By Eric Corwin

Radio should become a local marketing thought leader for business. What is a thought leader? Wikipedia’s description is as follows, a thought leader is a futurist or person who is recognized for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights. I would make one change to this and say that a thought leader can also be an organization like radio.

The opportunity

Look at your market and tell me how many different marketing or advertising choices there are for a business owner to consider. The answer of course is many. With many advertising alternatives come just as many sales representatives selling those services. Business owners are deluged with misinformation or conflicting information about their advertising choices. Many business owners make marketing decisions based solely on the representative’s sales pitch, others research their options on the web to determine their choice. The truth is most business owners don’t have a comprehensive marketing plan and are not well versed in many of the questions they need to ask about a particular advertising solution. Consequently, this presents a great opportunity for radio or any other media for that matter that wants to position itself as a thought leader for small businesses looking to advertise and market their company.

Small business is looking for marketing direction

There is a thought leadership void in your local market that is waiting to be filled. In fact, there’s a website called Area’s Best Business, (ABB), that was created to begin to address this issue. ABB provides unbiased marketing and advertising information to help the small business owner market their companies more effectively. The idea is that a well educated consumer of advertising services is a better customer and more importantly that by providing this information the small business owner can save money and time and give themselves a better chance to succeed. This website may be part of the solution and may begin to fill the thought leadership void but it is missing the most important component which I believe is local radio.

Why radio

Radio has the local market connection with its listeners–many of whom are small business owners. They have a digital presence that given time can become a viable aggregator and distributor of local content to its listeners and small business owners. Businesses want to feel that they can trust the information they receive. Not the self serving information that an advertising company provides for the purpose of selling their solution—a solution that may not be best suited for the advertiser. Radio can apply its local connection to the market through its airwaves and digital assets to provide marketing direction and support for the local small business owner. Through these efforts, they will build a strong relationship with businesses because they will view radio as a true unbiased resource for marketing support and direction. In turn radio will become the local market thought leader for advertising and marketing.

The initiative

An additional characteristic, as described by Wikipedia of a thought leader is “the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader marketplace in which it operates.” By taking the position as a marketing thought leader in their local market, radio can position itself as a true partner of small business. In turn small business owners will look to radio as a marketing resource for all of its considerations and radio will benefit mightily through this goodwill.

Learn more about becoming an advertising thought leader in your market.