Recently the radio ads manager of REI Radio – Grace Mills, was interviewed by Sharad Mehta – Founder and CEO of REsimpli. In this insightful webinar they talked about all the important things real estate investors need to know about the radio and how it can help them to skyrocket their productivity and much more!
Want to boost your real estate business via radio? We can help!
Most people believe real estate is a great way to make money but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Some creative means should be adopted to excel in this field and radio is one of them. Radio is a really great legacy builder. Take advantage of that and make yourself some money by getting a referral lead. Radio isn’t difficult, but there is a lot of due diligence.
Before we jump into subject matters, let’s know a little about our super talented guest, Grace Mills.
Grace Mills started off as a prospecting assistant, toyed with the marketing and then tweaked everything possible to pull out of actual radio. She has played a pivotal role in the success of REI Radio since its inception, working behind the scenes to coach nearly 300 investors and agents on maximizing their Real Estate business through radio advertisements. Collaborating closely with Chris Arnold on the program’s creation, she now takes the lead as the face and coach of REI Radio 2.0.
With an impressive eight-year tenure overseeing all marketing channels for a prominent real estate investing company, Grace has conducted extensive split-testing of radio strategies to discern the vital “do’s and don’ts” for optimal results. Her primary objective is to empower professionals to find their unique voice within the industry, drawing upon her experience working with investors and agents across the United States and refining the art of radio marketing.
Sharad 54:44
Hey, Grace! Are you on the call?
Grace 54:50
It’d be nice if I unmuted myself. Hi, Sharad!
Sharad 54:52
Yes. How are you?
Grace 54:54
Good. How are you?
Sharad 54:56
Good. Good. Nice to finally meet you!
Grace 55:00
Definitely.
Sharad 55:02
Just give me a couple of minutes. I’m just going to be streaming this call live on our Facebook group. Also, a lot of people watch the recording.
Grace 55:11
Okay.
Sharad 55:12
So let me just do that, and then we can get started. Where are you joining in from?
Grace 55:24
Can you still hear me?
Sharad 55:25
Yes.
Grace 55:26
I am in the Carolinas. I always say the Carolinas. I live on the end of Charlotte, North Carolina. That really should be South Carolina. It’s farmland, but Charlotte kind of, you know, claims it as Charlotte. This isn’t Charlotte.
Sharad 55:41
Hey, as long as you have Internet, right? It’s crazy, like, how much work you can do from anywhere in the world nowadays. All right, cool! All right, we can get started. There’s always, like, people that are joining in late, so yeah. Grace, if you want to just quickly start with a little bit of introduction, tell us a little bit about yourself, and then if you have a presentation, we can jump into that, or we can open it up for Q and A, however you want to do that. I know a lot of people that I know are using REsimpli. I’ve had a lot of success using Radio, so I’m really curious something I am thinking of doing in my business. So I’m excited about the call.
Grace 56:20
Yeah, no problem. I don’t mind just, like, kind of talking it out and then leaving it open for questions from there. I wouldn’t necessarily have a presentation. I really like talking. (Crosstalk) Yeah. Because I’m really big on making sure that Radio even fits for people and just telling you in general about it, and then I kind of go from there. So a little bit about me. I actually got my start working as a prospecting assistant at a real estate investment company in DFW.
And from the conversations, I kept wondering, what’s happening with the marketing? And I’m really nosy. So I stuck my nose into the marketing, kind of toyed around with a couple of things. I’ve always loved Radio. It’s always been available. We had just started launching and trying Radio in Dallas, and so I took it over. I probably ran it maybe about seven years or so in DFW. Just kind of toying and tweaking with every little element, potentially, that we could pull out of Radio alongside of all of our marketing channels.
And it consistently was always our best producing marketing channel, and it was one that our acquisition managers at least appreciated. I know some of you out there are acquisition managers, right? You know, there are certain leads that come into this system that give them a headache to kind of follow up with, and they were always excited about actually talking to Radio leads. So, yeah, that’s the shortest way that I can kind of phrase. My starter started off as a prospecting assistant, toyed with the marketing and then tweaked everything possible to pull out of actual radio.
Sharad 57:49
Okay, no, that’s really cool. Especially, I feel like right now with the way the industry is going with spam calls and robo calls, I don’t know how much you’ve kind of tuned into the whole ten DLC with cell phone carriers kind of trying to weed out any spam calling. I’ve been talking to investors and I’ve been telling them it’s going to become more and more important to have inbound marketing rather than outbound marketing, like SMS, cold calling. I feel like those are not going to be as effective, and then you run the risk of getting blocked by the carrier.
So that’s where the more inbound marketing you can have in your business, I think the better it’s going to be long term. And I feel like with inbound marketing, you get higher quality leads also because these are people that are responding to your ads rather than you reaching out to them. So you sort of have leverage because….
Grace 58:46
Yeah.
Sharad 58:46
They’re the ones who’ve initiated the contact. So what kind of led you to radio? I’m curious about that. Was that something you guys wanted to try out in the market? DFW is a very competitive market, or anywhere in Texas. But what kind of led you into radio advertising? Did you have the same thoughts about trying something inbound marketing?
Grace 59:06
Yeah, very much so. On the agent side, we had a couple of agents that had tried it and was like, well, if it’s working so well for agents, why wouldn’t that work on the investment side? Right? Like, as we were wholesaling on that end, we’re like, well, it should apply just be roughly the same. And it does, as long as you are able to tailor the actual market. But I’m glad that you actually mentioned the leverage piece, because I think that gets missed out inbound marketing is what I almost would call like, invitational. Right?
Like, you’re inviting people to actually contact you, and so that puts you in a different position when you are actually getting the calls, is that you’re talking to people who reached out to you. You didn’t have to chase them down. It doesn’t feel awkward. You’re like, okay, I’m trying to find my footing. Right? If it’s direct mail or cold calling, you have to get through clarity of why you call them. How’d you get my contact number? What do you want to talk about? Right?
With radio, it’s like it’s very clear. It’s in this radio message. I heard that this is who you are, this is your business, this is what you provide in the service. And I think you can help me. Can you actually help me? They’re a lot more motivated to talk to you, believe me. Once you’re on radio, it builds up a lot of credibility. The listeners just assume that it’s so difficult to get on radio that when you’re actually there, they’re like, okay, well, this person has to be legitimate. It works to your benefit.
The radio station itself has already built up its own credibility being a radio station in that market. So you’re literally like borrowing almost like their equity. You’re like, hey, I’m so and so and such and such. And I’m already airing a radio ad commercial on this station that’s been here for multiple years. The listeners will trust you based on that.
Sharad 1:00:43
I think that makes sense. And who would you say? What kind of investor type this Radio ads would be a good fit for?
Grace 1:00:50
That’s a really great question. Let me tell you who it’s not a good fit for first and then we’ll move into who it is. Real estate is a great way to make money. I am all for anyone making money and any additional money that you can get your hands on, especially looking at our economy. So if you know that you’re not necessarily looking at this to really build a real estate business, I wouldn’t touch it. Radio is a really great legacy builder and it comes with that credibility piece. Once you’re there, people start believing that you can almost resolve all of their problems. I’ll tell people all the time, I’m like, you can make an ad and make it very clear, like, hey, I buy properties cash.
At some point you will have someone call in that says, do you do mobile homes? Or do you know someone that does mobile homes? Hey, do you do land? Hey, I know that you buy homes. So then do you rent them back out? Because my lease is ending, I’m potentially looking at moving out of my current lease and finding a new one. And so if you know that you’re not necessarily looking at this to really build up a real estate business, I would probably say don’t touch it. Because with the legacy piece, people are going to keep your information and want to call you again or at least refer people to you.
