Graham McGregor: The profit power of direct response radio

Direct response radio - a new way of marketing? Photo / Thinkstock

Marketing consultant Graham McGregor on why it pays to try new ways to promote and market your business.

I had the pleasure recently of interviewing advertising legend Fred Catona for my 'Unfair Business Advantage Report.'

Fred developed and pioneered Direct Response Radio, an extremely effective method to generate sales and sales leads that is easily manageable, measurable and cost effective. Fred has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Entrepreneur Magazine and over 100 TV, radio, magazine and online media outlets.

Fred has created a system called 'digital convergence marketing' where all marketing efforts funnel to a single entity which is the sale and here's the way he does it.

In the United States (where Fred is based) there are 10,000 radio stations. This means you can reach the whole population of the United States, 300 million people in about 5 days.

Once a person hears one of Fred's radio commercials they are driven to a micro website (or a squeeze page as some people call it.)

And on that squeeze page is delivered the free offer that is made on the radio commercial. That free offer is usually an eBook, special report an analysis etc. Something that doesn't cost a lot of money but is important and valuable.

You exchange that freebie in exchange for a potential clients email address.

At that point in time when someone goes to that micro site a small percentage of them will buy your core product. (Say 5 per cent.)

What happens to the other 95 per cent?

The other 95 per cent you send emails to on an auto responder system but the emails are not just 'buy now' messages, they are more great information that a potential purchaser will find helpful. .

Fred discovered that when you have a customer that doesn't purchase your core product you might send them 15 more added value emails over let's say the next 30 days. Between the 8th and the 12th email, 80 per cent of all the people that are going to purchase, actually do purchase.

In our interview, Fred went into great detail on the price point and profit margins that worked best when using direct response radio.

One thing that surprised me from interviewing Fred is how inexpensive radio is in the States was when purchased as part of a national radio campaign. A 60 second ad that would normally cost say $100 when purchased locally, could often cost only $7 when purchased as part of a national radio campaign.

Fred also had some very encouraging words on radio marketing that I found helpful.

"If you want to do marketing with radio, you could start on Monday and you can have a spot on the air by Wednesday and you could be making money by Friday. I mean that's how fast you can do it. See, as human beings you know what we do? We tend to over-complicate things. Life isn't complicated. We make it complicated.

Sometimes we make business too complicated. I don't know why. I think maybe we are afraid to face the music so we try to put a lot of detail in place instead of actually executing on it. Write a 60 second radio commercial with the right formula, put it on the air and collect money. It's that simple. One week from starting."

Action Exercise:

Read my full interview with Fred in my 'Unfair Business Advantage Report' and see how you could apply some of his ideas in your own business. And remember that sometimes all you need is a tiny change in 'how' you do your marketing. And this small change can often transform your results.

"Success is on the far side of failure." Thomas Watson Senior

Graham McGregor is a marketing consultant and the creator of the 396 page 'Unfair Business Advantage Report.' www.theunfairbusinessadvantage.com (This is free and has now been read by business owners from 27 countries.) You can email Graham on graham@twomac.co.nz