictures Television – King of Queens Summer Stay-cation Sweepstakes.  Support the national contest with a local “how old is your TV” picture contest.
6. LOCAL HOME DEPOT STORE – Delilah Show Summer Sweepstakes with Home Depot on premise event and home improvement contest
7. LOCAL GROCERY STORE – SuperValue and Clorox Instant win Sweepstakes 10 Grand Prizes worth $1,000 each
8. LOCAL RADIO SHACK  DEALER ASSOCIATION – Radio Shack Instant Win Game ends July 31
9. LOCAL CHASE BANK – Chase bank USA – One Good Reason Sweepstakes ends July 31
10. OTHER LOCAL EVENT POSSIBILITIES
    1. Wendy’s Sweet & Spicy Movie Premiere Sweeps …
    2. Liz Claiborne – 500 Wish List Sweeps
    3. T-Mobile Who’s Got you Covered Sweeps and Instant Win Game
    4. Bassett Furniture $500 Giveaway
    5. Banana Republic $1,000 Shopping Sweepstakes

Search the web for contests in your area and build on the national event with a local promotion.  Hurry some of these sweeps end soon … it is a good reason for the call … now.

Not the Only Game in Town

Radio contests can be powerful events, sponsor building programs, and listener delights.  However, some recent radio events are not drawing the entries they used to draw.

Radio contests are not the only game in town anymore.  Search the web and you can find Mr. Sweepy®  tracking 803 active sweepstakes with prize pools totaling $53-million!  He rates and ranks the current events drawing 600,000 monthly visits to his tracking website.  You can find Honeywell Consumer Products $65k prize pool; Nat’l Frozen Foods Assoc $100k prize pool, Dream Bedroom from Lifetime Entertainment $20k; Hilton Grand Vacations new Mini Cooper prize; Toyota Hybrid Drive Sweepstake; Sharpie Office Depot Back Pack Contest; Rite Aid; TNT-TV; Sega; Hasbro; ESPN; L’oreal; and 792 more contests.

Radio is not the only constest game in town anymore

Search Google for “Radio Contest” and find 121,000 possibilities.

Now about your current contest … what’s your prize?  Do you have an easy entry process?  Are you still asking for mail ins?   Is the contest mentioned in the sponsor’s spots?  Any on air mentions? Do you have the contest on your website?   Is the contest in your newsletter?  Facebook page?  Twitter stream? Is the contest inviting, current, immediate, and engaging?  Or, do you have a 4-week event with little consumer engagement?  Hopefully, you are not running black box contest … entries in and winners announced 4-weeks later?

With CELLit Media tools you can have an engaging, active, sponsor-delightful contest.  We provide web tools to accept digital picture entries and videos.  Your audience can enter by the web, by email or directly from their cell phone.  You set the contest policies allowing your audience to help select the winners with voting options per day, per contest, per contestant.  You moderate the contest with easy review tools.   CELLit social tools allow commenting, rating, voting, tagging, and email-a-friend.  We even summarize the contest and automatically report all the results to you just minutes after the ending date/time.

Is it time to become “the” game in town?  CELLit Media

Time to Re-think Radio Contests

You know the old radio contest structure.  Sponsor buys a four week spot program, the promo group runs the contest, a few on air mentions, and the sponsor prize is announced on air.  Winners come by the station to pick up the prize.  Nothing’s changed since AM radio.

The consumer has changed.  Two-week, four-week events are too long.  The audience wants to see the contest as it goes along.  Who’s winning?  How am I doing?  The days of a “black box” event are over.

The hot events are in-the-moment.   One new site Swoopo runs 225-contest auctions per day and has one-half million visitors each month.  Woot.com runs one-day events and draws 7-million web visits each month.   Contestants want to see voting, ratings, comments, and they want to share with links, embed codes, and email-a-friend options.

Sponsors have changed.  Most merchants are looking for a powerful immediate event … just like the audience.

Try something new.

CELLit Radio Contest Toos

Run a 72-hour event on your radio station website. The sponsor focuses a spot buy into the 72-hours across all day parts.  The audience enters on your website.  Pictures and videos will work.  Send in by email, cell phones, or post on the web site.  Don’t have the tools?  Don’t worry we can connect you in one-day.  No software, no servers required, and no fees.   CELLit will even produce a summary report for all entries, contact information, and complete voting details.

Because the contest is NOW, this moment, the event has special impact.  You might even engage the audience to visit the local sponsor to complete the contest participation.

Furniture stores, mattress stores, sporting stores, restaurants, clubs, clothing boutiques all want the immediacy.  Your new week/weekend event will be the talk of the town.  Repeat weekly.

Back-to-school and Radio

Seriously good article in today’s Wall Street Journal – Stores Anxiously Watch Back-to-School Sales.   Click thru and read the article.  A few key perspectives:

• Inventories cut back with lower back-to-school sales expectations
• Retailers would rather chase more stock than discount if sales are weak
• Quick read to come from Florida and South Carolina with earlier back-to-school start dates
• If Back-to-school is weak then merchants will cut holiday inventory  … 2009 game over

Merchants are spreading out the “goods” to make shelves look full.  The mind set is run out rather than mark down.   No doubt, consumers will notice the lack of selection.  An unintended consequence might be even lower sales.

What’s this mean for local radio support?  At best, spot buy reductions with lower inventory and lower sales expectations.   Doing the same thing gets less.  It is time to reach deeper to stay even or think about recovering from this year’s first 6-months.