So it doesn’t necessarily work out really well for that. It works brilliantly for people that are really clear on wanting to truly service people and help them. The more tools on your tool belt, honestly, the more successful you’ll be on Radio or at least your willingness to connect them to someone else that can’t help you that you can’t actually assist. And I mean by that, like maybe referral leads, maybe there’s an area that you’re like, hey, I don’t necessarily service that. But you still attracted a really motivated seller from that area.
Sometimes people will dead those leads out. They’re like, oh, well, that’s too far, I can’t service it. Radio is going to pull in a very high motivated person. You don’t want to just dead that. There’s a great opportunity to just at least check your network and maybe JV it with someone else. That isn’t actually in that area or again, with mobile homes. Maybe you don’t actually want to deal with mobile homes. Truly, in the United States, there’s a buyer for anything. I mean, you could sell dirty socks on eBay.
There’s someone who’s willing to actually pick it up and buy it even if you’re not necessarily wanting to deal with it. So take advantage of that and also make yourself some money by getting a referral lead. It could be even retail, right? Like some people are like, hey, I only want to buy in this number range, and anything outside of that, I’m going to count it as retail. Well, don’t dead that. There could also still be an opportunity to connect with a local realtor. And the fact that you’re running our radio gives you even credibility with local realtors as well. Sometimes they’ll just call you directly.
Sharad 1:03:31
That’s a great just so that I understand clearly, you’re saying radio is not good for someone who’s sort of like doubling in real estate investing, right? It’s great for people that are serious about their investing because it needs some time and effort on your part. It’s not like you’re sending one letter. You’re investing in a new marketing channel. So that makes sense. And then for someone who’s getting started, I’m sure you get this question asked a lot. What are the best radio channels to get? Let’s say if I want to start radio ads, how do I even get started? Like, do I start calling the radio stations? Like, what does the process look like?
Grace 1:04:08
Oh, I’m so glad you asked this. Radio isn’t difficult, but there is a lot of due diligence is what I usually warn people. It’s the type of channel with a lot of due diligence, especially up front, just to get it rolling. Let me start by explaining radio in general. There’s probably 250 radio markets across the US. A market could be, and I’m just giving this an example, Miami, Florida. Miami is its own market. Then Tampa is its own market. Orlando is its own market. Phoenix is its own market, things like that. It’s kind of split.
Sometimes it can be one huge city or sometimes it’s a combination like DFW, the Dallas Fort Worth is an actual radio market. So there’s a lot of options there. And within that you have FM and then AM stations. So FM are usually like your music stations, country music, what we call like hot top 40 with all the pop hits, oldies, maybe classic rock, maybe alternative rock, and AM are going to be your sports and talk stations there. That’s just to give you kind of like a very baseline.
But in terms of starting with radio, I always tell people to just take a split second to really figure out what your target audience is and who those people are. Because if you know that you need to reach a very mature, aged audience, then we need to prep for stations that are going to fall in line with who you are already servicing or who you have the most success with already, based on your deal so far, and maybe you haven’t closed any deals yet. Just in terms of pacing, of conversations, what are the patterns around the people that you’re talking about? Is it in a certain age bracket? Are they in a certain income bracket that these people are kind of falling into?
And then we can kind of match that in terms of radio, but in general, absolutely. You could just call an actual radio station. The best way to start and really free is Google. I would go radio stations and then type in whatever your actual market is. If you’re in Lubbock, Texas, I would go radio stations. Lubbock, Texas, I would go radio stations. Phoenix, it’s going to show you a drop down menu of station options, and they all vary in terms of ownership.
iHeart is probably one of the largest nationally known companies. They roughly nine times out of ten you’re going to have an iHeart station in your market unless you’re like, in the middle of nowhere, and iHeart didn’t care to pick it up. But usually there’s going to be an iHeart company somewhere within that market, and iHeart could own anywhere between three to five stations within that one market. I think DFW specifically, they probably own about eight radio stations within the Dallas Fort Worth area somewhere along those lines.
What you’re looking for is to find one. Just at least just to get started is just a connection within at least two, I’d say about two ownership groups. So you have iHeart. You have Audacy, Beasley media group, Hubbard media group. Those are another big ones. You want to pick at least two ownership groups to call. Any of the sales reps can talk to you about all of the stations underneath their umbrella, but it’s at their specific ownership.
So iHeart can only talk to you about iHeart stations. They’re going to pretend like they can talk to you about their competitor, but they’re not going to talk very highly about them because that’s their competitor. So iHeart can only really have a conversation with you about iHeart stations. That’s totally fine. You want to call them and roughly explain, and this is the way I highly recommend everyone start the process is that you’re going to reach what we call a radio sales representative or a sales rep is what I mostly say, and sales rep say that as well amongst each other.
A sales rep is literally the person who, if you were to call them, you may reach maybe their business manager, who then connects you to the sales representative. They’re almost like an account manager, so they’ll talk you through the process. If there’s any information you want on a station, they’ll provide it. If you negotiate the actual contract or negotiate your radio deal, it’s going to go through them. And then if you actually do keep that deal and continue advertising on that station, they almost become your account manager as well.
So in very basic steps, yeah, I would do a quick Google search of radio stations. Whatever your actual area is that you’re looking to set up radio in, I would pay attention to the ownership groups and pick maybe one or two call the number, and I would warn them that you’re just starting this process for the first time. You’re like, hey, I’m just looking to collect information. If you don’t warn them that you’re just looking to collect information, you’ll be on the call about 45 minutes, unnecessarily, and they’ll be trying to pluck apart every little element of your business. Oh, do you have a budget? How much do you want to spend? What do you want to be? Right?
It’s a salesperson, so if I was recommending that to someone doing it for the first time, I would just start with a quick Google search, tell them that you’re just looking to collect some information, and I would request that they send you any information on their actual audience for their station. And then you want to look to make sure that this is an audience that does actually match up to your target audience. Again, if I’m looking for a mature, aged audience that actually owns a home, and the sales rep starts telling me that all of my top 40s hit station, we are number one for millennials in Gen Z, that’s on my station, right?
In terms of getting an understanding of who I should be in front of. All stations know their audiences well enough to pitch it because they need to for sales. They are going to say, hey, we’ve got the number one audience for working women, 35 plus. We’ve got the number one audience for affluent listeners. They know those things. And if you know that you don’t work well, really with the affluent, high income, highly educated, you know to cross that type of station off your list.
Sharad 1:10:05
So rather than you sharing with the salesperson, this is our audience, and then they kind of manipulate the data to make you feel like that’s the right fit. You just say, I’m collecting information. These eight radio stations that you are managing, what is the target audience for each of the radio stations, correct?
Grace 1:10:24
Yeah, you definitely could say, but honestly, in my experience, if you say, hey, my audience is roughly 35 plus or 45 plus, you could you still want to pay attention to the data yourself. Right? Like it’s a sales rep. So I find that in some cases, they’ll try and slightly start to tweak your data down the line of, like, okay, well, you already told me that you want to reach 35 plus. They will dig through their data to try and find anything that keeps you underneath their umbrella even if it’s not necessarily the best fit.
That’s why I usually just recommend just say, hey, I’m looking to collect some information. We’re looking to pick up maybe two or three stations starting this process off by just calling a couple of stations in the area, wanted to connect with you guys and collect some information on your audience and leave it.
Sharad 1:11:15
So let’s say I have that conversation. Now, at this point, I’m expecting some data from the sales rep of let’s say iHeart Radio, they’re going to send me some information. Like, how do I know if it’s a fair price? What are the next steps after that? Let’s say they tell me. I’m just making it up. Say, hey, Sharad, it’s going to be $5,000 for ten ads, and it’s going to run between 02:00 to 03:00 p.m., for example. How do you figure out if it’s the right price, if your ads are going to be at the right time, when your audience is going to be tuned in, how do you go about that?
