Ringing Up Sales with Long-Form Advertising (Part 2)

In part one of this post (yes, I realize that it was nearly two weeks ago, and for that I apologize to you) I covered long-form advertising for television. In this post, I want to talk about using long-form advertising, or infomercials or paid programming, on radio. Having been a radio talk show host for many years, I have a special fondness for radio. I really like radio for both the intimacy and the immediacy of the medium.

The problem with most infomercials is that they come off as one big sales pitch. Of course they are, but I think that stations, both radio and television, do their advertisers a disservice by having a more-or-less "hands-off" approach to this form of advertising, which by the way, helps to shore up a station's bottom line. By "hands-off" I refer to the common practice of accepting the advertiser's cash, but doing little else in terms of production value, or anything else that might help to make the paid program successful.  I fully understand that there are legal considerations, thus the need for disclaimers, but still, stations could do so much more to help advertisers with their infomercials.

A few years back, when my nightly program was cancelled to make way for a nationally syndicated show, I was eased over to weekends and fronted a few paid programs. I decided going in that I would approach the new gig quite differently than paid programs traditionally are done. I talked with the client and told him that I had some ideas to help make his show sound better. He liked my ideas and they worked very, very well. I worked with this particular client for nearly two years. Along the way, I also worked with a couple others and each time, I approached them with my ideas, and each client enjoyed tremendous success.

I took those strategies for radio infomercials and I then developed them into a proprietary system which I use with my clients that want to produce a radio infomerical. In short, a successful radio infomercial depends on many of the same variables as a tv infomercial: the product should be something that people will want to purchase; the pitchman (or woman) must know the product thoroughly, and the pitch person doesn't necessarily have to be you.

The keys to success when doing a radio infomercial is to play to the medium's strengths; as best possible, try to create a show that is as seamless as possible from the station's format, and finally, don't hard sell, relax and talk just as you would to a friend about your product or service.

Take a listen to an infomerical that I "co-hosted" where the client was selling real estate and financial services. I selected this particular show for this post because there were some technical problems--and that's the kind of thing that can happen when doing live radio.  I think that a more organic approach actually appeals to listeners more than a highly scripted show.  Unfortunately, there's no capacity for inserting an audio file with Blogger, so, you'll have to follow the link to my website, and near the top of the page, right next to the Blogger logo is a media player, click play to listen to the infomercial.

What do you think are the pros and cons of infomercials?

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