Your Radio Competition Smarter Than You?

Scary news that AT&T 5,000-strong sales force begins to sell Yahoo’s web display inventory in local markets.  This makes a total of 13,000 agents including the existing Yahoo Newspaper consortium local ad reps network.  Ok, radio spots are different so it’s not the same sale.

Agree the new “force” is not selling radio but they are educating your clients about web advertising … CPC, CPA, and CPM.  No minimums.  Short lead times. Immediate changes.

You should know how to talk about internet display marketing and sell radio’s reach as a powerful and important tool.  It’s not one way or the other.  Local merchants need a program that mixes the best parts, at the best times, for the best results.

If radio only talks about radio then you cannot be the leader.  I don’t think you want the new Yahoo force leading the discussion.

Get smart or get skunked.

Ten Immediate Radio Sales Ideas

Ten ideas to get you into the Owner/GM office and make a sale this week

Large companies run very powerful contests that sometimes get lost in the mail.  You can build powerful, immediate programs for this week’s sales by running local events along side these national contests.

1. Find an event that works with a local merchant.  Start with Mr. Sweepy®.  Prospect thru his 803 active contests.
2. Think of a local event to build on a national program (see our sample ideas below)
3. Call a local merchant and present your idea to immediately leverage the national event.
4. Offer your program with spots, a local web contest, and a traffic building on location event
5. Repeat often.

Here’s 10 events running now that you might combine the national event with a local contest on your radio station.  Add an on location

1. LOCAL BOAT DEALERS – Fram Nordic Boats 22’ Evolution Speedboat $64,999 – National Sweepstakes supported with a local merchant “My Boat” picture contest.
2. LOCAL OFFICE SUPPLY MERCHANT – FedExCup Global Golf Sweepstakes 5-day vacation package.  Got FedEx drop off in the store?  Support the national event with a contest for the best looking four-some pictures.
3. LOCAL DRUG STORE – Rite Aid Cool Cash Sweepstakes $10,000.  Support the national sweeps with a local merchant prize drawing.
4. LOCAL DRUG STORE – Hershey’s and Walgreens Sweeter Summer Giveaway Sweeps 26 – $500 certificates … support the event with a local my sweets picture contest and on location candy sampling event.
5. LOCAL APPLIANCE DEALER – Sony Pictures Television – King of Queens Summer Stay-cation Sweepstakes.  Support the national contest with a local “how old is your TV” picture contest.
6. LOCAL HOME DEPOT STORE – Delilah Show Summer Sweepstakes with Home Depot on premise event and home improvement contest
7. LOCAL GROCERY STORE – SuperValue and Clorox Instant win Sweepstakes 10 Grand Prizes worth $1,000 each
8. LOCAL RADIO SHACK  DEALER ASSOCIATION – Radio Shack Instant Win Game ends July 31
9. LOCAL CHASE BANK – Chase bank USA – One Good Reason Sweepstakes ends July 31
10. OTHER LOCAL EVENT POSSIBILITIES
    1. Wendy’s Sweet & Spicy Movie Premiere Sweeps …
    2. Liz Claiborne – 500 Wish List Sweeps
    3. T-Mobile Who’s Got you Covered Sweeps and Instant Win Game
    4. Bassett Furniture $500 Giveaway
    5. Banana Republic $1,000 Shopping Sweepstakes

Search the web for contests in your area and build on the national event with a local promotion.  Hurry some of these sweeps end soon … it is a good reason for the call … now.

Not the Only Game in Town

Radio contests can be powerful events, sponsor building programs, and listener delights.  However, some recent radio events are not drawing the entries they used to draw.

Radio contests are not the only game in town anymore.  Search the web and you can find Mr. Sweepy®  tracking 803 active sweepstakes with prize pools totaling $53-million!  He rates and ranks the current events drawing 600,000 monthly visits to his tracking website.  You can find Honeywell Consumer Products $65k prize pool; Nat’l Frozen Foods Assoc $100k prize pool, Dream Bedroom from Lifetime Entertainment $20k; Hilton Grand Vacations new Mini Cooper prize; Toyota Hybrid Drive Sweepstake; Sharpie Office Depot Back Pack Contest; Rite Aid; TNT-TV; Sega; Hasbro; ESPN; L’oreal; and 792 more contests.

Radio is not the only constest game in town anymore

Search Google for “Radio Contest” and find 121,000 possibilities.

Now about your current contest … what’s your prize?  Do you have an easy entry process?  Are you still asking for mail ins?   Is the contest mentioned in the sponsor’s spots?  Any on air mentions? Do you have the contest on your website?   Is the contest in your newsletter?  Facebook page?  Twitter stream? Is the contest inviting, current, immediate, and engaging?  Or, do you have a 4-week event with little consumer engagement?  Hopefully, you are not running black box contest … entries in and winners announced 4-weeks later?

With CELLit Media tools you can have an engaging, active, sponsor-delightful contest.  We provide web tools to accept digital picture entries and videos.  Your audience can enter by the web, by email or directly from their cell phone.  You set the contest policies allowing your audience to help select the winners with voting options per day, per contest, per contestant.  You moderate the contest with easy review tools.   CELLit social tools allow commenting, rating, voting, tagging, and email-a-friend.  We even summarize the contest and automatically report all the results to you just minutes after the ending date/time.

Is it time to become “the” game in town?  CELLit Media

Time to Re-think Radio Contests

You know the old radio contest structure.  Sponsor buys a four week spot program, the promo group runs the contest, a few on air mentions, and the sponsor prize is announced on air.  Winners come by the station to pick up the prize.  Nothing’s changed since AM radio.

