RADIO INTERVIEW 101 The Importance Of A Toll Free Order Numb

RADIO INTERVIEW 101 The Importance Of A Toll Free Order Number

Most people who do radio interviews for the first time seem to really under value (if not totally disregard) the power of having a tollfree 800, 888 or 877 order number to announce during their interviews. You must understand that well over half of your total listeners are out-of-their-home (i.e., away from their TV, computer, newspapers and magazines), and that the single biggest chunk of listeners is listening in their cars. Car listeners have almost no other current-topic media to consume except their radio. So unless you are going to be advertising your product on a highway billboard, radio is going to be the only way you are going to reach car listeners.

Thus the need for an 800 number. During your interview, you need to FREQUENTLY announce your toll free order number (about every 5 or 10 minutes, depending on the length of the total interview,) so that car listeners can call in on their cell phones and order your product. Home listeners might call too, but it’s really the car listeners that you are after. The phone number must be announced clearly, slowly, repeatedly, and it also must be EASY to remember, so that car listeners can remember it and (unfortunately) dial it while they are driving. Announcing the number only once at the end of the interview, or worse, just posting it on the station’s website, will almost guarantee that you will get no calls. 800 numbers are so important that we let our clients use ours for free.

So, you ask, how do you get away with announcing your number so often? Wouldn’t it be perceived as being overly-pushy by the host? No, not if you do two things: First, you have to confidently and politely slide your order number into your interview. This takes practice, and the technique can be learned. Second, you have to have some type of a Top-10 list that listeners can call in and get for free (by having it emailed to them.) We cover how to do this in a different article. Not only does a Top-10 list allow you to announce your order number more often (because you are giving something away free to listeners), it also allows you to build your “sales list”… a list of email addresses of listeners who want to know more about your product after hearing you talk about it. If that’s not a hot list of prospects to buy your product, what is?

Some other things to think about, if you haven’t got your 800 number yet… Make the number spell something that can be heard, and remembered. Avoid the letters S, T, V, B, C, D, F, L, M, N, and P, if possible, since they are often mis-understood. Also, get one of the phone company’s voice-mail services, where more than one person can call the number at the same time and get to leave a message (most cell phone accounts can do this). You can “piggyback” your new 800 number on top of your regular phone or cell phone number, and it will ring your phone like a normal call; if you are already on your phone, it will go to voicemail.

Lastly, have a webpage set up that matches your 800 number. For example, if your number is 800-BUY-BOOK, then create a web page at www.800buybook.com, and have that page forwarded to your regular page where your product can be ordered.

800 numbers are cheap, from $5 per month, down to free. Also, there are several “toll free vanity” selection sites, like tollfreenumber.org that let you type in easy-to-remember vanity words.