(By Loyd Ford) This article is for radio CEOs, market managers, others in leadership positions in radio and local radio sellers in the United States.
This isn’t meant to be a groundbreaking piece of advice and I cannot pretend that what follows will be an idea you haven’t thought about yourself. I hope you have. However, this is about how radio must tell the local story of radio brands, clusters and connection to local customers for advertisers.
Radio gets power from being local. That certainly includes local sellers and local sellers should want to control the narrative when it comes to solutions for local business owners. We shouldn’t just be sellers of our products. We should seek to be truly seen as trusted experts in marketing and advertising.
Radio should work to be top-of-mind when potential advertisers are looking for advice on advertising, marketing and connecting to new customers for their business.
Your customers have more choice than ever and they are seeking ways to market their business on their own in the absence of someone they trust to ‘make it easier for them.’ When you get time in front of a prospect, you better have your best advice, be willing to listen so you can help business owners find the solution they are looking for and you should always bring something creative with you. Advertisers are looking for creative ideas constantly. It’s not recommended that you bore them.
The more we continue rolling into the 21st Century, the more it seems the margin for error is getting smaller and smaller. Attention spans are not growing – they are shrinking (if that’s possible). So, there is literally no reason not to use every natural and unnatural advantage for local radio right now, right?
We live in the future right now and clients and potential clients are looking for customers they must have in the future. Our job is to give them the best practices, smart innovations, shortcuts (if we can) and the best opportunities to bring those new customers directly to them. That’s what they pay us for and radio absolutely needs to be better at telling that story consistently so we are seen as the advertising solution experts in local markets.
Of course, radio has for many decades had high-performing sellers and sales managers that created immersive opportunities to mingle with clients and potential clients and become those trusted experts.
Let’s talk about today. Why wouldn’t we use our advantage of being audio professionals to create more local benefit and extend forward that we are the local advertising and marketing experts that can help you understand and navigate the best solutions for your advertising and marketing today?
The Real First Question For You
Are you or is there someone on your staff today who is a very communicative expert in advertising? This person is well-spoken and engaging, draws people to them, is probably a storyteller and absolutely a great listener. They probably smile a lot. If you are thinking of a specific person right now, that person should probably be a host or co-host of a unique local weekly podcast that begins with the name of your city or market.
Why? Because all across the world we are seeing how effective podcasts can be in helping sell the story of individual brands and your company should be a local brand and certainly a set of local brands well-known to the advertising community. If that isn’t already happening, it should be your goal going forward.
- A podcast about local advertising solutions puts your company at the head of and in the middle of the conversation about local effective advertising.
- Smart local advertisers already looking for solutions will be more likely to listen and learn the value of connection to you, your ideas and to come closer to you as a result of a consistent podcast that offers true value for them (this cannot be an advertising podcast about your brands).
- Planned, written and executed correctly, a local advertising podcast can electrify the perception of you as the local expert.
- Because you are attached to a cluster of radio stations (or at least a single local radio brand), you have an immediate way to expose your new podcast to a lot of people, including many local advertisers and the people that know and influence them.
I would recommend that your podcast be a short 3 to 5 minute podcast. If your super-seller isn’t someone with great writing skills, find someone in your building who is and get them to write the weekly podcast.
Do yourself a great favor. Don’t be like your lessor competitors who will do an inconsistent podcast and then 6 months from now you look and see the last episode was 8 Months Ago. That will effect no one and will be a giant waste of time. Leadership starts from the top. Make this effort important at the top and everyone will know: Your podcast happens once a week – every week.
- You want a podcast that is 3 to 5 minutes only. Maybe less.
- You want a podcast that focuses on all kinds of advertising, not only radio and not only what your team sells.
- Your podcast must be done consistently and you must have a long-term commitment to it. Don’t even do it unless you’re willing to commit to 3 or more years up-front.
- Always make sure each episode has easy-to-recognize take away value (not selling).
- You should include your contact information up-front in the podcast and at the end.
- It is my recommendation that you have an invitation in each podcast to receive your monthly ‘advertisers cheat sheet’ (but that’s another article).
We also recommend that in addition to making your podcast available on iTunes and “anywhere you get your podcast,” that you post your individual podcast episodes on a dedicated site about the podcast so it is highly searchable for business owners looking for that special edge, new information, knowledge that can separate them from their competitors and bring them more new customers.
Take the actual written copy of each episode and publish a single page with the individual link to the audio and post the written copy itself on that page so Google can crawl your website and get your local content.
The Consistent Spread It Critical
Finally, and this is important, encourage everyone on your team – programming and sales, engineering and administrative – to share the link in their social media (and share it on the individual radio station socials) each week. Every person in your organization has more influence than you or they think.
Let me repeat: Consistency and making sure you are sharing valuable information are the critical factors you must have for your weekly local advertising and marketing podcast.
This shouldn’t take up too much time; we’re broadcast and audio professionals. I say this all the time. “Once you have a radio station, you can get anything else you want.” But to do that today, you must consistently tell your story and control the narrative of local advertising in your market.
Start with a podcast about local advertising and marketing in your local market, post and share the content, promote it consistently on the air and make your local seller (or sellers) stand out as the overall trusted names to call out when looking for true local advertising experts in your market.
Loyd Ford can be reached at 864.448.4169 or [email protected].