The consumer has changed.  Two-week, four-week events are too long.  The audience wants to see the contest as it goes along.  Who’s winning?  How am I doing?  The days of a “black box” event are over.

The hot events are in-the-moment.   One new site Swoopo runs 225-contest auctions per day and has one-half million visitors each month.  Woot.com runs one-day events and draws 7-million web visits each month.   Contestants want to see voting, ratings, comments, and they want to share with links, embed codes, and email-a-friend options.

Sponsors have changed.  Most merchants are looking for a powerful immediate event … just like the audience.

Try something new.

CELLit Radio Contest Toos

Run a 72-hour event on your radio station website. The sponsor focuses a spot buy into the 72-hours across all day parts.  The audience enters on your website.  Pictures and videos will work.  Send in by email, cell phones, or post on the web site.  Don’t have the tools?  Don’t worry we can connect you in one-day.  No software, no servers required, and no fees.   CELLit will even produce a summary report for all entries, contact information, and complete voting details.

Because the contest is NOW, this moment, the event has special impact.  You might even engage the audience to visit the local sponsor to complete the contest participation.

Furniture stores, mattress stores, sporting stores, restaurants, clubs, clothing boutiques all want the immediacy.  Your new week/weekend event will be the talk of the town.  Repeat weekly.

Don’t have a radio show producer … get a smart phone

To all the web administrators, please pass this along to your on-air hosts.

So you are not the morning show … yet?  Don’t have a producer?  Working two-jobs?  No time to prepare?

Time for a smart phone with FaceBook and Twitter apps will help produce your radio show.  What’s better than one show producer?  Hundreds of producers.  You can build a community with a smart phone, Facebook, and Twitter.  When you get connected your show and your career will both move ahead.

• Smart phones will get smarter and smarter … will you?
• A community want to share enjoys good leadership.  Are you that person?
• Your online community will keep you connected with what’s important.  What’s real.  What’s worth talking about.

Why is CELLit Media posting this?  We know video is just a part of your community.  An important part but not the whole thing.  If you want to build a community, increase your ratings, move your career ahead then you need help.  We can be part of the solution.

Is YouTube Good for Radio?

Some radio website administrators reach out with YouTube embedded videos.  It’s actually a really smart start.  Video works, YouTube works, and your radio station website will see an immediate jump in time-spent-online.

So what’s the problem?

It’s a good start but you need more.  The “more” is reserved for YouTube.  Once your audience sees the first video they can be off to Google-land.   YouTube embedded video tools can be a quick slide for your audience to leave.

You have options.  There are many white-label video tools.  Many providers are free to use.  Some cost money.  The all work and let you keep your audience.

We think CELLit Media offers a powerful option.

1. Audience generated pictures and videos.  The real power is engaging your audience.  They want to participate, see themselves, and be part of your community.  Otherwise, they become part of YouTube.
2. You can post your own station videos and enjoy an immediate jump in web traffic.  You can be in control.
3. Posting by PC, email or cell phone.  With CELLit Media you your audience can post by email as an attachment, by cell phone, or on your PC.  It’ easy.   You can even forward email from your own station email address like Videos@Station.com Put the you back in your videos.
4. You can run video and picture contests with full control.  CELLit Media tools manage and report the results to you.  YouTube doesn’t have these tools.
5. You can moderate all your audience generated content … pictures, videos, comments, tags, and flags.
6. You are in charge.  You set the policies.  You customize the tools.  CELLit tools work for you.
7. CELLit is advertising supported.  Just like on-air syndicated programs, the CELLit video tools do not have any start up expense or operating expense.

Continue using YouTube if you like.   The Google-guys appreciate your hard work.  Or, take charge and keep your audience.   More information at www.CELLit.com

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Radio Website Traffic

There seems to be a common practice not to mention radio station web site traffic.  Just like the military “Don’t ask, don’t tell or you are out”.

You know how it goes at the station.  The GM never asks.  The web admin never tells.  The digital manager (the newly titled NTR person) knows but does not talk about it.  The sales manager and his entire team know and they don’t talk about it.  The on-air talent talks but they don’t know anything about the web.

We surveyed the top 100 radio stations and found only 6% of the listening audience visited the station’s website.    We did find two stations with larger online audiences than the local broadcast.

The issue is 70% of the broadcast audience has internet.   The web has a valuable place in their lives.  However, less than 1 in 10 internet connected listeners visits their station’s website.   How often do they need the station’s phone number?

Station administrators know the problem.  Unless you can get the broadcast audience to the website … nobody cares.  You cannot get the audience to the website without content.

It’s easy to point at others.  They need to provide more help, the PD doesn’t care, there isn’t enough time to keep the site fresh, it is too much work to post pictures, and videos … out-of-the-question.

If you are in charge of the station website here’s what you can do:

1. Keep the home page graphics fresh and current.   You must change the graphic at least once-per-week.   This is the minimum you should do.
2. Keep content up to date.  You know where to look.  On-air personality pages current?  Contest pages expired?  Contact information still real?
3. Delegate a page not the responsibility.  Got a sharp promotions person that wants to be more involved?  Invite them to help you.  Contest pages are easy to delegate.   Ask around and see who has a Facebook or MySpace page.  You will be surprised.
4. Invite the on-air people to email you new bio-information and a new picture.  Invite the new digital manager to send you weekly updates for the home page.
5. Add a few widgets to your web pages.  You’ll have dynamic, interesting, engaging content.  Don’t feel comfortable?  Talk to someone.  Call us.  We can help you.
6. CELLit Media provides easy to use video and picture tools.  There is no start up cost and no cost to operate.  These ad-funded (syndicated) program tools do the work for you.

Don’t ask, don’t tell, and eventually you will be tagged as the problem.

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.