Grace 1:11:54
That’s a really, really, really great question. Let me start by warning you that sales reps can be full of crap on their own numbers, especially for any…(Crosstalk) Yes. If you say to a sales rep, and here’s what I usually warn people, it is super important not to come across like you’re super excited or you’re urgently trying to get this done. You have to play very evenly kill with them, hey, we’re starting this process. We’re taking it a little slow by collecting some information.
Once we have an opportunity to kind of sort through the data that we’ve gotten back, we’ll call you. If you call them and you say, hey, man, I’m ready to get on radio, we’re super excited, or hey, with the way our business is running, we’re making a lot of money. We’re trying to get this done really quickly. They will price you according to your urgency. And so there’s a retail price to radio, and there’s also a wholesale price to radio. And if you call them randomly today, they can smell the fact that you’re green behind your ears because they can tell in the way that you’re describing what you’re wanting to do that you don’t quite know radio’s ins and out.
And you don’t need a PhD in radio to avoid getting taken advantage of. You just have to know in terms of talking points, how to position yourself, which is why I always recommend people to play it kind of evenly killed. If you come across too urgent or too excited, they’ll take advantage of that and pricing will reflect it. On a normal day, they’re going to hit you with a retail price anyways. It’s a sales rep. Usually, they’re making a commission on what is being spent. So if you come in and you close underneath them, they’re going to continue getting a piece of whatever it is that you spent.
So if they have an opportunity to sell you on something that’s $5,000 a month when you could have gotten it for maybe $3,000 a month. They’re not going to tell you, hey, I can give this to you for 3000. They’re going to pitch it at 5000 to see if you take it. And if you take it, hey, that’s not on them, right? It’s a salesperson. So I would definitely tell you that nine times out of ten, the first price they give you is terrible. Do not take their first price. I don’t recommend people really acknowledge the first three rounds of almost like negotiating with them on pricing. The first three rounds are going to be BS numbers.
Sharad 1:14:04
So is there a good time to call a sales rep? I mean, I don’t know if they have like a month and quarter end sale or something going where they have to meet a certain quota. Does that happen in radio advertisement?
Grace 1:14:19
It can. It can. It depends. They all are different and it’s almost like dealing with a seller is what I usually equate it to with people. They all have different pain points at various times throughout a month, which is why you want to take that process slow and let them know that you are not in a rush because you want to be able to hear it and pace it as well. If you’re not going to secure the greatest deal on one phone call or two, you wouldn’t necessarily do that with the homeowner.
Some homeowners, you have to kind of pull their teeth, right, to kind of figure out, all right, well, here’s an actual pain point for them. Or you may want to hold out for a great deal. Radio is the same way. The best deals are going to come within actual time, but yes, so some of them can work that way. What I would definitely say on the sales piece, though, if you reach a sales rep and they’re like, we have a sale or we are running a special, walk away. There’s no such thing as running a special or running a sale on radio because it’s there 365, 24/7, truly.
Sharad 1:15:22
Got it. Okay.
Grace 1:15:23
You can run radio ads whenever. You could run radio ads at 01:00 in the morning if you wanted to. Now, does that work? No. I would probably roughly say the latest time that I’ve ever seen work well for still producing some radio calls is about 09:00 p.m. And that’s the latest kind of across the board, and I would probably say the earliest is 06:30 a.m., 05:00 a.m. Is a terrible time frame to advertise, really, for anyone. No one’s mentally truly awake. And you don’t want people trying to call you at 5:30 in the morning wanting to have a conversation about selling their home as well. They’re probably not awake, nor you. But a sales rep is not going to say that to you either. That’s not their job. Their job is just to get you.
Sharad 1:16:07
To sell all the slots that they have.
Grace 1:16:09
That’s their job. And the more slots that they can get filled up, the better, because their business managers are looking at a sales rep and saying, we have inventory slots available. Your job is to fulfill them. So sales rep like, if you buy it at 5000, that’s their job. They did their job as if they sold it. It’s going to take you at least 60 days to realize that was a mistake, because a sales rep is going to take your 1st 30 days, which is normal for any marketing channel that you jump into. It’s going to take time for it to build up.
They’re going to use that to their advantage in your 1st 30 days and avoid having this conversation station that they know that they sold you a really poor time packaging. Targeting the right station is one point. Getting it at a really great price, but also having enough frequency and being on at the right times a day is super important. I’ve had people who tried radio, and I’m like, hey. They’re like, hey, it didn’t work. I didn’t have a great experience. I’m like, Send it to me, let me check.
And I’ve seen deals so bad that it’s like 13 of their radio ad commercials were playing at like 02:00 a.m. 03:00 a.m., 04:00 a.m. 05:00 a.m. (Crosstalk) Produce any phone calls. But the sales rep also knew that as well, based on just getting a general understanding of their business. But I would definitely say, in terms of real estate investing, sales reps still have a very hard time slightly comprehending how it works on this side. They assume that you are very similar to a real estate broker or a realtor, and that is roughly the data batch that they put you in.
So they’ll say, oh, you work in real estate. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard, I know a little thing about real estate, I would retire. They all use that phrase. If you say, hey, I own a real estate company, I do X, Y, Z, they’re going to say, hey, I have experience with this, I’ve done it, or I’ve done a little bit of real estate myself. Not to the extent of what we know on this side, not at all on the investment side, they’re equating it to their working with a realtor or broker, which is a completely different way of approaching an audience or homeowners. Does that make sense?
Sharad 1:18:08
No, I agree. I mean, I’ve given up trying to explain my family that I’m not a real estate agent. Yeah. So I totally understand what you all right, so first call that I’m doing, I’m just trying to get information about the audience, right?
Grace 1:18:22
Yes.
Sharad 1:18:23
The audience that they have. So let’s say I have that information. Out of ten radio stations that they have, I pick two that meets my audience target audience. Right? What are the next things I’m doing? Am I just like negotiating with them at that point? What are the next things I would assume that I’m talking to them about? I need to have some information. When is the best time for my ads to be played on radio and what stations and how many times, right? Is that kind of what the next step is after I pick the radio stations?
Grace 1:18:56
Yeah, absolutely. What I would also recommend collecting is outside of the audience data, right? And they have a ton of information, believe me. It’s just all about requesting it. They could tell you how many of their listeners own a certain type of property, what percentage of the listeners own a single family home, what percentage of the audience potentially owns a multifamily unit, how many of them own a town home. Right? They can actually break it down and it becomes really detailed. It’s a really great way of really truly filtering out what’s going to be best for you.
Sharad 1:19:30
You can ask for all this information.
Grace 1:19:32
Yeah, you can. Definitely. Absolutely. Especially when you go after when you are in conversations with some of the bigger nationally known stations like iHeart, Audacy (A-U-D-A-C-Y). Audacy, actually don’t let the name fool you. They’re actually owned by CBS. And so CBS, when you think about it, their money is long in terms of the amount of money that they can spend on keeping and tracking actual audience data because they all need it internally.
So these type of ownerships that have really large budgets or Hubbard Media, Beasley Media Group, they can afford to track it to the detail of this is also how many people roughly own a certain type of property. They can also break it down with home values. You can have a home value report pulled.
Well, what percentage of the listeners on this station actually own a property? Under half a million. And that’s a really important piece to filter out if you know that there’s a certain age bracket you work with, a certain income bracket you work with, or even home values, think about really deeply what pushes people to potentially work with you. Because you can apply those same little pieces to radio to filter out the best stations. There’s a lot of information there.
