By Holland Cooke
Radio Consultant
BLOCK ISLAND, RI — To avoid a common mistake I hear in my radio travels, promos for your station’s website should END – not BEGIN – by plugging the site.
Instead, begin by telling ‘em ONE REASON they want to go there.
Fundamentally, a promo is a commercial, right? So, as with copy you’d write for an advertiser, you should:
1. BEGIN by stating the prospect’s need, THEN…
2. Explain how taking action will solve that need, THEN…
3. Tell ‘em how to take action.
As with most of what-you-push-out-the-speaker, “YOU” should always come first
Yet the typical station website promo still begins by announcing that-WE-have-a-web-site, which contains this, this, and that. Often the copy invites listener to “CHECK OUT our web site,” very 1990s.
Back then:
a) Having-a-web-site was novel; and
b) The Internet consisted of websites; and
c) We’d “LOG-ON,” a phrase from the modem screech era, which we still hear in promos.
Now most users are always-on, via smartphones and tablets that make being-on-the-internet invisible; and on computers with always-on cable or DSL or telco fiber connections. And all this access has shortened attention spans.
Nobody wants to peruse a website
They’re too busy. The only way you’ll get ‘em there is to offer value in-exchange-for their time.
“NOW THAT THIS STORM HAS PASSED…NOWWW ARE YOU GOING TO BUY A GENERATOR? READ THREE SHOPPING TIPS THAT’LL GET YOU THE-MOST-BANG-FOR-YOUR-BUCK, AT WXXX DOT COM.”
See, hear, read more from consultant Holland Cooke at www.HollandCooke.com and follow HC on Twitter @HollandCooke. Meet Holland Cooke at TALKERS New York 2013 on Thursday, June 6.
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