Promote Your Radio Station with a Digital Marketing Strategy
By Eric Corwin
Impact Target Marketing
Article Highlights:
• Stations should consider online advertising to promote themselves.
• The most effective online advertising that consumers/listeners are most likely to read and act upon are articles that
include station/brand information.
• Article-based advertising incorporates station brand information into informative content.
Today radio is hard pressed to afford any form of external marketing and relies almost exclusively on its airwaves and websites to promote programming. Although many stations have a digital presence few understand how this presence can affect both ratings and revenue because they’ve not had the resources to execute this type of strategy. This is beginning to change as the economy recovers and more station assets are freed up. Now is the time for stations to consider a more comprehensive approach to marketing.
Broadcasters should market their stations by combining advertising, PR and digital in such a way as to deliver a far greater ratings outcome. Stations should blend the control of advertising with the credibility of PR and the measurability of digital. A recent Opinion Research Corporation survey helps reinforce this. It measured consumer responses to five different types of online advertising and found that public relations based articles that included brand information got consumers actively involved with this information. This type of online advertising can also work for radio.
Radio, as the original social media vehicle can utilize the digital landscape by providing compelling content based articles to build buzz based marketing initiatives that bring about highly engaged listeners. The premise is simple; the creative and execution not so. Imagine a radio station that launches a contest called for example, “Be the Face of Jack-FM”, and offers a strong incentive for individuals that exemplify the Jack FM persona. Through PR based online articles describing the station and the characteristics of an individual who might represent Jack FM, the station has the ability to create a market wide buzz with this promotional outreach. Wrap Facebook, Twitter and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising support to promote this type of initiative. Include compelling on air execution in conjunction with targeted marketing like direct mail and you have created a market buzz that will affect both ratings and revenue almost immediately. If you’d like to learn more click here.
