By Steve Lapa
Lapcom Communications Corp
President
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — News and talk radio sellers are boring.
Sorry if I offended you. But that’s what I see in the marketing work I do.
It’s all about numbers on paper. If ratings are not part of the pitch, it comes down to a laundry list of predictable guests, a boilerplate bio, and whatever else is fast and easy.
Here we are selling talk radio personalities, the original first mover influencers in media, and it is a boring, laborious process, most likely focused on you the seller.
What happened to the anecdotal components to your presentation? Those unique, relatable stories based on past performance of your on-air talent that stimulate the “what if,” moving the advertiser to a win-win? What I see and hear daily has no connection with selling the total engagement most proven talk radio hosts deliver every day. Let’s clarify with a simple example that may help your daily sales.
Golf. Although golf is far from my favorite sport, I appreciate the social, physical, and being outdoors benefits of 18 holes. Watching almost any decent golfer play the course, you learn to appreciate the focus each swing requires. From the moment a golfer puts on their colorful clothes, grabs their clubs and tees off, the outside world is shut off. It’s been a while since I’ve actually seen or heard a golfer answer a mobile phone while on the golf course. Every drive, every swing, every putt requires a level of focus totally engaging the golfer to help keep that score at a bragging point level.
You may think I’m stretching here, but think about the engagement level of your listener with their favorite talk show host. The outside world shuts down for a brief moment as that listener is focused on what your host is saying. The host presents the content in a way that helps the listener shut out their daily distractions and engage with the host, guest and callers. Can you relate?
Sometimes we get so habituated in our daily sales work that numbers and “how we sell” cause us to forget how impactful a simple analogy can be when bringing home an important component of any talk radio sales call.
You may or may not like the golf analogy. The takeaway here is integrating anecdotal concepts to help you and your advertiser maximize the opportunity using the original influencers-talk radio hosts!
Steve Lapa is the president of Lapcom Communications Corp. based in Palm Beach Gardens, FL. Lapcom is a media sales, marketing, and development consultancy. Contact Steve Lapa via email at: Steve@Lapcomventures.com