RADIO ADVERTISING IN MARKETING SERVICES ROLE

[LITTLEBOYBLUE]

Was curious if anyone has ever been at a station where sales team (or subset thereof) reviews the effectiveness of the marketing/advertising campaign?

In other words...my perception is radio likes to be an "order taker". It may involve a promotion or a remote ... but if it doesn't deliver results, the invoice goes out and the client probably doesn't renew. I'm wondering if there is much effort put into "what do we need to tweak to make this work better?" so a client actually gets the traction they are promised originally? The tweak may be adjusting the copy approach, the mix of when spots air, a push in an email or contest mention, etc?

Even DOCTORS tend to do a follow-up ... "how are you doing" after a surgery, though not after an office visit! Curious whether radio mimics the surgery or the poke 'em & bill 'em side of the medical example?

 

[bobdavcav]

Obviously Cumulus does not do this on there CHR stations, otherwise they may have learned not to be so conservative by now. There is a 5 page thread about this over on the CHR board of this site.

 

[chippr]

I've been at stations where we would make adjustments before the end of a campaign if we felt a promotion was going to bomb, but I can't say that I've ever seen a station ever follow through to measure the success of a campaign. I suspect most wouldn't want to know the answer. If they had, there would never be another remote at a hot tub dealer.

It's an interesting concept. If I own a store, I don't really care how many people hear my commercial. I care about how much money people spent in my store because they heard it. If a station could truly demonstrate that the commercials would more than pay for themselves, ratings wouldn't matter. Providing and demonstrating value is how many other businesses sell things.

I doubt we'll ever see this happen because it shifts all the risk to the station. Stations would be accountable for delivering success whether or not the client gave them the information or creative control needed to make the campaign a success. And after all the cuts, how many stations have the marketing expertise or even the resources to pull something like this off? Most stations are terrible at marketing themselves. Why would they be any better at marketing someone else's business? There's a reason agencies exist.

 

[TowerLamp]

LBB,

That's a great question. With so few buys being direct these days the "feedback loop" isn't nearly as direct as it once was. The agency who actually placed the buy may find itself in a conflict of interest if the campaign fails to deliver. The agency doesn't want to admit that they failed to make a good demographic match when what they are usually focused on is CPM, and how many bonus spots they can get on the weak stepchild sagging FM or AM sister station.

Ultimately though any station needs repeat buys to survive. Those stations who cultivate listener loyalty (read lots of P1's) will outperform their ARB numbers and nail that direct buy repeat biz. In that way the broadcast business is somewhat self-policing. Sadly, many great well performing stations die out because of a lack of agency follow up on the very thing you mention, LBB. Did the campaign perform Did traffic increase and were sales up? Young agency buyers are still hyper focused on that CPM because it's easy to calculate. But, did you really debrief the client after the run to see how things went or are you already moving on to the next big buy? I've been at plenty of great stations where the GSM made detailed follow-up policy the rule and a few where it wasn't. Guess which ones are still around!