In broadcast sales, we spend an enormous amount of time talking about messaging.
What should the commercial say? Is the call to action strong enough? Should we mention the phone number twice? Is 30 seconds enough time? Should the client use humor? Should we lead with the problem or the solution?
Those are all legitimate questions. Great copy matters. Frequency matters. A strong offer matters. Creative matters.
But I think there’s an even bigger question that we sometimes skip entirely. Is the radio station getting attention?
Because at its most basic level, that’s what marketing is about: attention.
Before an advertiser can persuade somebody, that advertiser first has to get somebody’s attention. Before the greatest commercial ever written can work, somebody has to actually be there to hear it.
Which means your copy and messaging are ultimately only as valuable as the platform carrying them.
Think about the Green Monster at Fenway Park.
There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about putting an advertisement on a giant wall. Businesses have been putting their names on walls for a very long time. What makes the Green Monster valuable isn’t the sophistication of the advertising medium.
It’s the attention surrounding it.
Fenway Park is one of the most recognizable venues in American sports. Thousands of people are sitting inside the ballpark. More are watching on television. Highlights get replayed. Photos get shared. Home runs become moments. The wall itself is iconic.
That makes the real estate valuable.
Advertisers don’t need to be convinced that people pay attention to Fenway Park. They already know.
And I think radio executives should occasionally look at their stations through exactly that lens.
If your radio station were a wall, would anybody want their logo on it?
Not because your sales team is great at overcoming objections. Not because you can package enough spots together to make the cost per commercial irresistible. Not because somebody on the sales staff has called the business owner 14 times and finally got an appointment.
Would advertisers actually want to be associated with what you’ve built? That is a fundamentally different way of thinking about radio sales.
We tend to put an enormous amount of pressure on sales departments to create demand for advertising inventory. Prospect harder. Make more calls. Send more emails. Knock on more doors. Build better presentations. Handle objections. Ask for the order.
Obviously, selling will always require selling. Nobody is suggesting that account executives should sit in the office waiting for the phone to ring. But at some point, station leadership should ask why the phone isn’t ringing.
If your station is a major part of the community, if your personalities are recognizable, if your promotions get talked about, if your events draw crowds, if your social content gets shared, if your high school football coverage matters, if your morning show creates conversations, and if your brand consistently finds its way into the cultural bloodstream of your market, something interesting begins to happen.
You stop selling only commercials. You start selling proximity to attention.
Companies want their logos inside packed stadiums. They want sponsorships attached to popular events. They want product placement inside content people actually consume. They want influencers with engaged audiences talking about their products. They want signage where people will see it.
Nobody has to explain to those companies why attention has value. Yet sometimes in radio we seem to believe the sales department should somehow manufacture value independently from the product. Here’s the cold, hard truth: It can’t.
A brilliant account executive can sell around weaknesses for a while. A strong relationship can keep an advertiser around. A clever promotion can generate incremental revenue. Great creative can absolutely improve results. But sales become dramatically easier when the underlying product has cultural gravity.
Imagine walking into a local business and having the owner immediately know your morning-show personalities. Imagine the restaurant owner asking how his business can sponsor the station’s Friday-night football coverage. Imagine the regional company calling because it keeps seeing photos from your station’s events. Imagine a new business opening in town and putting your station on its marketing plan before one of your sellers ever picks up the phone.
Create something advertisers want to join.
The Green Monster doesn’t cold-call Monster Energy or Jim Beam.
