More financial advisers are paying for (air)play

Carol Buchman, a certified public accountant and certified financial planner in Manhattan, hankered for something more. So she recently became co-host of a regional radio show about financial planning.

Ms. Buchman and Paige Stover Hague, a business consultant, are on a weekly radio show called “Financially Speaking” that airs on a couple of Boston-area AM stations. The two are looking for a New York affiliate, with visions of national syndication.

Ms. Buchman is an exemplar of the increasing presence of investment advisers and financial planners on the radio airwaves in metropolitan and regional markets across the nation. Evidence of the trend is strong, if only anecdotal: There are said to be 40 such shows now, for example, in the Los Angeles market alone.

“We’re seeing tons of new shows as more advisers see that this is something they can do,” says Bryan Farish, president of a Los Angeles radio promotion company that packages and syndicates shows, and helps them purchase local air time.

Mr. Farish says more radio executives have gotten over the industry’s previous reservations about broadcasting “advertorial” material, and so they are more open than before to selling their airtime to financial planners.

airwave marketing

The cost of a weekly show in Chicago, for example, runs from about $200 an hour for a graveyard-shift time slot on a small station to several thousand dollars for a prime-time “day part” on a big FM talk station.

More advisers are creating regular shows that can pay off handsomely as a marketing tool, often nicely complementing their local-seminar business.

“This business is still about name recognition,” says David Cohen, a certified public accountant who has been host of the “Business Sense Power Hour” on a Boston station since 1993. The show was expanded in 1997 to a daily one-hour lunchtime program.

“I’m still surprised by how many people say, `Do you do the radio show?’ I’ve gotten clients specifically because they’ve heard me,” says Mr. Cohen.

John Castino and Bruce Helmer of Wealth Enhancement Group in Wayzata, Minn., broadcast on WCCO-AM in Minneapolis every Sunday morning from 8: 30 to 9: 30. They talk about the day’s topic for 20 minutes and then open up the phone lines to calls from listeners.

“The goal is name recognition [for WEG] and getting people to call in, and it has worked great,” says Mr. Castino, a former infielder for the Minnesota Twins. “Seventy percent of our clients come through radio.”

Advisers and planners should make sure that there’s a potentially productive relationship between the station they choose and its audience demographics, stresses Mr. Castino, who was American League Rookie of the Year in 1979. “Otherwise, your best performances can fall on essentially deaf ears.”

Some of the most effective hosts also use the Internet to extend their relationships with their audiences through weekly e-mail newsletters or quizzes that help them capture listeners’ contact information.

But on-air success isn’t as easy as sliding behind a microphone. Advisers need to make sure that they are effective oral communicators.

They should listen to and learn from masters of the microphone, whether their preference is Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern.

“Listeners can only go by what they hear, which makes it very different from face-to-face appointments, or even seminars, where they can evaluate how you look and your posture,” says Marilee Driscoll, a Plymouth, Mass., consultant who helps advisers launch radio shows.

And, she notes, advisers should reckon with the cost of failure.

“If a seminar fails,” Ms. Driscoll says, “you can just get back up on your horse and do another one. Failure isn’t that apparent except to those who showed up.”

“But if you’re rolling out a local or regional radio program, it’s a pretty high-profile venture. And the only reason you’re not on the air anymore is because it’s not working.”