By Duane Sprague

When done correctly, radio it works very well. The problem however, is that radio is not bought correctly in most dealerships, simply because the dealership does not have a trained media buying professional on staff, and the reps knowing this, take advantage. Here are a few of the top ways radio reps get the best of you.

Radio reps know the tricks, and a good one uses them well to disguise a poor buy as a great deal. There are over a dozen ways that the data can be misrepresented, the facts blurred, and your budget wasted.

For example, a rep may show you one or more colorful bar charts or graphs that graphically show a huge number of listeners on their station compared to the competition, or a big growth in listeners over the last year, or an impressive share (percent) of listener audience in a particular day part. We call these "one sheets" in the media buying profession, and they mean nothing really by themselves, but they look impressive.

The numbers in the charts may be true, and they will even quote a reputable source like Arbitron, (the radio rating and research firm) but they mean nothing if they are taken out of context from the rest of the data, and compared to a four Arbitron book average, analyzed against your target demo, analyzed based on a cost per target rating point, cost per thousand, audience reach, and audience turnover. These figures indicate the true efficiency of a station buy.

Another trick often used by your rep, is to broaden the day parts. Radio is sold by specific day parts, and they charge according to the Arbitron ratings for each day part. If for example, station WWYG has a very successful morning drive day part (Monday - Friday 6:00 am - 10:00 am) they will try to broaden that expensive day part to include 5:00 am - 10:00 am. By doing this, they can sell you a more expensive spot, and place it in a very poor time, from 5:00 am - 6:00 am, where it costs you top dollar, but it performs very poorly. What they tell you of course, is that their drive time is 5:00 am - 10:00 am, and then they stuff as many of your spots in the first hour as they can.

One of the most famous of devious rep ploys, is to ask you what your budget is, and then come back with a "package deal" for their station that consumes your entire radio budget. Two problems with this. Number one, package deals are always to the benefit of the station. When broken down and analyzed, at least 50% of the spots they give you run in very low rated day parts, which you should never even pay anything for, yet alone full price. Number two, by consuming your entire radio budget, you are extremely limiting your audience reach. Even the number one station in market only reaches a fragment of the population.

Another underhanded trick is to charge you a prime rate for prime times, and then pre-empt your spots for another advertiser that paid even more. You buy only morning and afternoon drive times for example, and they run your spots just before or just after those prime hours, because they booted your buy for an even more profitable one. And you never know it, because even most media people do not know how to do a post flight analysis, or they simply don't have the time and patience. So you paid for A, and got B, and nobody but the station is the wiser.

And by the way, never sign a radio stations time order, because the clauses are always in their favor. Also, the times they order for your spots to run are too broad or vague, thus allowing for a lot of spots to slip into undesirable times and days. For this reason, I have created my own time order, which guarantees that my spots run exactly where I want them, or I don't pay.

These are just a few of the ways you can get taken, but in the defense of radio reps, all reps are not bad all of the time, and some reps do not use any sales trickery or misrepresentation whatsoever. If you want to learn more about the subject of media buying in future articles, let this magazine know.