By Eric Corwin
Impact Target Marketing
There’s some light at the end of radio industry’s tunnel. More advertisers are coming back to radio now. Rates are beginning to stabilize and in many cases beginning to rise. But we as industry have much work to do to in order to uncover the real opportunities that exist in our new digital world.
Some Broadcasters have Found New Revenue Solutions
Some broadcasters are seeking revenue solutions that are somewhat non-traditional to help support their return back to relative revenue stability: revenue sales seminars, social …

The Radio Industry Speaks
Last week we surveyed thousands of individuals throughout the radio industry. This survey was promoted through our weekly blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a variety of other social media sites. Respondents included those in traffic, sales, sales management, programming, general management and others. We asked questions that many of our weekly readers have posed to us over the last 12 months. To receive a complete list of survey comments click here.

Number of Survey Respondents: 2,849
1. How would you rate the recovery of …

Marketing budgets have never been tighter for radio stations. Today more than ever broadcasters that have a marketing budget need to be focused on their return on investment. In a PPM world, unlike the Diary rated world you can be more precise with your targeting and in turn more effective since there are fewer PPM households being surveyed than in a Diary rated market.

Your most important listener is survey friendly
Survey-Friendly individuals are influencers. They want information and are willing to spend time with things that interest them. …

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 …

by Eric Corwin
Impact Target Marketing
The state of radio today is such that most broadcasters have little or no marketing budget to promote their stations. Sure there is the station’s airwaves, but preaching to the present listeners alone is not enough to help you gain the ratings advantage over your competitors. Let’s discuss some of the “no cost” and “low cost” options to help you affect your ratings.
A social media strategy can increase ratings
Let’s talk a little about your station’s social media strategy. Do you have one? …

By Eric Corwin
Radio is at the mercy of major advertisers if we are only “order-takers”
Each day we read in All Access, Radio-Info and other industry trade publications that radio revenues are up and then again down. We hear that more automotive ad dollars are coming back to radio and that this is not a political year and it will negatively affect radio’s revenue. I feel like radio is a little like Oliver Twist asking “Please, sir, can I have some more?” We’re at the mercy of major …

Generate up to 1 million in Revenue for your Station
by Eric Corwin

This is a simple concept that uses an event in the form of a seminar or workshop as a catalyst to bring lots of business owners and marketers together. Once together they hear an informative “how to” pitch about marketing solutions and the reason “radio” will benefit their company. Every station across the country should be using a sales seminar strategy. There is no downside to getting your sales people hyper-focused on selling new advertisers, none.
Don’t let me hear …

Radio sales 2.0 will change everything

The sales landscape has changed over the last several years outside of radio. New sales strategies have replaced or supplemented the old tried and true methods. We all know that the web has changed the way we promote our stations, the way our listeners listen and the way we package our advertising. Now it’s time to change our sales strategies to keep pace with the way our advertisers buy. The web offers sales organizations a new and better way to reach …

Many of the stations we work with and consult want to use social media to market to their listeners. Unfortunately, most do so with very little regard for developing a comprehensive strategy. It is more of a hit or miss approach that yields little additional traffic to a station’s website or additional listeners to the station. Another point that broadcasters need to understand is that social media can also be effective at reaching potential advertisers. This is, for most stations, not even a consideration at this point. …

Good morning sales, it’s Friday
So here we are on Friday, January 15th in the world of radio sales. Does today look painfully similar to every other day within the last year. Your sales people stroll in for their obligatory morning sales meeting. Training may on be on tap for this morning or more likely it’s time to review the week; you listen closely as your sales people list their earlier-in-the-week targeted sales list, broken up into targeted cold calls, new business meetings and converted sales. …