Has response to your Direct Response Radio Control commercial flattened out?

This in-house research tool reveals a Nugget of Truth than can help you beat your Control and double, even triple call volume - overnight.

It costs nothing.  Zero, zip, nada.

Just give each of your TMs a pad of paper and a pencil.  

Ask them to write down the first ten word out of every caller's mouth when the telemarketer mentions PRICE.  (If you record calls, transcribe this portion of 100 or so recent calls in which the TM actually got to the first close.) 

Pay close attention to the Verbatim Comments from people who called but Did Not Buy.

People who are interested enough to call but who balk on price won't often admit they can't afford your $149.95.  Instead, they'll reach into their memory bank for a lame excuse why Your Thing won't work for them.  

Very often, that excuse is about them, not about your Thing, or your competitors.

When we read through the Verbatims we may see the same lame excuse over and over again.

If 25 out of every 100 callers DO NOT BUY for the same lame excuse, you can be sure that 250 out of 1,000 people who hear your spot DO NOT CALL for the same lame excuse.  It's a little stronger in their brains and it occurs to them just before they reach for the phone.

Our next round of creative should take that that "Yeah, but..." off the table.  It's usually an emotion-driven excuse, so it may take some subtlety, even artistry, to defuse it. 

Two Examples:

I. National Dynamics Speed Tapes

Jim McAlister had run the same network :30 for nine years, fielding 2,000 calls a week and converting 22% of calls to sales.

Throaty VO: "Stop wasting time watching TV! You can learn a foreign language in just 20 minutes a day!"

Everyone in America had heard the spot 30 to 100 times.  Could I beat it?  How?  I asked the TM Supervisor why 78% of people who called Did Not Buy.  He knew the answer without looking at a note pad.  The main lame excuse was something like:

"Well, I took Spanish in High School and I had a hard time memorizing.  So, um.. I guess this wouldn't work for me."

In fact, if you start your second language at the ripe age of 13 or 14 your brain is already hard-wired to English.  Memorizing is tough.  But defusing that excuse was simple.  Instead of throaty announcer copy I ran 30-second Spanish lessons demonstrating the ease of learning a foreign language without memorizing.

The first spot in the new campaign, S-O-C-K-S, pulled 5,000 calls the first week.  Conversion rose from 22% to 28%.  The roll-out campaign grossed $35 million in two years, as much money as the Throaty Announcer copy had earned in nine years on the air.  

Click to The Top 200 for five of the 40 spots in the campaign.

II. Credit Answers.

There are a dozen or so companies that advertise Credit Card Debt Relief/Settlement/Negotiation on radio and TV.  Most offer the same program and imitate each other's logical, straightforward announcer copy.  Credit Answers, based in Dallas, was a pioneer in the category, but by mid 2010 was stalled at about 1,500 calls a week and about 15% conversion.  Could I beat The Control?  (Play it.  You've heard it dozens of times.)

After an extensive Brand Resistance Survey, it was clear that a great many people in credit card trouble were, well, Lunatic Spendaholics.  They didn't want to cancel their cards or go into an austerity program.  They wanted to keep using the bank's money to finance their lifestyles.

"Well, I can't afford the payments, and I know my credit is shot, but I don't want to do anything that will hurt it."  

So the objective was to persuade prospects that Credit Answers might offer a solution that could minimize Spendus Interruptus.  The advertising had to be emotional, not rational.

    The Party Is Over :60

I ran a modest measured-impressions test on 250 streaming stations.  The Control got 1/3 of the gimps; the test spots (we tried a few other ideas, too) got 2/3.  We tracked G (000 impressions per phone call or page hit).  The Party Is Over out-pulled the Control 4:1.

Of course, you can use a Brand Resistance Survey long before your Control Copy burns out, even before you begin an advertising campaign.  Just ask your sales force, "Why Don't People Buy?"

Defuse that problem in your advertising and you'll never burn out.