Radio commercial production costs will be a negligible percentage of
your long-term revenues in Direct Response Radio.
But if you're new to radio advertising, every penny you spend up front
comes out of your wallet, not your customers'.
The least
expensive and often most effective way to produce a local :60 radio commercial is to write
100 words of from-the-heart copy about
your company, your store, or your thing, then record it at a local radio station.
Imagine that you're sitting in the passenger seat of a
Total Stranger's car for a minute. Your store is just up ahead. Try to
persuade your prospect to pull over and come in. Get a little closer to
the mic than the guy in the pic. Relax. Speak slowly. Enunciate. Repeat your phone number,
URL, or address a few times. Don't try to act, or announce, or sound
powerful.
The least
effective method is to give the station sales rep a copy of your Yellow Pages or
newspaper ad,
let him or her write some copy, and have the station's Powerful basso
profundo throaty news announcer read it,
along with everyone else's.
You'll just add to the Daily Drone of Unheard Bullet Points.
If you want your commercial to run on a lot of stations
outside the local market, in places where no-one has ever heard of you, you
may wish to consider a slightly more distinctive sounding :60 or :30.
Examples:
Forrest P is on Vibrate. (Single customer interview for Dice.com)
The Perfect Place. (Single customer interview for TrueWest.com)
Sara & Jeff. (Two customer gush for SutraMax)
Foreclosure Storm (Single Anncr + SFX for PlanToForeclose)
Work Work...Play Play (Two-talent + VO + Jingle for Carnival Crystal Palace)
Get The Stinky Dog Away. (12-Voice fusillade for Dinovite)
The Cost of Radio Commercial Production
includes creative, studio, talent, and custom music &
jingles.
Radio commercial production houses typically bundle all costs into one package
price. I give you much more detail, and I include the media budget for a
local test.
For example, the project planner sheet below Estimates the line items
for a typical set of three Testimonial :60s to run on 1 to 3 local stations in a standard
10-Day Control Test.
It shows the time of staff
required to prepare a customer questionnaire, interview 10-12 customers on
the phone, record their comments, transcribe the verbatim comments, pencil
edit, then mix and finish air-quality finals.
I've set co-op participation
at 35%, applied 25% of media commissions to creative time of staff, and
added a standard 17.65% commission on out-of-pocket expenses.
This is a test budget. For
network roll out clients of mine, the cost of radio commercials is essentially zero
- we roll it into the media commissions.
You'll see this page in my
Free Strategy & Planning for Radio ROI
Excel Workbook. The media dollars
will, of course, be pasted from your own Year I Budget page.
Click to The Radio Show for more examples of my work. Click to The Basics of Direct Response Radio to
learn why my work works.