So absolutely, I would definitely also recommend getting an idea of the size of their audience. What I typically look for, and I will give you the word and I’m going to spell it, it’s called Cumes, C-U-M-E-S. Cumes is one way of measuring a radio audience. Why I prefer using Cumes is that it tracks unique listenership. There are tons of different ways for you to come up with an average number of people who are listening to radio, but they tend to include duplicates. Radio data is so advanced that they can actually tell if they are potentially reaching the same type of person. Right? So a Cumes is like, hey, this is at least a unique person, I believe, on maybe a five minute or so span, right?
It’s a unique listener. It’s not necessarily a duplicate listener. That was maybe someone turned on a station 30 seconds ago and they jumped back to it. Cumes is not going to count that person, right? It’s like, I counted you already. You are already here. You just came back in that you can definitely go to a station and say, hey, I also want to get an idea of the size of your audience. Do you mind sending me the actual cues for the audience? And that will show you just how large or how small a station is. Why that’s important is two things here.
One, you can use it to your advantage and pricing, right? Because then you can start to see what their competitors look like as well. This is why I always recommend at least reaching out to two different ownership types. You want to be able to get an understanding of what’s available to you in your market. There’s always alternatives. You can love station A on this country station here under iHeart, I guarantee you there’s some other competitor who has a very similar target audience, and maybe it’s not as competitive, or maybe the size is roughly around the same.
So getting that information allows you to track it and use it to your advantage and pricing. But it also should be an extra filter for you. I will tell you personally that there are some sizes of stations that don’t work really well. There are stations that could carry maybe 10,000 or 15,000 listeners, and you’re like, well, hey, that’s 15,000 people. I can grab them. I think this can just really work out, right?
For safe numbers, let’s say it’s 20,000 people that are listening, but if only 50% of them own a home, we’re now only in front of 10,000 homeowners. And even though that sounds like it’s a really great deal, I would rather you be on a station that has a little bit more wiggle room because if you’re going to start on a station, you want to be able to grow into it. And so if you’re on a station that only has 20,000 listeners, only half of them own a property, we’re going to hit that ceiling very quickly and run out of room to grow.
Sharad 1:23:21
Got it. And then Michael has a question. What are the best time slots for radio?
Grace 1:23:26
I would tell you anything after 06:30 a.m., about 06:00 a.m., 06:30. If you want to push 06:00 a.m., you definitely can. Maybe your market actually is awake mentally, but I roughly would say as early as 6:30, as late as 09:00 p.m. And you can kind of toy with it if you start to see that maybe 09:00 p.m. doesn’t work out. The thing with a schedule, with radio is that once you get in the door, you can tweak it.
So don’t allow yourselves up to kind of make you feel that, hey, well, I agree to 06:30 and nine, but now I see that 09:00 p.m. isn’t necessarily working for me. I’m stuck. No, you’re never stuck. You’re one email away from adjusting it. You just simply say, hey, internally we’re not tracking 09:00 p.m. really well. Can you go ahead and move us up to the latest that we can air ads is maybe 07:00 p.m.
Sharad 1:24:13
Okay, cool. And then Anthony has a question. What is the best target audience for sellers? When you were doing running in DFW, what did you notice was the best target audience for you guys?
Grace 1:24:24
Well, that was in DFW, but now I run REI radio. So I actually literally just help people set up radio stations across the US and even Canada. So I’ll just tell you in general, like, what I actually see, there’s not necessarily one genre that works well for radio. And a lot of people kind of get confused and they’re like, what do you mean? It’s all about your actual target audience and what you offer as an actual service.
So if you are buying homes for cash and you work and you want to make sure that you’re in front of a mature aged audience that actually owns homes, there’s a plethora of potential stations that you can get on. There are country stations that could work out really well. There are talk stations that could work out really well. There’s classic rock or rock alternatives that could work really well in terms of genre types, but there’s not necessarily one guarantee. Like, I wouldn’t say to someone, hey, absolutely, go pick up a country, or absolutely, go pick up a rock station because it can slightly vary.
There are some talk stations that reach more like blue collar or like a mixture of people and then there are talk stations and you can tell they’re very wealth management content, right? Like when you’re listening to them, they’re like finances this, wealth management this. They’re hitting a more affluent audience. So although, yes, you do want to hit a mature aged audience, is that the right audience for you? Would your audience really be listening to someone that’s going wealth management and finances? Probably not, right?
Sharad 1:25:55
What would be the best audience for motivated sellers? For us, based on our market, we’re not in radio, but just based on direct mail and other marketing that we do, we notice typically we’re buying properties from sellers that are 40, 45 plus, you know, blue collar. That’s the kind of demographic information that you’re getting from radio and you target based on that.
Is that based on your experience, like helping other investors nationwide? What are you noticing? Like, what target audience like for motivated sellers is working in terms of not the radio station genre, but the target audience. Let’s say one radio station has audience 40, 45 plus versus one has 55, 60 plus. How would you choose if you had to choose one, how would you come up with that criteria?
Grace 1:26:50
If I have to budget, I’ll stretch it, because you can always slightly tweak your service. That’s what I meant by if you have multiple tools under your tube belt, it can work really well because if you hit an audience that’s a little bit younger, and I’d roughly say like 35 plus, these are and you can kind of think about that in terms of real life. There’s a lot of people right now who are trying to finance their way through life. And that same thing can work with a property owner. Finance can work really well on an audience that’s a little bit younger, and then you can still buy the houses from cash on the mature aged audiences that actually have the equity in their property.
Sharad 1:27:23
Got it. And then another question. What price per cube should we shoot for? That would depend on the radio station and the time slot that you’re trying to advertise for, right?
Grace 1:27:37
Yeah, that can definitely depend. I would say when you’re looking at the actual cumes of a station, and I’m just trying to give you kind of like some general guidelines. Like I mentioned, there are some stations that are a little bit too small. So if a station is under like, 50,000 cumes, no one should tell you that it costs $3,000 a month not to reach 50,000 cumes. Not at all. If you’re looking at 50,000 cumes, you should be under $2,000 a month.
If you are looking at a station whose cumes are maybe like 100,000 to like, 300,000, then possibly you’re pushing $3,000 a month. That’s a little bit more in line with where they should be in terms of pricing. Now, if you were to call them today, are they going to give you that? No, they’re going to say, oh, no, the lowest that we can do is 6000 or this $8,000 package. Or if it’s your lucky day and you call, iHeart they’re going to put together a $12,000 package for you when the station probably is maybe $3,500 a month.
Sharad 1:28:37
So let’s say I find 100 to 300,000 cumes and I negotiate a price of, let’s say 5000, right? You set the package so they’re not running your ad one time for that price, right?
Grace 1:28:46
No.
Sharad 1:28:47
How many times I would assume that’s also negotiable. How many times? What time slots are they running your ads? How do you negotiate with that? Or what’s the minimum you should expect in return for, let’s say, $5,000 package? 400 to 300,000 cumes?
Grace 1:29:04
I would say in general, your best case scenario is running 20 to 25 ads per week. (Crosstalk) Yes. Absolutely. You’re anywhere from 80 to 100 ads per month.
Sharad 1:29:15
Oh, wow! For that price?
Grace 1:29:17
That should be your aim. Absolutely. And this is why I always tell people to go slow with radio. They’re not going to say this information to you they’re not. You have to be very careful in terms of approach. But I err on the side of knowing that there is an actual wholesale price to radio. I’m always on the side of dragging out negotiations to get that better price. I will wait for it because it’s always there, but they’re not betting that you’re willing to be patient for it or even pitch it, because if you don’t request it, then you can’t get it right.
