Thanks to Megan Black from Second Street as well as Tucker Young at Bryan Broadcasting Corporation for this week’s Advertiser Success Story. Second Street and KNDE-FM in College Station, Texas, teamed up to generate five year-long leases, 110 new contacts for the client, and $3,500 in revenue for the radio station. Here’s how they did it.
The Idea
When meeting with the client, which is a local rental community in College Station, the station discovered that the target audience was college students who would actively be in the market for new housing in the area. It was decided a sweepstakes would be done.
The Execution
The first step in developing a good sweepstakes promotion is determining the prize. While any number of prizes could incentivize a large number of entrants, the station only wanted people entering who would be interested in living at the|VINTAGE Apartments. The advertiser offered up an entire year of free rent as the grand prize, a value of over $9,000. Not only was this going to attract a lot of interested entrants, but they would also all be people likely in the market for a new apartment.
Free Rent for a Year
The station also wanted to be sure it could produce additional measurable results for the apartment complex. They started with an email opt-in for the sponsor. This way they could grow their database of leads for potential marketing campaigns.
Two survey questions were added to help the|VINTAGE Apartments understand more about their potential clients: what’s most important to them about their housing choice and what would incentivize them the most.
In addition, a survey question was added asking if the entrant was actively looking for an apartment and wanted to be contacted by someone at the|VINTAGE Apartments. The goal was to find hot leads.
Collect The Leads
To maximize engagement, users were eligible for extra chances. For each person who entered with their unique link, they’d be eligible for an extra chance of winning. The apartment company offered every entrant a free month of rent at the|VINTAGE. Since just one lease would mean incoming revenue for 12 months, offering a free month would be a lot of motivation for a potential renter, but not a huge hit for the apartment complex.
The station wanted to take the sweepstakes one step further and make this into an event. Instead of choosing just one grand prize winner right away, 50 finalists were picked. Each finalist was presented with a key and invited down to the|VINTAGE Apartments to see whose key opened the lucky door. The event was even streamed live on the radio station’s Facebook page.
The Results
When all was said and done, the campaign was a tremendous success. Five apartments were rented as a direct result of the campaign. Based on an average annual lease, that means over $77,000 in revenue for the advertiser from just one engagement campaign. Beyond that, 110 users asked to be contacted about an apartment, and 277 people joined their email database. $3,500 in revenue for the station. Perhaps the biggest takeaway…all the other apartments in the area now wanting to run a similar contest.
Here’s what Tucker Young told Radio Ink about this successful promotion. “The Vintage is a great example of the results you can get when you combine the power of radio to push to digital. The goal of the campaign was conversion of listeners into leasers for a lesser-known apartment complex in a market that has one of the highest saturations of apartment housing in the nation. To accomplish this they needed a big voice, and radio is the biggest one you can get for saturating a market in a fixed window. We used radio to drive listeners to our website and enter for a chance to win a free apartment for a year at the Vintage. Every entrant got a free month of rent if they signed a lease just as a thank you for registering. We picked 50 finalists and had the giveaway during a live event at the complex where the staff had been primed to give tours to everyone who showed up and offer them a special deal if they signed that day. We also included a link in the entry blank that could get them a call from the complex if they were currently home hunting and wanted to talk to someone from the Vintage immediately, which proved extremely popular. The campaign performed beautifully and delivered leases over and above what the client expected. In addition to leases, it put them on the map instantly as a great place to live in our market. Radio is a powerful medium of immediacy. Channeling that immediacy of action into a digital funnel that can provide tangible and measurable results for our clients has been something that we’ve been moving towards for a couple of years now and it’s delivered tremendous growth for both them as well as for our bottom line.”
They’ve seen the power of radio.
For more information on this success story GO HERE.
You can contact Megan at Second Street at [email protected]
You can reach Tucker at Bryan Broadcasting at [email protected]
