In an ideal or perfect world – this would be the perfect situation for you to be in for your promotional preparations for a big major promotion, or any promotion for that matter:
90 DAYS BEFORE: BRAINSTORM OF IDEAS
Involve your entire team – your General Manager, Program Director, Sales Manager, Promotions Director, and other creatives who are usually involved or are the ‘ideas people’.
While great promotions do begin with creative ideas it’s important to be flexible. A ‘no-holds barred’ brainstorming session with your team will help to get the ball rolling – then narrow it down to your top 3 ideas – work on them until you come up with the best one.
AT LEAST 75 DAYS BEFORE: WRITE AN OUTLINE, CHECKLIST AND ASSIGN JOBS
Have agreement by this stage of the promotion. Including a timeline checklist which covers all aspects of the promotion – from possible sponsors, to artwork, how it is to be run, who is doing what, when and why – have everyone agree to this in writing.
This will include writing a proposal to sell the promotion to a sponsor. Booking locations/equipment, etc if required.
AT LEAST 60 DAYS BEFORE: FINALISE SPONSORS & PRIZES
This is when the devil in the detail starts – you have 2 months before the promo starts so if those details are not finalised by now – hold off before they can be fully worked out or sold.
You don’t want to proceed any further unless you have all your ducks in a row. Have photos or artwork prepped or planned for at this time (if required)
AT LEAST 45 DAYS BEFORE: BRIEF YOUR ON-AIR STAFF
Meet with your on-air staff (including casuals) and brief them all on the general framework, mechanics and rules and requirements.
Obtain their creative input and ideas to really polish the promotion.
AT LEAST 30 DAYS BEFORE: BEGIN WRITING YOUR SCRIPTS & THEN PROMO PRODUCTION
Create liners, teasers, scripts for the week before, week of, samples (these contain samples of callers) and the post promotion.
These are important to have produced (or at least written) in advance. This way you can show a sponsor that you are covering what has been sold to them.
Also, you should have all promotional artwork, printing, etc ready to send off if required.
14 DAYS BEFORE: BEGIN THE TEASE PROMOS
Start your pre-recorded and produced promos on-air (I would suggest 2 weeks before – or at the very least 8 days before) from one-line teasers that Jocks can say on-air about a new promo that’s coming up to fully produced teasers (I find 15 second teasers or shorter work best).
You want to start wetting listeners appetites and painting a picture without giving too much away.
7 DAYS BEFORE: THIS IS CALLED EDUCATING LISTENERS
Sometimes called the ‘educational phase’ of a promotion, this is where you start to run your ads telling them how to participate.
Keep all your on-air promos and liners simple – what you are trying to achieve is anticipation, and listener buy in. The more anticipation, the better and more effective the promotion will be.
For example… “Watch your letterbox for the XYZ Postcard from our Breakfast Team”
PROMOTION BEGINS ON AIR
Keep it short and fun – most people get bored with hype very quickly. Look at the burn rate for big summer blockbuster movie trailers! Keep them short, sharp, to the point and be entertaining, having more than one works better – you want to generate interest and eager listeners.
RUN THE PROMO
Keep audio grabs, photograph interactions from on-site, share the story on your socials. Keep track of all of these to use later.
Start to use some of the audio grabs from listeners in promos.
Share some of these on your stations socials and keep refreshing them every day – you want new content and to keep listeners engaged.
FOR THE WIN!
Make a huge deal about it, with lots of build-up on-air, on your website and on your socials – have a press release ready to roll.
Make sure you get the audio of the final winner, and any external press coverage.
Do the promotional draw and lock in the details into your post promotion audio then dip into your file from the promo of photos and social shares to include with the press release.
AFTER THE PROMO
Run a post promotion promo with the winners audio on it (suggested run time is 8-15 days).
Make sure you update it when they collect their prize. Refreshen your promos with that audio.
You could freshen them again after 15 days by calling the winner and recording their response as to “what did you do with your prize” and run the promo again for another 8-10 days.
REPORTS AND FEEDBACK
Often overlooked, but if you want return sponsors – then you HAVE TO include this…
Gather all the data you can from entries, get together audio grabs, and all of the social media and photos or coverage you got for the promo and put it all together in a report for the sales team.
Next, omit some of the detail and prepare another report for your sponsors.
Then get the sales team member who sold the promotion to take it to the sponsors with a thankyou gift.
Next you need to get feedback from your team – find out what worked, what didn’t how could it have been done better? Differently?
Log all that information for when you are doing a similar promotion next time.
What next?
Move on to your next promotional activity.
