How Your Radio Show Can Make It Rain For You

By Shawn Sparks

Many people believe that creating a profitable radio show is different from other types of marketing endeavors. Many think that it’s all about the content of the show and how entertaining it is for your audience. All these things definitely matter, but a profitable radio show is about so much more.

Whether or not your show is profitable comes down to one thing. Does your show create leads? On top of that, do your ideal prospects listen to the show and then engage with you because of it? That’s the real question and, from the business standpoint, it’s the most important thing.

So many advisors say that they hear great feedback about how much their friends or people from their church enjoyed listening to their show. They may get a text from a friend, or even get feedback from their clients. But again, did the show generate any calls from interested prospects? If the answer is no, it doesn’t matter how good your show is, it is not going to be profitable. Calls from prospects create appointments, appointments create clients and clients create revenue. It’s really that simple.

The Goal Should Be Leads

You must think of your radio show as a marketing initiative. And as with any type of marketing funnel, the number one goal is to get leads.

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However, not all leads are created equal. When you launch your radio show, it’s important to understand the difference. Specifically, there are two types of leads you will get from your radio show:

1. Passive leads - These leads respond to a call-to-action for more information. The information can be a book, guide or other type of information that you offer.
2. Active leads - These leads respond to a call-to-action for a financial review or appointment; they are specifically interested in meeting with you.

If you focus on generating passive leads, you will likely generate a lot of responses but those who respond tend to be much harder to convert to clients. You will get a lot of people who are strictly interested in the information you offered, and don’t have any real interest in meeting with you in person. By focusing on active leads, you will get much fewer responses but these prospects tend to be of higher quality and a larger percentage of them will actually meet with you for an appointment.

So you have to decide what type of leads you want to generate. Then you will build your radio show around offers that will create those leads. Some advisors pick one or do a combination of both. But regardless, you definitely want to create leads. Once you create them, you need to handle them correctly in order to capitalize on the opportunity.

How to Handle Your Leads

Now that you have decided what type of offers that you’d like to include on your radio show, you must be prepared to handle the incoming calls in the best possible way.  First, I recommend having one dedicated person (or team) who is responsible with talking with these leads.

You want someone who is well trained, who speaks with confidence and is able to take control of the call. They must be very knowledgeable about what you do and the value you offer. This person should be considered a “sales person” in your office. How well they handle the calls will influence how many of the callers set appointments to meet with you. One of the biggest mistakes advisors make is they dedicate an “assistant” or “administrative” person to handle these calls. Don’t underestimate the difference this person can make in communicating with your prospective clients and be sure you pick the right person for the job.

I have been reminded of this lesson many times over the years. Most recently, an advisor I know decided to delegate this role to one of his new entry-level employees to manage. The employee had very little training and, as you can imagine, the results from his radio show went into a tailspin very quickly. As he wondered what went wrong, it was obvious that the leads were not being handled correctly. This was a very costly mistake for his business.

Solution

If you’d like a successful radio show, you must first learn to create leads from your show.   Determine what types of leads that you are after and then put together appropriate calls to action to generate those leads. Once the leads start coming in, don’t underestimate the difference a great sales person can make in handling the calls. The right person will not only increase the amount of leads that are converted, but they’ll also be able to handle your full follow-up process so that you can convert more and more leads after the initial phone call.

Shawn Sparks is the author of the book The Advisor Breakthrough. Download the first section of the book by clicking here. Shawn may be contacted at [email protected].

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