Back-to-school and Radio

Seriously good article in today’s Wall Street Journal – Stores Anxiously Watch Back-to-School Sales.   Click thru and read the article.  A few key perspectives:

• Inventories cut back with lower back-to-school sales expectations
• Retailers would rather chase more stock than discount if sales are weak
• Quick read to come from Florida and South Carolina with earlier back-to-school start dates
• If Back-to-school is weak then merchants will cut holiday inventory  … 2009 game over

Merchants are spreading out the “goods” to make shelves look full.  The mind set is run out rather than mark down.   No doubt, consumers will notice the lack of selection.  An unintended consequence might be even lower sales.

What’s this mean for local radio support?  At best, spot buy reductions with lower inventory and lower sales expectations.   Doing the same thing gets less.  It is time to reach deeper to stay even or think about recovering from this year’s first 6-months.

Couple of ideas:

• Bring back radio’s strong suit … contests.  Radio engages listeners like no other medium.  Turn on that special reach.   You can make the phones ring.  Now, make the register’s ring.
• Make the new contests about today, this weekend, and 72-hours.  The world isn’t waiting for 3-week events.  That’s so 90’s.  Do a blow out weekend.   Feature a special value … extraordinary event for 72-hours.  Concentrate the spot buy and flush out that sparse inventory.  Then it will be time to replenish the goods and the next spot buy.  Holiday outlook will be much brigher.
• Selling is now a team sport.  Two spots a day isn’t going to make a difference.  You need to program a support package.  Sell the concentrated package of spots on all day-parts, it will take on air mentions, web site banners, and page text for search engines.   Now, that contest … 72-hours and blow them away.
• Make the contests about back-to-school.  You might even think about individual winners from different schools to engage the entire audience.

Traffic Building Widgets

User generated content will dramatically increase your radio and newspaper web traffic.  Let your audience, readers, and viewers provide dynamic, interesting, local content.   You can use one of six CELLit widgets to fit your home page.  The widget will automatically update with your choice of the most recent media, most popular, or highest rated content.  The widget comes in 6-standard sizes and incorporates your colors and logo. 

CELLit Widgets

Administrators can create dynamic widgets for their audience media.  These widgets display in standard banner sizes that fit easily on the parent media website page.  You can choose horizontal sizes (720×90; 468×60); verticals (120×240; 160×600) and rectangles (300×250; 125×125).

The widget display includes your logo, colors, and a badge indicting the media selected.

CELLit Widget one-of-six

You can select from three different media selections:  Most Popular; Highest Rated; Most Recently Posted.

CELLit Widget Admin Panel