[thechat] Radio ad

deacon web at master.gen.in.us
Mon Apr 5 18:46:02 CDT 2004


On 5 Apr 2004 at 3:05, Madhu Menon wrote:
> We've recorded this 20-second commercial, which I'd like you to download 
> and check out.
> You can get it at http://shiokfood.com/misc/shiok_radio_20s.mp3

My wife and I both liked the ad. We're at a cultural disadvantage here, 
though. Will you listeners be able to figure out that shee-auk is spelled 
shiok, and being told that it's on Donegal road, will they be able to find 
the restaurant?

Even if they can, I'm not sure that's a wise use of your advertising 
dollars. Radio advertising is a fairly good way to remind people to 
return to your establishment. It's not a good way to tell people you 
exist. For instance, your ad doesn't tell people what kinds of food you 
have, it doesn't say whether it's a cheap place to get a fast lunch, or 
the kind of place you save up six months for. 

What works better for that is flyers. You can target the population you 
want to reach, and you can tell a fairly complete story. Even better, you 
can include a coupon in the advertising. If I were promoting a fast-food 
restaurant, I'd be giving away free french-fries. The customer is sure to 
buy a drink, and probably will buy a sandwich as well. For your place, I 
suspect an appetizer would serve the same trick. 

Keep a short expiration date on the coupon. You want a lot of people 
to read the flyer, and you want *some* of them to sample your place, 
and be impressed enough by the experience to tell others about it.  

You can distribute the flyers any number of ways. Putting them under 
the windshields of cars works if your workers have enough sense to 
select only the cars of people who can afford to do business with you. 
Distributing to homes is a lot easier, because you can choose the 
neighborhoods you want. And if you are sampling correctly, you can 
just go down one side of the street, knowing that people will talk across 
the street to their neighbors about your place. 

Sending stuff through the mail is expensive - but it might make sense 
to reach certain people at their place of employment. In this case, you 
can offer a deal for business lunches. The boss brings the staff for 
lunch, because he gets a good price, and the employees are 
impressed enough to come back some evening the following week 
with the wife in tow.

But a lot of people seem to think that you can turn a stranger into a 
customer in one fell swoop. Sorry. That's like walking up to a beautiful 
woman in the street and saying "Your place or mine?" Yeah, 
sometimes you get lucky, but your odds are a lot better if you take it 
one step at a time.

The other thing about radio advertising is that a two-week radio ad 
works for you for fourteen days. As soon as the ad goes off the radio, it 
stops generating traffic. We saw an ad for Quizno's on TV last night, 
and we visited Quizno's today. That's rather ususual. If you don't go 
the same day the ad runs, you're probably not going to go at all.

deke











More information about the thechat mailing list