[rbriggs]

Have any of you ever used radio advertising? Just wondered if any of you have had any experiences. Obvioiusly its not a cheap advertising method, but if the ROI is decent, than we'd like to look into it.
Thanks for any info,

[Lanelle]

First a question about your avatar. Do you own a franchise location? I see trucks with that logo around here in VA also.
Now, regarding radio advertising: The size of your market will greatly influence the cost of radio spots. I'm in a large metropolitan area so radio ads are usually pretty expensive. Some of the larger garden centers run ads but not many landscapers. If you can do something that will stick in people's heads in a positive way, it may be worth it, depending on your services (products) and the outcome that you want.

[rbriggs]

Lanelle, I am not in the green industry. I belong to this forum because many of the ideas and issues I face with my business nearly mirror those of the LCO industry. I've met some great people on this site who I have been able to exchange with frequently on business matters. To answer your question, yes I own a 1-800-GOT-JUNK? franchise in Massachusetts.
Thanks for the advice on the radio.

[scl]

I got to explore this when I received some radio time with a Chamber of Commerce promotion. It was really fun, I recorded and wrote my own ad, and I don't have a bad speaking voice, so I thought the whole thing was pretty cool. My target area is rather small, I live in a town of 17,000, with a target area of aound 50,000. Many peolple told me they heard my ad and I took a pretty good ribbing from my buddies. What did I see for ROI. ZIP! I could not attribute one new job directly to my radio ads. Though any kind of advertising is beneficial to your Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA), its rather pricey if you want to keep hammering it in.

[Dale Wiley]

My experience was exactly the same as scl's, althought the marketing are was about 3 times that size. I got the time with a trade show booth, (which was a flop also) and let them do the ad. Zilch...never again.

[Metzger]

Same as the others, we tried radio advertsing once and never again. Not one sale from it.

[r schipul]

Don't they say that on average a person needs to hear or see your name 21 times before they MIGHT act. As with all advertising, consistency is the key. I'm sure if a radio ad was run long enough you would see good results but it probably still wouldn't have a good ROI because you would have a stretch in the beginning where people wouldn't be acting.

The key is to chose a form of advertising which has the potential to hit your target market but also something you can afford to continue for an extended length of time. Everyone has junk to get rid of! Your potential clients are everywhere. Don't overlook the classifieds. If I were you, instead of running a radio ad 5 times a day on one radio station for a month I'd take that money and run small classified ads in every newspaper in your market for 6 months. 1800gotjunk.

[Bill Schwab]

Our biggest, best and most clients come from word of mouth, which, costs you the price of trying to be better than yourself, each and every time you roll the trucks on the street. When you add some of Dale's methods, of achieving 100-110% effiiency to that mix, you then make more money than ever, and spend even less than before on advertising. I can't tell you if we are hitting 10% effcienciency, but i can tell you that if the two are related, we have no shoratge of work, and, it is not because we work cheap.

We get an occasional hit off the website, but in all honesty, our website was never intended to gain work for us. It was designed and built as sales support for those sitting on fences.

Yellow pages are the larget waste of money anyone can ever spend, and have proved so in 2 states. Overpriced, and too many fish in an already over stocked pond. Yellow pages are not only victims of thier own sales success, there are now over 6 different yellow page booklets in our area.

Radio/TV, unless you are buying an entire campaigne, forget it. They are a gross waste of money. We did a TV show last year, it was free, a paver installation for a Home Improvement host. We got a very nice 80K job from it, but, consider that show was free. There was no outlay on our part, and it was in fact a lucky hit. Then you must consider your target market. I don't care if my phone rings off the hook. I care that those who do call have the oney and are willing to spend it on th things I sell. nothing ticks me off more than a wasted time sales call on someone who should know, yet had clue as to how much they need to spend.

Newspaper ads, same as yellow pages. No one reads the things anymore and all they want to print is negative stuff about the war, or who got shot raped or killed. Thier liberal negativity has become the start of their fall, yet, they still charge the same for ad space.

The best piee of marketing stuiff I have seen, flyers, and full color post cards in direct mail. People see those, save them for years until they want to do something, and, call you directly without taking bids. Why, I dunno but they do....

[VoodooChile]

There is a landscape supplier/installer in our area who has consistently run radio spots on the town's local radio station for years now, complete with a cast of characters, i.e. "The Hairy Fairy".

I usually tune out radio spots to search for a good song, but I listen with interest to these, probably and only because I am a competitor. I have no idea how much material sales/work these ads generate, but they've certainly stuck with them....

[Mac]

Rich,

It just came to me. The only garden center that advertises on the Radio here does so on an AM station. Ive also heard from a Professor that NPR can be a great spot to advertise a company. Just ideas to get outside the box. Id imagine NPR stations will be much less expensive...

[rbriggs]

Thanks Mac. The radio station we are meeting with in January is a talk radio station (albeit FM). Anyhow, the franchises in CA did a radio campaign last year cooperatively and had good luck with it. They are repeating their campaign this year and adding a bit more air time ($$).
My only concern is that the radio advertising salespeople will tell you anything (like any salesman) to get you to buy their air time. That being said, I know very little about radio advertising.
Thanks for the input Mac. Talk soon.

[cutntrim]

I can't tell you about effectiveness of radio ads because I've never tried one. As most others would tell you, word-of-mouth is the best advertising, but when I started out 14yrs ago it was small-print ads in the local paper classified section that worked well. In my city anyways, people read the local paper faithfully and most do so cover-to-cover. I would think your local paper would work well and be much less expensive, but I'm sure I'm telling you something you already know.

I would think that dropping flyers in the mailboxes of neighbours of your customers might be worthwhile. Just something simple mentioning something like, "Hi, we were at 123 Anywhere St. today and helped them clear out there garage of junk the city wouldn't take...etc..." Even just giving flyers to the direct neighbours on either side of the house you're at might steer business your way, as they'd be able to ask their neighbour about your service as a way of securing an indirect referral.

Anyway, I'd agree with others that radio might work but you'd have to hammer it home with oft-repeated ads to be effective.

[Stonehenge]

If you want to put a radio salesperson on their heels during your meeting, ask to see their Arbitron numbers for the last quarter or year.

Arbitron does for radio what Nielsen does for television, and that radio station should be able to provide you with all of the demographics of the people listening to their show. Pretty important info, IMHO. And sometimes it's info they'd rather you not know (because their market penetration might not be very good for the demos you want).

[scl]

I seriously believe that radio is more of an impulse sale sort of market. I mean, people listen and think " I need some groceries, i'll go there", or christmas gifts or car shopping. Things that have a volume of sales. A major percent of a listening audience shop for these type of things very often. But landscaping would be targeted toward a much smaller audience. Like throwing a baseball at a flying bird. Best advertising is an enclosed trailer/billboard and good work. Albeit, I might have hit on something for your business. Look into renting a billboard for a month or two! Static advertising is always at work, and in good locations reach every car that goes by, not just the ones tuned to your channel. Billboards ain't cheap, but probably cheaper than trying to saturate a comparable market by other medias, such as radio.

[VoodooChile]

One of the great challenges in marketing is educating your potential clients about what your service is and why they need it.

In your case rbriggs, I think radio might be a good forum because it allows you to explain exactly what you can do for your potential clients...which frankly, isn't clear to me at all...I mean, your potential clients might be thinking, "When I got junk, I haul it to the curb. Why do I need to pay you to do it?"