Couple of ideas:

• Bring back radio’s strong suit … contests.  Radio engages listeners like no other medium.  Turn on that special reach.   You can make the phones ring.  Now, make the register’s ring.
• Make the new contests about today, this weekend, and 72-hours.  The world isn’t waiting for 3-week events.  That’s so 90’s.  Do a blow out weekend.   Feature a special value … extraordinary event for 72-hours.  Concentrate the spot buy and flush out that sparse inventory.  Then it will be time to replenish the goods and the next spot buy.  Holiday outlook will be much brigher.
• Selling is now a team sport.  Two spots a day isn’t going to make a difference.  You need to program a support package.  Sell the concentrated package of spots on all day-parts, it will take on air mentions, web site banners, and page text for search engines.   Now, that contest … 72-hours and blow them away.
• Make the contests about back-to-school.  You might even think about individual winners from different schools to engage the entire audience.

Digital Radio Revenue

Looking for more digital traffic, time-spent-online, and page views?   Look to your audience.  Tracking of the top-100 radio stations indicates less than 8% of their broadcast audience visits the station’s website while 50-70% of the audience is online.  That’s 1 of every 10 listeners … listeners that go online every day.  Nobody talks about the station website numbers but everybody knows.  It’s no secret.  Ask the sales team for more digital revenue and they ask for “better numbers to sell”. 

Dynamic content will bring your radio website traffic, the sales attention, and increase your digital revenue.

How do you get dynamic content?  Your audience and CELLit Media

CELLit Media provides the video and picture tools to engage your audience.   Videos and pictures are easily posted to pages with your station’s logo, colors, and display text.  You create your own channels; select how media is displayed; and fully moderate videos, pictures, comments, and tags.  CELLit provides these tools for shared advertising space.  No cash expense.  No operating expense.  Just opportunity!

About CELLit Media and dynamic content:

• You can add dynamic banners to your main website that update to the most recent postings, the most popular or the highest rated items of the moment 
• You can add a video player to your pages and display the videos of your choice for immediate viewing
• You can manage media based contests with start/stop times, special instructions, graphics, and system generated reports to judge the winners.

How do you get started?  First, recruit a digitally inclined on-air talent to post “their video and picture stuff”.   We promise the on-air talent doesn’t need much encouragement to get started.  DJ’s using CELLit Media dynamic widgets and video players will immediately boost your web traffic.  Second, start an audience contest.  Something very simple … best Dad for Father’s day, summer swimsuits, any pet contest, any baby picture contest, my office cubical … whatever.  You will increase your traffic again.  You will be a real hero.

For more visit www.CELLit.com.

New Year Resolution Week: January 4-10

Have a hard time keeping a New Year Resolution?  How about putting it on video for the world to see to help you stay on track. Ask your listeners to send in video of them stating their New Year Resolution.  Listeners go to the site to vote for the best video each day to select the weekly winner.  A panel of celebrity judges will select the winner of the best New Year Resolution from the daily winners.  The winner’s resolution will help shape the prize they win.

New Year Resolution Video Theme:  Resolution Week

Invite listeners to send in a video of their New Year Resolution. Listeners vote for their favorites to select each day’s winner.  A panel of judges selects a winner during the station’s special event or remote.

Sponsors: Health Club, Spa, Health Food Store, and Weight Loss Center

Fun At Work Day: January 30th

Capture how you have Fun At Work on video for the world to see.  Ask your listeners to send in a video of how they have fun at work either with or without their peers and win prizes.  The Boss will never know or maybe they will join in to win really cool stuff. Come on – be yourself show us that work and fun can go together. Listeners vote for their favorite video.

Fun At Work Video Theme:  Fun At Work Day

Invite listeners to send in a video of what they do for fun at work.  Listeners vote for their favorites who win prizes from local retailers.

Sponsors: Coffee House, Office Supply Store, Deli, or Electronics Store

Belly Laugh Day: January 24th

Have you heard the one about…?  Probably but we want to hear it from you.  Tell a joke on video and sent it to us.  We are ready for a good laugh; just remember to keep it short and clean.  Listeners select the funniest joke to determine the winner.  Use your on-air talent to inspire those want-a-be comedians to send in videos.

Joke Contest Theme:  Tell Us A Joke

Invite participants to video their funniest joke to celebrate Belly Laugh Day.  Listeners vote for their favorite. Winners receive tickets and VIP treatment at the local Comedy Club.

Sponsors: Comedy Clubs, Night Clubs

National Clean Off Your Desk Day: January 12th

Every office has at least one desk that stands out from the all the rest good or bad.  We want to find those special desks and share them with the world to celebrate National Clean Off Your Desk Day. Ask your listeners to send in their videos/pictures of that cluttered desk in their office to win prizes for themselves and their peers.

The four-week contest starting on January 12^th has a winner every week with a grand champion selected from the weekly submissions.  Listeners go to the site to vote for the best/worst desk each week to select the weekly winner.  A panel of celebrity judges will visit each office location to select the winner of the grand champion worst office desk title from the weekly winners.

Messiest Desk Video Theme:  National Clean Off Your Desk Day

Invite listeners to send in a video of their office’s messiest desk.  Listeners vote for the best/worst to select the prize-winning office desk.

Sponsors: Office Supply Retailer, Office Furniture Company

I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore Day

Are you fed up with something in your life? Well it is time to rant and rave about it to win prizes. January 7^th is I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore Day. Ask your listeners to send in videos of their best rant on the topic of that of their choice.  Listeners go the website to vote for the one they think deserves winning a golf resort/spa stay.

Rant & Rave Video Theme:  I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore Day

Invite listeners to send in a rant video of what is ever bothering them to get it off their chest.  Listeners vote for the most deserving to select the prize-winning trip.

Sponsors: Las Vegas Casino, Spa/Golf Resort or Cruise Line