Telling Your Story … Easy as 1, 2, 3!

Do you ever struggle to tell the best story for your station? Don’t quite know how to show that you are a great fit for the advertiser? Need the proper approach to finding and telling your story?

Follow these “golden rules” to improve your odds of moving the conversation to the next phase. Keep in mind … finding the best fit for an advertiser means showing how their target consumer has the same characteristics as your listeners.

#1 – Finding your story

• Gather all the info you can about the advertiser’s target consumer and their goals for the ad campaign. This might include age, gender, socioeconomic info, lifestyles, retail spending, etc.
• Pull all the quantitative and qualitative reports for anything that might match the characteristics of the target consumer.
• Consider additional categories to explore. Example: plans to buy a home or vehicle for a mortgage company as well as other loans and banking information.
• Determine the estimates that provide the most value for your story. Cume persons for reach, composition for targetability and efficiency, etc.

#2 – Craft your story (this is the matchmaking part)

• Determine where your listeners have the same characteristics as the target the advertiser wants to reach. Show the comparison by stating, “Here is your target consumer” and then, “Here is a profile of our listeners. They share several of the same characteristics, right?”
• Start with broad information and narrow. Consider profiling the market first, followed by the client or consumer group. Add your station facts last.
• Use meaningful data.
• Some sample bullets:
  • $XXX is spent in furniture yearly in (your market).
  • XX people in (your market) are planning to buy furniture in the next year.
  • Potential furniture buyers are XX% more likely to spend $XX on their next purchase. XX% of our listeners are planning to buy furniture this year.
  • That’s XXX people that could buy their furniture from YOU!

#3 – Putting it all together

PowerPoint is the mostly widely used software for presentations. Be sure you are proficient in the basics of layout, fonts, etc. or get someone to help you create the slide deck. Now take all the main bullets points you created to tell your story. Keep the slides simple – only a few main points/bullets on each page. Add an image or graphic that relates to your main points. Include a cover page with the client’s name and logo, as well as a summary and call to action. Depending on the stage of your prospecting, you may want to include a proposed schedule that will help the advertiser to accomplish their goals. DON’T FORGET TO ASK FOR THE ORDER!