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.

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.

Digital Radio Revenue

Looking for more digital traffic, time-spent-online, and page views?   Look to your audience.  Tracking of the top-100 radio stations indicates less than 8% of their broadcast audience visits the station’s website while 50-70% of the audience is online.  That’s 1 of every 10 listeners … listeners that go online every day.  Nobody talks about the station website numbers but everybody knows.  It’s no secret.  Ask the sales team for more digital revenue and they ask for “better numbers to sell”. 

Dynamic content will bring your radio website traffic, the sales attention, and increase your digital revenue.

How do you get dynamic content?  Your audience and CELLit Media

CELLit Media provides the video and picture tools to engage your audience.   Videos and pictures are easily posted to pages with your station’s logo, colors, and display text.  You create your own channels; select how media is displayed; and fully moderate videos, pictures, comments, and tags.  CELLit provides these tools for shared advertising space.  No cash expense.  No operating expense.  Just opportunity!

About CELLit Media and dynamic content:

• You can add dynamic banners to your main website that update to the most recent postings, the most popular or the highest rated items of the moment 
• You can add a video player to your pages and display the videos of your choice for immediate viewing
• You can manage media based contests with start/stop times, special instructions, graphics, and system generated reports to judge the winners.

How do you get started?  First, recruit a digitally inclined on-air talent to post “their video and picture stuff”.   We promise the on-air talent doesn’t need much encouragement to get started.  DJ’s using CELLit Media dynamic widgets and video players will immediately boost your web traffic.  Second, start an audience contest.  Something very simple … best Dad for Father’s day, summer swimsuits, any pet contest, any baby picture contest, my office cubical … whatever.  You will increase your traffic again.  You will be a real hero.

For more visit www.CELLit.com.

Top-10 Radio Industry News Sites Lead the Way

Here’s an interesting “eat your own dog food” example. 

The top-10 radio industry news websites are up … big!  Unique monthly visitors are up 68% over January’08, month-to-month growth is 19%, news-site visits approach 1-million, and time-spent-online includes 5.5 million page views averaging 53-seconds each.  Radio operators know for timely, valuable news that it’s online.  

Download the January Information Here

The most popular radio news sites have great content, valuable perspective, message boards, and multi-media tools.  The lowest traffic sites have fewer or no interactive tools generating less time-online and fewer page views.

Radio business people get radio news online and appreciate web tools.  Now, take a look at most radio station websites.  If one-million radio news readers “get it” then why are most station websites falling so far behind?

Take a look at the January’09 information.  Then look at your own radio website.  Start with a few new tools like CELLit. 

You are online.  Your audience is online.  It’s time for your station’s website to move up.

 — 00 —

Top 10 radio news traffic sites:  www.Radio-Info.com; www.radioandrecords.com; www.allaccess.com; www.radioink.com; www.rbr.com; www.rab.com; www.insideradio.com; www.kurthanson.com; www.hear2.com; www.nab.com.  Credit to http://www.Compete.com for this information. 

Google in your market … bigger than you realize

Later this month when Google reports 2008 financial results, we will find out if Google is bigger than the entire radio industry.  In ten years, Google has shown how websites can be an effective part of their marketing program.  Since Google revenues might exceed all the radio station revenue in your market, it’s time to learn how to sell against, around and with this gigantic local competitor.

The brand new information comes from a recent SEC filing where Google confirms they have 1-million advertisers.   The table below attempts to understand what 1-million advertisers means.  Take away Google’s international revenue and that portion of international advertisers.  Assume US revenue is evenly spread out across US advertisers and geography.  This is a big assumption.  Later, you can adjust your thinking for how much isn’t local.

If your radio station serves a population of 500,000 then it is possible Google had 970 clients in your market spending $1,550/month on search and Google network banner ads.  That’s about $18-million a year from merchants in your broadcast area.    Google didn’t get to $22+ billion in revenue without some part of your market. 

Did your 2008 sales revenues miss something? Do you have 970 clients? Merchants in your market spend part of their advertising budgets on something you either don’t believe in or don’t care about. 

Local merchants now have more respectable websites with product and service details, pictures & videos, location information, pricing, coupons, and ecommerce tools.  Does your broadcast signal work with or ignore websites? Are you engaging your listeners with web links? Does your website have dynamic content? Video? Texting? Commenting? Sharing tools?  

 Are you missing a connection and sales revenue? It’s time to make your radio website part of your marketing program.  Your advertisers are already there.  Join them.

 

Google Local Radio Market Revenue Estimates

30% objective can lead to strong NTR performance

Non Traditional Revenues (NTR) can be a source of 2008 success.  How can you build the NTR business without major investments, new programs, and expensive graphics programs?  We suggest you look to the younger staff and help them apply their creativity.   Generally, one-in-three of your staff under 35 years old has a MySpace or FaceBook page.  Some might have more traffic to their social pages than your radio website.

We suggest you lead with an objective that 30% of your listening audience visit your website once a month. This may not seem like a large objective but it is way above the 5% of listeners we see visiting the average radio website.   Now, help your staff include information that attracts the listening audience.  The regular posting of contest information, special event schedules, concert lists, and program details will dramatically increase your web traffic.

You can help the team stay focused by asking for a daily report of site visitors and page views.  A simple report, everyday, will demonstrate your priority and help the team focus on the objective. 

Building site traffic is the sound basis for stronger advertising performance and business results.

Radio + Cell Phone Video = 2008 NTR$

We begin 2008 as a new Inside Radio and Small Market Radio Newsletter sponsor.  You’ll see us in the morning Headlines and the Afternoon Updates.  We promise to keep our messages fresh and helpful.  Nothing gets passed over faster than yesterday’s news.

Working with our initial partners has helped us improve service.  The three most important improvements hold great promise.  The “trusted sender” program recognizes station members and can automatically approve cell phone video, emailed video/pictures, and pc postings for immediate web site display.  The “talent bar” is a new page footer that helps feature contest information, program director picks, and sponsor messages.

New “Channels” allows video and pictures to be displayed as a channel of information.  Visitors can locate contests, local events, morning shows, and any station defined group of videos.  All these features are directly controlled by the station administrator.

Check out the details on our business website:  http://www.CELLit.com

Happy 2008