SHOULD YOU INCLUDE PHONE NUMBERS IN YOUR RADIO COMMERCIALS?

"When engaged in radio copywriting, what's the best way to explain to a client why, for most radio advertising, radio commercials should not include phone numbers?"

A radio commercial should have a single Call To Action. The entire commercial should be designed to get the targeted listener to do one thing and one thing only.

How do you know what that one thing is? Easy: Determine how people act on the sales message. How do they make the purchase, so to speak — and that does not necessarily mean giving them money. How, specifically, do they take that action?

If it's an automobile dealer, usually customers give them money by coming to the automobile dealership. So that is your single call to action, "Come to the dealership."

And you need to give them a reason. You can't just say, "Come to the dealership." But that probably would be the Call To Action.

On the other hand, if the call to action is to call us for our free information booklet, then you give the phone number. But in that case, you don't give a website, too.

ONE Call To Action.

Which Call To Action? The one that the targeted listener is supposed to follow in order to act on the sales message.

And I still haven't answered your question yet, which is how do you convince, or educate, the client?

You can tell them some things~You can explain it to them~You can explain it to them~You can patiently teach them}~You can tell them~You can explain it to them~You can patiently teach them}. They won't believe you until they test it, and unfortunately they probably won't test it.

There's something called "face logic." Face logic is a fallacy, and it simply is when something sounds logical on the face of it, but it's not.

So it sounds logical that if you give people multiple calls to action, more people will respond because some people prefer to call, some people prefer to go online, some people prefer to stop in, some people prefer to write a letter, some people prefer to e-mail.And you give them this variety, this choice, and people can respond in their own preferred method.

That sounds logical? But it's a fallacy. It's false.

Choice paralyzes response.

Every time you give people a choice, the sales process stops while the person decides, "Okay, what do I want to do here?"

Someone once said, "Delay is the death of the sale." Each time you give people a choice, you're delaying that sales process. "Do I want to go online, or do I want to call them? Hmm…"

You know what? Some people will just give up at that point. That's not what you want. The entire commercial has to be engineered to deliver the listener directly to that one call to action.

There are lots of clever little tricks or techniques to demonstrate this for clients. I mean, the fact is no one wants the phone number unless they want to call. So if it's a car dealership, even if you can make people remember the phone number with a catchy jingle, so what? No one calls a car dealer.

I once heard a commercial for a bowling alley, and they gave the phone number. Why are you going to call a bowling alley? What the heck are you going to say to them?

"Hi, bowling alley, you have balls?"

What are you going to ask?

As the client, "Do you have a bank? Do you have a savings account?? Do you use a dry cleaner, a laundry?"

"Yeah."

"Do you ever go to the movies?"

"Yeah."

"Favorite movie theater?"

"Well, yeah, that one down the road."

" What's the phone number of your bank?"

"I don't know."

"Okay, what's the phone number of your dry cleaner or of the movie theater?"

And the client is going to say, "Well, I haven't memorized it, you know. First of all, I never need to call them, and if I did, I've got it written down somewhere."

That's real life. Even if somehow you can, through with some mnemonic device, make people remember the phone number, there is no point in giving the phone number at all unless that's how people make the purchase.

And there is this brand new invention where if someone wants to find the phone number of a business — you might want to write this down. It's called "The Internet." From what I hear, it's a bunch of tubes that somehow are connected.

And I hear that some people, when they want to find the phone number of a business, actually go online. Isn't that amazing?

Same for the address. So, that's the quick answer as to how to explain to the client why you should not put the phone number in the ad.

And you also tell the client, "If you give a phone number once, that's two to three seconds. If you give it three times, that's 10 seconds. Let's take that time and use it to sell more, even if it's only six seconds that are being used to give the phone number twice. Let's take that six seconds and use it to deliver the sales message more powerfully, to drive the targeted listener to that one Call To Action, and it has to be only one Call To Action."

And this, by the way, is not opinion; this is fact. This was first demonstrated around 1962, and I have not seen a test since then that disputed it.

A famous copywriter did a split test in New York in which they ran ads that had a phone number to call, or you could write in to this address. They had a coupon you could mail in. This was before the days of email and faxes.

So, this copywriter did a split test. They ran the ad three different ways; one was just with the phone number, one was just with the address to mail in the coupon, and the third had both.

I actually don't remember which was Number One and which was Number Two in terms of response, but I can tell you which was in last place. The one that got the fewest responses was the one that included both Calls To Action. And that hasn't changed since then.

Occasionally I need to convince clients of this. These days I kind of miss it, because these days they tend to take my word for it. But I remember one direct marketing client out of Denver, was very nice, really knew his stuff, but he didn't believe me when I said, "No, no, no, you don't give a phone number and your website.He was selling a diet solution.

"You've got to give only one. How do you make most of your sales?"

He said, "Well, most of our sales are made from our website." They had a very good, high converting website.

I said, "That's what we're going to put in your commercial."

He was a very nice guy, very smart, very respectful, and in fact, in a way I guess this demonstrates how smart he was. He wanted to see proof, which is good. Smart direct marketers don't take your word for things; they test.

So he conducted a test. I didn't care; they'd already paid me. He ran the commercials, one with the phone number, one with the website only, one with both.

A short time later the client emailed me to say, "Well, you were right~A couple of weeks later he emailed me to say, "You were right~A short time later he sent me an e-mail saying, "Well, you were right~A couple of weeks later the client emailed me: "You were right~A short time later the client emailed me to say, "Well, you were right}. The time that we ran the radio commercials with two calls to action far and away performed the worst."

It really is not opinion. It's fact.