If you never ask for it, you’re not going to actually get it. And sometimes you may have a lower price in mind if you’re like, oh, I don’t think they’re going to bite. Say it anyways. And then what I would do is make them qualify. Why almost you should pay higher. Well, hey, I’m a visual learner. Maybe I’m missing something. Can you help me understand why this would be more money and allow them to qualify their station to you?
Sharad 1:30:12
And all time slots, your ads on any time between 6:30 and 09:00, are they all, like, same quality, like, as far as, like, Legion is concerned or if, you know, if the radio sales have to say, hey, whatever time you want, like, what time would be, like, absolutely ideal that I would want to be. Let’s say if they say, all right, we’re going to run your ads for 10, 20 times a week, but they run my ad every time, 6:30. Right?
I’m not getting anything, but they say, that’s what we agreed on. Could I choose the time where I know this would be the best time to reach my target audience? I would imagine this would be, like, early in the morning when people are driving to work or late in the evening when people are driving back. Is that kind of what you notice?
Grace 1:31:05
No, that’s a really great question. And I’ll tell you, it’s a combination of everything that I experienced in DFW plus the last three years of just, like, working with people across the US is kind of toying. That that’s what I meant earlier is don’t allow a sales rep to believe that you’re pinned into a schedule. Once you get there, you can always adjust it and tweak it. But I would definitely tell you that within that time frame, and that’s why I say the absolute latest that I’ve ever seen work is about 09:00 p.m. is that it still produces calls.
Most people that are needing to sell their property for cash don’t have a very cookie cutter life or a cookie cutter schedule. There are some people that work first shift, second shift, third shift, and so they’re moving around in between that. So it’s not a dead giveaway that you are absolutely like, I only need to clear air ads in the morning, or that I only need to clear them in the afternoon.
To be honest with you, especially as a new advertiser, you want to give yourself an opportunity and the audience an opportunity to get to know you. And then I would roughly say once you have about 60 to 90 days of data based on call value, look at the times that people are calling and look for a pattern and then tighten your schedule up even more.
Sharad 1:32:13
Got it. Okay. There was one other what specific reports do we request from the radio station? It’s a great question.
Grace 1:32:22
Yeah, absolutely. If you don’t know, because the names of the reports can get a little lengthy. I would generally start with, hey, can you send me any information that you have on your audience data? And then I’ll tell you what, you should be looking for all of their audience data. And sometimes this set fits on one PDF, and sometimes it’s maybe on two PDFs. It should include the percentages of listeners in each age bracket, right?
So it’ll go like 18 to 24, 35 to 44, 45 to 54, 55 to 64 plus and then it’ll roughly say, okay, well, here’s the income here’s under 25000, 35000, 45000, what have you. All of that should be listed on there that allows you to see, okay, this is the age demographic, the age bracket or age of homeowners that I usually work really well with. And this is also clarifying the income that they typically pull in.
And then also, definitely it needs to include renters to homeowners number. Usually that is included. If it’s not, I would tell the sales rep, hey, because I do run a real estate business, can you as well make sure that it’s included homeowners and renters information? Usually it is in there. There’s at least a percentage of, hey, maybe we reach 60% of our listeners are homeowners and the other 40% are renters.
So I wouldn’t necessarily focus on the name of each report. I would say, hey, I’m wanting to look at audience data that you have on your stations. And then secondly, can you give me an idea or show me the size of your stations based on cumes? Now, granted, the cumes, the name of that type of report is a ranker, but you don’t even have to specify it right out. If you can describe these reports to them, they’ll still send it to you.
Sharad 1:34:13
Okay, so size, age, income, and then percentage of renters to homeowners?
Grace 1:34:19
Absolutely. Education should be on there as well. Just to kind of give you an idea roughly, the more information that you can get on that station, the better, honestly. Again, like I said, you could go even deeper and have them pull a home values report. What percentage of listeners actually own a property under a certain amount of money? And then what percentage of homeowners owner a particular type of property? Is it this single family? How many of them potentially own maybe a multifamily? Or how many of these listeners are actually landowners that can definitely be included in that as well.
Sharad 1:34:51
And Tara has a question. How many calls come in per month of 80 to 100 ads per month? Like some rough idea. Let’s say if you’re running your ad for one month, it plays 80 to 100 times. How many calls should you expect? 80 to 100 calls. What the conversion should look like after that? You can go into that too.
Grace 1:35:12
That’s a great question. I’m really glad that that came up. So this is a really great place for me to say this phrase, and I say this all the time. Radio is quality, not quantity. The value that you would see on direct mail or that you would see like, ringless voicemail, you’re not going to find that on radio. The entire point is that radio forces them to kind of filter themselves out in terms of motivation. No one’s going to call you on radio and say, hey, I’m kind of thinking about this.
Well, what do you guys think? No, they’re going to call and say, hey, I heard your ad. My family and I have been processing this. This is what we actually are ready to do. I would probably tell and it can vary based on the size depending on how small or how large it is. I’ve seen maybe 5 to 15 calls per week come in from an actual radio station. And some people freak out and you’re like, well, only five. But when you think about maybe the direct mail deals or maybe even the cold call deals that you’re doing, most of your solid conversations are probably about a handful of people. Well, radio is just attracting the handful of people that were ready to rock and roll.
Sharad 1:36:11
Right. You’re not getting people call you and say, hey, take your ad off radio.
Grace 1:36:16
I don’t like, yeah, right. No one’s angry at you. That, oh my gosh, how dare you interrupt my day with the radio ad. That’s what it’s there for. I would probably tell you that again, the longer you advertise, that will definitely change. As people start assuming you can help them with something else, it almost never fails. You can tell them, I’m buying it for cash. You’re going to attract people who are going to say, mobile, homes, land, do you keep your properties? You’re going to have other realtors that potentially call you.
You’ll have other stations reach out to you because that’s the catch 22. When you negotiate, they give you a hard time, but when they hear you on their competitor stations, they will call you based on your radio and say, hey, I just heard you on iHeart’s Country station. I know we were talking, hey, we wanted to put together yeah, that’s when.
Sharad 1:37:04
You have the leverage on them.
Grace 1:3:05
Absolutely. Vendors call you. I would definitely say usually once you start on radio, the boldest people to reach out and how you know that your radio ads are working. It will be vendors, it will be contractors that say, well, hey, if you buy homes, do you have a contractor? Can I get on your list? Do you guys have painters? Do you guys keep landscape? Is there anything that I can do?
Sharad 1:37:28
Your buyers list? Yeah. That’s interesting. And then when you are running your ad, what’s your call to action? Are you having people call or visit your website or both?
Grace 1:37:39
Great question. Do not complicate this. I really love to keep radio simple stupid. Drive them to a phone number. A phone number. And make it a specific phone number for that station so that you can track the results of that station. Sometimes people think, well, hey, I’ll just get this really cool 1800 number. Don’t do that. You want a number that’s local. Don’t go on radio as the new person. And you sound super polished and professional. You’ll scare people off.
People who don’t have cookie cutter situations are not drawn to ads that sound very proper, that sound super polished. That sounds very 1800. Let’s see what we can like a robotic. Sound human. Right? Sometimes people worry about this, especially with their own ad, and I’ll go into that. I highly recommend using a local phone number and also using your voice on the ad. You want people to feel like they’re talking to someone that is literally from their neighborhood. Right?
If you sound like you’re super polished and professional, they’re going to hold back on what they tell you. Because now that they’re afraid to tell you the details of their situation, they may not even decide to actually call you because they’re just like they almost sound too professional, open door, and some of those larger companies can come into a market and try and bulldoze their way through it. There are people in your market that they don’t like that idea, like, open door feels too distant for them. Right?
