March 2010 – Channel Crossing: Radio

Which Should Come First: Radio or DRTV?

Should you test radio before you launch a DRTV campaign? Yes! Should you try radio after you’ve built success on television? Absolutely! The fact of the matter is that radio and television work very synergistically, regardless of which medium comes out first. We have had a number of clients test radio first, hone the message, understand the drivers and build up some traction before jumping into DRTV–and we’ve similarly taken successful television campaigns and converted them into DR radio stars. Here are the lessons learned from either progression.

Radio Takes the Lead
In the increasingly competitive and risky world of DRTV, there is a lot to be said for the ability to test multiple creative messages and offers, clearly identify your most responsive audience and train your inbound team prior to launching a DRTV campaign. That is one of the greatest values that DR radio has to offer–it allows the marketer a “laboratory” where he or she can test numerous variables that have a direct correlation to their ultimate TV campaign–for a fraction of the price associated with a typical infomercial campaign.

This “real world” approach–where you accumulate both experience and empirical data, not to mention cash flow–is far more useful and accurate than focus groups or other pre-launch surveys. Granted, not every product is appropriate for a “radio first” strategy, but we have seen it pay huge dividends for players in the lead-generation space.

Two lead-generation clients–both of whom had started out in direct mail before considering a move into electronic media–approached us to conduct national tests. We started with relatively modest budgets and focused primarily on creative testing. The ability to test numerous creative messages simultaneously is one of radio’s greatest strengths and, as is often the case, we found that some spots worked extremely well, while others fell flat. This variance is key–too many marketers try radio with a “one-and-done” approach whereby either the first spot succeeds or the medium is a bust, when nothing could be farther from the truth. You need to test multiple radio spots or else you risk pulling the campaign prematurely.

As part of the normal testing protocol, we expanded the placement of the winners, pulled the losers and immediately saw cost-per-lead (CPL) results that met or exceeded each client’s expectations. We also tested numerous offers, inbound scripts and other key variables to not only improve the CPL, but ultimately lower the cost per order (CPO) well under the client’s target.

The key to the story is not what we did, per se, but that a radio-first approach allowed both clients to try a number of key elements of the campaign in practice before spending the tens of thousands of dollars necessary for a television campaign. DRTV was always their goal, but radio served a very strategic role in conditioning the campaign before being thrown into the television ring. The end result: both campaigns went on to be massively successful on television using the exact scripts, offers and other elements that we had proven to be successful on radio. Ultimately, the volume of results from television was significantly larger than our radio tallies. However, that success may have never come to pass if it had not been for radio contribution pre-TV.

Radio Follows Suit
One of our current success stories on radio faced the daunting challenge of living up to the expectations and performance levels established on television. Suffice it to say that this campaign was a mega hit on TV and frankly, some members of the client’s team felt that radio was a waste of time. Not only did they expect radio’s results to be way off the mark monetarily, but honestly, they just did not see how we were going to be able to reproduce their “recipe for success” from television.

The fact is that we didn’t reproduce their “recipe.” Instead, we came up with one of our own, totally unique to radio and its particular capabilities and characteristics. The end result was a radio-specific approach with results as profitable (or in some cases, more profitable) than those coming from DRTV.

The point of the example is to show that in order to allow radio to be successful, you cannot expect it to march in beat with the exact methodology or messaging that may have proven successful on television. Contrary to what some believe, radio is not “television without the pictures.” It is a unique medium that has its own means of conveying a value proposition and moving the audience toward response.

In this example, the audience was certainly familiar with the product from television, but the only way they related to it was through the carefully crafted–and in their minds, potentially artificial–medium of the infomercial. The testimonialists weren’t people they knew or related to on a personal level, so how was that suspicious listener to know whether or not the product really worked, rather than simply being skillfully packaged?

Enter the on-air radio personality and their credibility with that audience. Now, instead of an anonymous testimonial, you have someone the audience knows, relates to and trusts saying, “I’ve seen it on TV, too, but now I’m going to see if this thing is real or not.” Once that on-air radio personality validated that the product did perform as well as the examples shown on television, the audience’s trust was won over and the response was overwhelming.

Radio definitely benefits from the awareness and messaging that may precede it on television, but in order to be successful as a stand-alone medium, it needs to express that value proposition in its own unique way. Too many marketers come to radio with a “just do it like we did it” mentality, and then when radio fails, they blame the medium instead of the methodology. Again, not every product that works on TV is going to work on radio, but for those who do have the potential for cross-over, the approach should be one of “here’s what worked for us–please take from it what you will and do whatever you need to make radio its own profit center.”

Buck Robinson is president and CEO of Glen Allen, Va.-based Robinson Radio Inc. He can be reached at (804) 726-6400, or via e-mail at buck@robinsonradio.com.