Category Archives: Uncategorized

Radio’s Big Surprise

Your clients tend to think of Millennials as permanently attached to their smartphones.

They also tend to think of radio as a medium used mostly by older people, the ones who can’t quite figure out how to work an iPod.

Both of those stereotypes are dead wrong, along with a lot of other ideas about media usage in a must read article published in Media Life Magazine.

The article quotes Nielsen’s most recent total audience report, a quarterly document that tracks media use by different age groups, shatters a number of misconceptions about new and old media use.

It says “It might surprise you to know that more Millennials listen to traditional AM/FM radio each week than use smartphones.”

Nielsen found 93 percent of adults 18-34 listen to radio weekly, while just 80 percent report using a smartphone.

In fact, radio is the most frequently used medium among Millennials. It’s well ahead of TV at 76 percent and PCs at 49 percent.

I recommend that you copy the entire article at this link  http://www.medialifemagazine.com/surprising-facts-about-media-usage/                    and mail, email or hand deliver it to every business on the planet as a third party endorsement of radio’s continuing relevance.

 

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The Myth of Complete Disruption

One of the blogs I read this week said, “Mobile has completely disrupted digital marketing”.

          I have not seen piles of laptops along the roadside on garbage pick-up day with the move to mobile anymore than I saw radios piled in a heap when the internet began in 1982.  We continue to use laptops, and radio, even as we add new media to our lives.

          And while there is no doubt the digital marketing world continues to change faster than a speeding bullet, ‘complete disruption’ is an over-statement. This complete disruption myth is one that has been repeated almost weekly as the internet, search engine optimization, social media, mobile and a long list of digital marketing alternatives evolves.

          As our digital media expert, Alysia Taylor, explains it, “These changes are an evolution, not a revolution.”

          Imagine being a business owner in 2004 who bought the ‘complete disruption’ story with the introduction of MySpace, the self-proclaimed first social media. What would have happened had you put all of your eggs in that marketing basket just before Twitter, Facebook, and a long list of other social media evolved?

          No business wants to be left behind in the evolution of electronic media. At the same time, as this world changes ever-faster, there is a great deal of comfort, and success, in continuing to use tried and proven heritage media like radio as the constant in this chaos.

          The announced complete disruption has not made allowance for the fact that one of the oldest electronic media, radio, continues to reach in excess of 90% of adults every week, in spite of all of the new media introductions.

          I would never discourage an advertiser from trying something new. But we also owe it to advertisers who want to sleep at night, to point out a constant that they can rely upon during this evolution….radio advertising.

          Our Winning in the New Media Economy advertiser seminars and local market surveys are convincing local advertisers across North America to include radio as a primary media in their media mix. Contact [email protected] if you would like to facilitate our surveys and seminars in your market.

 

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What’s New

 Marketers have always known the power of the word ‘new’.

    From packaged goods distributors who advertised ‘new and improved’ to the digital media folks who describe their platforms as ‘new media’, there is no disputing the allure of all things new.

       But here’s the thing. For business categories that don’t currently advertise on radio, radio can be positioned as the something ‘new’ they are looking for.

       As some of our better advertiser categories take budget from radio to try new media, radio can be new media for advertisers that are losing confidence in their old print or Yellow Pages stand-bys.

       Our Share-of-Mind surveys in more than 100 markets across North America have proven our Share-of-Voice = Share-of-Mind = Share-of-Market formula.

       When you crack a new advertiser who has no competitors advertising on your station they automatically have the dominant share of voice with your audience, and the results will amaze even you!

 

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Radio with a Capital ‘R’

You may have noticed in our last ENS on Sales that I’ve started spelling Radio with a capital R.

 Proper names always begin with a capital letter, and Radio is the proper name of a media that’s proven to work. The TV guys have always spelled TV with caps, rather than tv.

Ironically, our ‘Three R’s Formula’ has been one of the formulas we’ve used to sell more Radio.

Reach  X  Repetition  X  Relevance of the message = Results

Is it time that your account executives, and your advertisers, learned the various formulas for creating advertising that works?

Contact [email protected]  to inquire how we can help you sell more Radio advertising in 2016 and beyond.

 

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Downside of Relationships

If you have been on our website you know our motto is “Helping media companies and advertisers to establish stronger more profitable relationships.”

    But there can be a downside to ‘relationships’.

    I talked to a radio salesperson last week who had left the competition’s cluster to join my client’s station cluster.  Upon arriving at the stations we consult, he was shocked to learn that a client, who had spent $1,000 a month with him at his previous stations, had been spending $4,000 a month at our stations. When he asked the client why he hadn’t been spending $4,000 a month with him at the other stations, the client said “You never asked me to.”

    Many account executives confuse ‘relationship’ with ‘friendship’ or become protective of their relationships and fear asking for more. Often they become ‘too close to the forest to see the trees’.

    Your clients are all adults. They are perfectly capable of saying ‘No’ when you’ve reached their budget threshold.  Your clients are in sales too, and they respect salespeople who have enough confidence in their product to ask for more.

    I’m not proposing you gouge or over-sell your good clients.  But your relationship can be more damaged by accepting token buys than it would be by presenting solid plans to increase reach and frequency to help improve your clients’ R.O.I. (Return on Investment).

 

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