It’s like, here’s this large company that’s coming into their small town or whatever area they’re in. They’d rather work with someone that’s locally that they feel like they can really talk to. Now, granted, do you have to handle all the calls? Absolutely not. Right? But I would definitely put your voice in it so that people find something to connect to. They’ll feel a lot more confident and more comfortable talking to you about their problems.
Sharad 1:39:30
So local number? I agree with that. Would you recommend someone get a vanity number? I know we used to work with when we have plans coming, they get their vanity number for phone number guys, what you would recommend, or does that make you sound like, too corporate? If you have one, two, three, buy now or something like that, we should just keep it, like, easy to remember numbers.
Grace 1:39:54
Yeah, very much so. People have a lot of things to do in their universe, right? Like, they’re going to hear your ad, but they’re going to hear someone slightly before you and after you. There could be a daycare ad and their kids are screaming in the back and the next ad is their fixture windshield wiper. And they’re like, yeah, crap. This does look like crap. So, yes, you want to keep it as simple as you can, I would say on the vanity number piece, find a local area code. And I’m just like making this number up. Let’s say it was 872. Right? You could go 8722222 still vanity number is still local area code easy.
I would definitely, if you can some people are a little unique about this that they’re like, hey, I want to spend $1,000 and buy a phone number that ends in buy or ends in sale. I would tell you, on average, most of the clients that I usually work with roughly find a great phone number within like $250 to maybe 375. And it’s a really solid, memorable, easy to remember number and sometimes even cheaper. You do not need to spend $800 or $1,000 on a phone number. And in most cases, I would avoid words in the ad because people will get it confused, especially sales. They’ll like S-A-L-E or S-E-L-L right? And then in the ad, you’re taking up time in your ad to explain that’s S-E-L-L versus you just saying 7777. They can’t…(Crosstalk)
Sharad 1:41:22
Something that they can confuse. You still recommend, like, phone number guy to get those vanity numbers. So what we’ve done with people that are in radio ads is they buy their phone number vanity numbers from phone number guy or other vendors and then we put them into REsimpli. Do you have any vendor recommendation for vanity number?
Grace 1:41:44
Yeah, you could go that route or more just now that you know what to look for. Now you can also find additional vendors on that line. Right? If you’re not comfortable going that route. 100%. Now you know what to look for and what makes up a good phone number. And now also you have an idea of pricing, because what typically should happen is you reach out to a vendor who has phone numbers. They should be able to provide you with a list of options before buying anything. I would really make sure you have at least 20 options in front of you so that you can practice them. That’s what I usually want, people, is before you purchase it, practice it, right?
Sharad 1:42:21
Yes. Say the number out loud, right? A couple of times, see if it sounds natural and let other people hear it and see if it’s easy to remember or not.
Grace 1:42:28
Absolutely. Because they’re phone numbers that just they don’t have enough rhythm. Right? You could say 254321794, like, wait, record yourself saying it and then play your recording as you move throughout your house and making noise. Did you catch the phone number? If you can’t, and it’s hard to say, and you take additional breaths in between each number. Don’t do it. Your phone number should flow.
Sharad 1:42:54
That makes sense. So let’s say if I’m starting out, actually one other question I have. For me, I want to get into radio ask, but I keep running into this issue. So I’m in a small market right outside of Chicago. So it’s like in Indiana, but for me, radio and TV the challenge that I run into, it for me to advertise on radio or TV, I have to be part of the Chicago market. So is it like people that are not in major metropolitan but they’re right outside, but their radio station is part of the major metropolitan area? How would they go about doing getting their ads on radio, but not like I don’t want to buy anything in Chicago, but the radio stations that we have in northwest Indiana are Chicago radio stations.
Grace 1:43:42
That’s a really great question because that comes up a lot of markets kind of borderline each other, even state lines, right? So I would roughly start by saying radio is slightly different from TV where it doesn’t necessarily force you to take the whole market with TV, you have to buy the market, right? Even though you’re like, I actually really only want to target maybe like this city or like this kind of city line radio stations all and they have just as much as they have data on their audiences.
They can also show you a signal area map and show you just how much of their station covers a certain area that also allows you to control if you want to pick it up. Because they can show you that maybe 80% of their audience is actually going west of the direction you want to go in, then I wouldn’t pick it up.
But yeah, you will still find a little blend or a little bleed over naturally with something like Chicago specifically. Most of the largest stations or the most popular stations in Chicago naturally stretch to some of those outskirts cities anyways, and then some of these outskirts cities in those cases, which are probably going to find a more mom and pop like locally owned stations.
And that’s who you want to approach because they will discuss just that one area with you. But if you try and go to pick up one of the most popular stations in this measure market, and you’re like, oh, well, I only service that little piece like way out there. They’re like, what do you want us to do in terms of an option? But in most cases you’re going to have mom and pops or locally owned stations that cover a lot of those skirt cities. I will go to them directly. You’ll get a better deal.
Sharad 1:45:23
That makes sense. All right. So for direct mail, when somebody comes in asks us, hey, I want to do direct mail, we always tell them do it only if you can commit to at least four to six mailings with a minimum six months. What would you say when it comes to radio ad? Like, if I only want to run it for one month or a week, you would probably say, don’t even do it, right?
Grace 1:45:45
Yeah. No.
Sharad 1:45:46
What’s the minimum time period and minimum budget that I should allocate for this marketing channel to have confidence whether it worked or not?
Grace 1:45:55
Yeah, that is a more than fair question. And I would tell you this is probably roughly, like, along all marketing channels, is you want to give it 90 days. It takes 90 days for conclusive data to build, meaning something that you can actually look and make a solid decision on, 30 days is not enough information. You have to imagine radio station specifically, they’re very loyal listeners. I mean, these are people who listen. They’re there all hours of the day available, and they’ve been listening to that station for hours, for years.
And here are you like, you’re the new guy, almost on their Turk. You have to allow people just to get adjusted to you, like a brand awareness, like, oh, okay, here’s this new person I’ve never heard of. There may be an audience who is not familiar with your service. They’re like, really? Someone wants to buy a house? Right? We think that everyone should know about it at this point. There are still pockets of people who are like, they’re not familiar with that type of service, or do they really believe that it can work?
So give them just a second not only to become aware of who you are, become familiar with your brand and your service, and then give them a fair chance to really, truly consider if that’s the best option, that is where their motivation comes in, because when they make that decision, they’re ready to go. But just give them some time.
Yeah, I’d say just in general, 90 days for conclusive data. Try not to judge it in terms of call volume. Call volume could take two, three weeks just to really get into a flow, as people are kind of like, all right, I think that this is truly credible. You playing an ad maybe one or two or three days out of the week. They’re like, okay, I’ve heard you the last two or three days. I don’t know if I can really believe that this is something that’s legitimate or credible until they can kind of get consistency right. They’re just hearing you a few more times.
Sharad 1:47:44
And should you always keep the same ad, same message for 90 days? Or if you should change how often should you change your ad or message? Or you should always keep it, hey, we buy houses for cash and whatever your pitch is, and then just keep it at that. Here’s the number, and then just run that ad.
Grace 1:48:04
That’s a really great question. I would tell you that the beauty of radio is not changing your best once it’s 365. People have really sticky situations. If you do your ad roughly, you should not have to touch it. A holiday can come around. The holiday doesn’t affect your ad, or you’re not going to run a Halloween ad or Christmas ad or Thanksgiving ad unless you want to. Maybe you can definitely play with it, but roughly, no, it is roughly the same ad because you’re hitting on the same pain points of, hey, I buy houses cash if you have an abandoned home or if you are backed up payments. Right? Those pain points are universal and they’re not seen seasonal in that way.
