Thor Schrock

Those who read my posts regularly know that I believe that a recession is the best time to attempt to expand your business.

Durring a recession your competition:

• Will be reluctant to match your moves
• Will cut back on service to increase the bottom line
• Avoid investing in people and equipment

How Do You Expand Your Business When Your Customers are Spending Less?

The answer is pretty straight forward - you get more customers.  You take them from your competitors.

While your competitors are cutting like mad, you reach out and entice disgruntled customers into your fold.

To do this you have to increase your marketing budget, and radio auctions are a nifty tool to convert your unsold inventory or service certificates into needed advertising dollars!

How Do Radio Auctions Work?

Typically, radio stations sell air time for money.  In a tough economic climate,advertisers cut back, so stations have to get more cretive to hit their sales goals.

For example, lets say you own a website design company.  You might provide a $1,000 gift certificate to the radio station to auction on the air.  You would receive $1,000 in trade to spend on commercials, et. in exchange for your certificate.

The station would then auction the certificate on-air to its listeners who call in to make their bids.  The certificates often sell for less than their value, so the callers feel like they are getting a good deal.

You get the free commercials (not to mention a 5-minute plug during the auction its self), the customer gets a great value, and the station gets money.  Everyone is happy.

Keys to Success in a Radio Auction

There are a few things you can do to make sure your item sells for a decent amount in the auction.  Nothing is worse than getting no bids on your item!

1. Don't assume the disc jockey knows what your product is or why it is a value.  Put this information in writing and provide it with the certificate.  You can't sell something if you don't know what it is!
2. Make sure the certificate has an expiration date. Make it expire in 90 days.  Light a fire under the customer to move on it quickly, or lose it all together.
3. Never provide a physical item to the station.  If you are giving away a surf board, give the station a certificate for a surf board.  This forces the customer to come to your business, learn where you are located, and establish a relationship.
4. Get Paying Customers.  If you have a service business, provide a certificate for services that ensure you are capturing a new paying customer.  Using the web site design company example, if a new website normally costs your customers $3000, providing a certificate for $1000 is gaining you a new $2,000 customer.
5. Provide multiple certificates for different things.  These auctions only happen once or twice a year - take advantage!
6. Save your marketing dollars for a single, large promotion.  Don't spread them out over time.  If you see the most website sales in June, then save them until May and fire them all off to become top of mind just before your customers come looking for you.
7. Be a part of the auction! In some cases you can call in to help "sell" your product.  Also, listen to the other products being offered.  You might be able to save some money on needed business items by putting in some pretty low auction bids!