I wonder if people in radio know that the wrap on Radio in DR circles is that radio can drive high volume of calls or leads but often radio leads hardly convert at a paltry level relative to TV and Online.
As an integrated direct response agency, Integrated Media Solutions has a unique purview. Our agency works with clients across all direct response media. This gives us perspective to review results across all media and make our optimization decisions based on what is based for the account, (in most cases, overall cost per acquisition or ROI). We are in a unique position in the market because we actually have expertise to assist our clients after the initial lead and all the way down the path to conversion.
Often a client or DR agency that has been too reliant on TV or Online is will quickly bail on a radio campaign that is not converting to sales even though the lead volume is there.
High lead or call volume is an indication that listeners heard your message, raised their hands and said “This offer applies to me and I am interested.” The challenge for marketers, agencies and stations is to take a deep dive into exactly why these interested consumers aren’t converting and create solutions to improve results.
At our agency we recently had an example of a DR radio client in the financial services area who was savvy enough to work with us on a careful analysis of their hand-raisers before abandoning the entire radio medium…but not before an initial gut reaction of distress!
Our client began a radio campaign received over 1,000 calls during their first month. This was excellent! In fact, the cost per call was lower than what they had seen from TV.
However, by the end of the month we saw that over 50% of the calls they received lasted less than 12 seconds. The client naturally asked why exactly they should pay to generate calls when half the calls don't even connect.
Rather than abandon the campaign entirely we decided ask a question...why were these callers hanging up? And we asked the callers themselves.
Using the caller’s phone number captured when they called our 800 number we reached out to a small sample of these short callers (about 30 callers).
The first interesting thing was that we were able to speak to about 80% of the callers. And for the most part they were happy to hear from us. When we asked what happened to their call the most common response was that they had dialed the number on their cell phone and then hung up quickly in order to save the number on their phone.
In this case the solution was clear: make an outbound call effort to those “short” callers. This allowed them to maximize the calls they got and increase overall conversion from calls.
It also points out the need and opportunity to find alternative tracking mechanisms for radio campaigns. For instance, perhaps marketers could consider using SMS Text to capture the response. You could offer to text back the phone number via text to the consumers. An opted in text campaign allows you to capture the “hand raisers” and create multiple follow up texts to take the respondent all the way through the sales funnel.
Call abandonment rates at 50% are not typical issues TV focused marketers. Ultimately the great strength of Radio –its mobility - can also make advertising more challenging for DR clients in day and age of ubiquitous cell phones and smartphones. Yet radio continues to drive high volume of quality respondents.