So, absolutely, yeah, you should keep it roughly the same unless something is super off. And what I mean by that is some people kind of to get a call flow, they may panic and say, well, hey, I think I need to change maybe my opening line. So I’ve seen people try and use like, the real estate market is booming, or hey, the market is doing incredible. Sell your home now knowing that you are going to give them a wholesale price, that’s a fight because these are people who mentally now, based on hearing your ad, think that the market is doing incredible. The market is booming.
So I need to cash out retail mindset now. And so when they call in, you’re trying to undo it. You want to fairly just simply say, hey, we buy properties in any condition, or we buy properties fast, whatever it is that you highlight, but also realistically in that ad, we’re going to give you a fair cash offer on your home. You do not want to give them the impression that the real estate market is booming and that they should be expecting something incredible like a retail offer from you.
Sharad 1:49:51
All right, so let’s say if I want to get started with radio ads, how do you help someone get started with radio ads? Do you negotiate with the radio stations? Do you negotiate on, let’s say if I say, hey, Grace, sounds great, I want to start in my Northwest Indiana market and I come to you. Are you helping me kind of negotiate everything, come up with a radio ad script? And how would that work? Or is it me that I’m calling the radio stations out there?
Grace 1:50:22
Yeah, absolutely. So REI Radio now is a done for you system. So literally, my team and I just set everything up for you. The most that we need really from you is just specifics on what you want to play with, what you want to avoid. And I always give you my best expertise. I don’t like missed opportunities in a market. So if I find that there is an opportunity to play maybe with a service you weren’t thinking about and what I mean by service, I literally mean like, hey, there just may be an audience sitting here that I’m like, this is a great opportunity for owner finance. Hey, if you ever want to play with it, right?
Because I don’t want you to miss out on growing your real estate business by not being able to oh, hey, this audience may be more responsive to this type of service, but roughly, yeah. Well, REI radio, we literally filter it all so we’ll do all the evaluating of looking at the entire market to see what potential options you have to play with. We have plenty of relationships with sales reps around the United States.
Believe me, I’ve spent years beating them in the head for price haggling. We have love hate relationships with them. They’re kind of like, oh, Grace and her team again, because we know what a good deal and a great deal on radio roughly looks like. But it always starts by finding the best station and targeting the right stations and then getting the best price or the best overall deal. We actually write the radio ads for you because we already have plenty of scripting. And I like scripting as a great guideline, but I prefer, really, to say, hey, here’s a general script of what we roughly would say in an ad. But I’d rather work one on one with people to say, look, this is your unique market.
Let’s figure out what you uniquely do and tweak an ad so that it sounds natural to you, because it doesn’t make any sense to hand you a 30 seconds or 60 seconds radio ad. And you’re like, I don’t talk this way. That’s not the way you naturally speak. You don’t want to go in and you record an ad that you sound like you’re reading or almost sounds robotic to you, and it doesn’t actually resonate with the audience that you’re trying to get in front of.
So we’ll actually work with you and write the actual ads for you. We’ll practice it with you and then get you booked to actually record the ads in studio and then monitor the ads from there because the first 30 days of running on radio can be really sensitive. It’s super easy to read into your results in the first 30 days of really launching any new marketing channel. And so the first 30 days, in all my experience, I will tell you truly, sales reps take their foot off the gas when they’ve got you contracted, right?
They’re on the ball. They’re super engaged throughout the process, and as soon as they get you contracted, they’re like, okay. They’ll start to pull back. They’re not as available. They stop paying attention to things because internally, they should be watching your account to figure out how many ads are you actually airing? All of the ads that’s agreed to. So if we’re aiming for 20 to 25 ads a week, and it looks like you’ve only actually aired ten, we have a problem. Why did only ten of the 20 to 25 air? The sales reps job should be to pay attention to that. But usually in the first 30 days. They’re taking their foot off the gas there.
Sharad 1:53:23
If somebody wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Grace 1:53:8
Absolutely. You can hop over to the website of Reiradio.com. So it’s Reiradio.com and literally just reach out to us and start the process. I like to make sure that it’s worth it for you and worth it for us as well. So there may be a case where for one rhyme or reason, I’m like, hey, this market. I wouldn’t pick up radio in or hey, for what you’re trying to do. I don’t think that it’s worth the spent.
I’d rather tell people that upfront than you start spending money on radio and then you’re wondering why you’re not getting results. It’s like it wasn’t actually a good fit. So we usually like to start if you jump to the website, it’s going to start with you with the discovery process and we like to kind of fill out if this is going to be a good fit for your market and for your business. And then we go from there.
Sharad 1:54:10
Perfect. That’s incredible. I’m going to reach out to you. We’re trying to look at more inbound Marketing Channel to just kind of diversify and build our brand. Also, Anthony has a question. What about the budget? Is there a minimum budget that you would recommend an investor to start out with? Minimum like 90 days. And what the budget for the 90 day period?
Grace 1:54:36
Yeah, that’s a fair question. And again, this can slightly vary because sizes of stations and competitiveness per station can vary. So if you are in one of those smaller mom and pop markets, you can definitely get a little bit lower of a price on a station. But it’s also competition is low and usually in terms of stations, those mom and pops will give you a great deal because most people ignore them because their stations aren’t as large as some of the other stations. But it is still a similar audience.
If I had to give you just like a baseline number, I would probably tell you a prep at least for anywhere between $2000-$3,000 a month is roughly what I would warn people and that could increase based on the competitive. Right? If someone in Phoenix was coming my way, we’d have a different conversation. Phoenix and Tampa and Miami are like on steroids. And so in order to truly compete and really pull out something that’s worth it, we would have to tailor their budget according to that, their goals.
Sharad 1:55:33
Are you also able to find out if your competitors are advertising on the radio station?
Grace 1:55:38
Yes, that is one of the things that we do in the evaluation stage is we dive on all of those things because I also like to figure out not only if they’re there, but are they frequent. Right? Because I like to approach and I’m a little aggressive with ads, right? Like 80 to 100 ads. If you say that to a salesman, they’re like, what? Why?
In radio world, that’s a lot of ads in terms of frequency. Now granted there are some people who depending on the size of the station, and this is usually very tiny, stations may offer you a great deal, like 200 ads. There becomes a point where you’re not a diminishing return, almost, let me phrase it that way, where yes, you could have done more ads, but it’s not going to produce anything. And sometimes people get a little confused there, they’re like, hey, I don’t know if that actually works.
Sharad 1:54:26
Right. And Brian has a question. I had good results for the first couple of months, but my radio athletes have fallen off the last two months. Should I change the channel?
Grace 1:56:37
I don’t know. Sharad, do you have the option? Can he hop on live? I try and talk to him out of it now. Talk you through it? I don’t know, in general.
Sharad 1:56:49
Yeah, he’s on the call.
Brian 1:56:50
Hey, how’s it going?
Grace 1:56:51
Hi, Brian.
Brian 1:56:53
Yeah, so I started radio maybe four months ago now and I got three solid deals within the first two months.
Grace 1:57:02
Nice.
Brian 1:57:02
That I started doing it. Yes, it was really immediate, like great return on my money so far. But the last two months, like last month, this month of June, zero leads from it. The month prior, I think only one or two no deals. So that’s what I’ve been talking to the people about, like, look, I want to try to give you some time because it’s so good at the beginning, but obviously something’s off.
Grace 1:57:27
Yeah, very. You started off hot and then nothing. Yeah, we have a problem there. Tell me, how are you tracking what is airing? Like, are you getting reports on that?
Brian 1:57:39
Yeah, they do give me a report and have a monthly call in with them, but I couldn’t tell you what the numbers are. I will tell you, I’m not sure exactly how many ads I’m running per week, but they are on them. I know I’m running like there’s like a 15 second split in the morning on morning drive and then there’s like Rotators that play once a day, different time frames throughout the week. And I want to say it’s five a week, I want to say it’s once per day plus a little short blips in the morning.
Grace1:58:10
Okay. My brain is going to checking just how many are truly airing. And then the times a day has it shifted from where you were doing? I’ll give you my email address because like I said, I really like making sure that if someone’s going radio route, let’s make sure that it’s really worth it. I mean, there are times Brian, truly, if I’m like, oh, your sales are pulling a fast one on you, I’m just going to tell you.
Brian 1:58:33
Yeah, I can tell me all that stuff. I’m like, oh, they got me.
Grace 1:58:37
Yeah, right. Your market has shifted. I’m like, oh, Brian, your radio market is trending downwards. I’d rather just tell you that so you can kind of get out of Dodge now. I’ll give you my email address. I don’t know what you have, but I’m more than happy to take a look at it because that is to start hot, and then it goes to nothing. My brain is saying something is wrong with the times of day or the number of ads that are playing. And if it roughly comes down to maybe something in your ad needs to be tweaked, if you could send me a copy of that, I’m more than happy to say that as well and say, oh, I can see where this is. Maybe people got a little too comfortable with your phrasing, and now it’s not creating any new urgency.
Sharad 1:59:10
Okay, perfect.
Grace 1:59:11
So it’s info@reiradio. Let me see if I can drop it into info@reiradio. The reiradio.com.
Sharad 1:59:23
Okay, perfect. Thank you. But your website is reiradio.com.
Grace 1:59:25
Yeah, the website is if you are looking to figure out, hey, if radio is something that’s up your alley, we always do a free discovery process, and that’s literally going through to really make sure that it’s worth it in your market based on what you want to do. And then if you decide you want to do, then we’ll definitely talk to you about how we can help with a dump for you service. But yeah, absolutely. Brian info@reiradio. I’m more than happy to take a look. If anything, you picked my radio brain. And I’m actually almost excited. I’m like, whoa, when I hear something like that, I’m like, what’s going on there?
Sharad 1:59:57
One of the question I have is, with everyone in their car now having Apple Airplay, Google, Android Pay, how has that affected the listeners, like, number of listeners on radio? I mean, it’s interesting I asked that question, but every now and then, I’ll still listen to a local radio station. But I’m curious kind of how now every car coming with Apple CarPlay, Android CarPlay, have you seen a slowdown on radio listeners? A number of people?
Grace 2:00:32
Yeah, just like anything in life definitely has affected it slightly. I’ll tell you, radio stations have taken advantage of that because they now have digital advertising, and so we would call those like, streaming ads. So the people who are like, okay, I don’t necessarily there’s a couple of ways it can work. Some people do still stream their actual radio stations. It’s usually a younger audience, but in general, yeah, it slightly has. But the cumes that I was telling you about, those I have pulled based on, like, a 90 day basis at least, I look at anywhere between 90 days to six months of data. You can also look at cumes on a 30 day basis, and so they’re only averaging you based on what they have, there’s no way to kind of manipulate it, right?
Look, if they lost listeners to people who now have satellite radio in their car, it’s going to show basically in their data. And we can also kind of find it almost like what we call, like, trending reports. Like, how many months has this been declining? Is this a station who’s, like, they’re not rescuing their core audience? Like their core audience is leaving? That’s a problem. In most cases. It’s not truly most people are still listening to their local audience.
If someone’s going the satellite route, it could be a little bit of a younger audience or just very specific. Like, there’s a satellite radio show that they listen to, and then they jump back over to local. But in general, yeah, it has affected it slightly, but those numbers are always tracked on a month by month basis so that you can truly see what does it look like right now in terms of audience.
Sharad 2:02:05
Got it. Okay. No, that makes sense. I guess we’re a few minutes over our time. Anybody has any last questions? I want to thank Grace, and we’ll email grace, we’ll email you information out to everyone. I’m going to reach out to you. I’ve been looking into the radio ads. I know we were supposed to have you last week or last month, but I was traveling, so I appreciate you being accommodating, but any other last questions for Grace? She’s been absolutely amazing with her information. Yeah, Lily said amazing webinar. Yeah, no, this was really, really insightful, really good information. Any other questions, guys, before we say bye to Grace?
Cool. Awesome. Thank you, Grace. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. And we’ll put your information out to email list, and then we’ll also put your website information, our preferred vendors, because I know a lot of people that have worked with you are using recently. We know, like, radio ads work. So I appreciate you jumping on a call and being super, super helpful with this. Thank you.
Grace 2:03:16
Yeah. If I could leave any closing statement just with radio alone. When you’re talking to sales reps, please keep in mind you cannot hire a wolf to guard your hin house. Their job is to protect the station’s bottom line and the station’s inventory. They are not your friend. They’re super friendly, though. Oh, my gosh. I mean, they could sell you the socks on your own feet. They’re great.
But I would definitely keep that in mind when you’re working with the sales rep is to kind of just take it again, like I said, take it slow and just collect as much information as you as you possibly can on it. But yeah, you want to be a local celebrity. People will recognize your voice. I will warn you that now I have people all the time that are kind of still rooted out by it. They’re like, yeah, I was in the store, and I was talking, and someone’s like, oh, I know you from somewhere. Oh, I recognize your voice and….
Sharad 2:04:04
It’s crazy.
Grace 2:04:05
Yeah. So it definitely happens. You don’t have to have a perfect sounding voice. I would actually tell you people with an accent or with, like, a lisp or that doesn’t necessarily pronunciate things perfectly are actually more successful than people that over pronounce things on radio ads.
Sharad 2:04:19
I think it makes them more relatable, maybe. Right? It just makes them more yeah, interesting.
Grace 2:04:26
Because the funny thing is that you will attract all people based on that. But if you came across polished, you actually exclude people that are like, hey, I don’t usually speak that way, but polished people….
Sharad 2:04:36
I don’t have to worry about that.
Grace2:04:40
Absolutely. Yeah. I just wanted to leave that there. Don’t worry about it. Sometimes people freak out. They’re like, put my own voice in there. I don’t think my voice is good enough. I promise you it is. It probably is. And if for some reason it’s not usually a modest with people…
Sharad 2:04:53
Do you notice though, with that, let’s say if I record a radio but I’m not the one going on appointment, do you notice sometimes people feeling sort of like a little let down that they heard me on radio but it’s my acquisition person coming for the appointment? Does that ever become an issue?
Grace 2:05:1
No. Here’s how I would prep your acquisition manager. I would tell your acquisition manager wants to answer these radio calls with just as much as enthusiasm. Right? Let me say that really quickly. We didn’t get to touch base on that. But if you’re recording your ad, your first, the tone of voice that you use is very important. Some people can have the right wording, and then you’re way too monotone.
So when you’re attracting motivated sellers, you want your ad to sound a little bit energetic, not like oxyclean guy. Please don’t scare someone off with, like, oxyclean guy energy. But your acquisition manager should answer the calls just as energetic and like, hey, no, but I am so and so’s, like, right hand. And I can help you with your property. Yeah, tell me about it.
Roll them right into the next point. If you make it seem like it’s a big deal or it’s awkward, the person will become awkward. But if your acquisition manager is like, yeah, no, I’m Sharad’s right hand. I do all of this. I’m who you want to talk to. I don’t mind working with you through your property. Hey, tell me a little bit about what’s going on. They won’t even make sense.
Sharad 2:06:16
Okay, cool! Yeah. Thank you again, Grace! This was really, really fantastic. Like, lots of great information. I’m excited!
Grace 2:06:23
No problem. I could talk about radio for hours, but I’ll save you guys. But thank you so much for having me!
Sharad 2:06:30
Thank you. All right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for being on the call. See you guys next week. Thanks!
