(SALES) 10 Reasons to Embrace Digital Media

3-20-2013

Even if you are not selling digital media yourself, digital can be a radio account executive?s greatest friend.

Of course, it is easy to assume digital is your enemy when your prospects tell you they have no faith in "traditional media" and are going to invest in the latest shiny new thing, be that social media, search engine optimization, daily deal sites, online directories, or a long list of other new digital media.

But the reality is that even the forecasters who are the most pessimistic about traditional media are forecasting traditional media will still capture the lion?s share of local advertising budgets far into the future.

The opportunity some broadcast account executives miss in these forecasts is in the lion?s share of this graph. By far, the lion?s share of local advertising spend has historically gone to print: flyers, mailers, newspapers, yellow pages, catalogues, brochures, coupons, and more.

Virtually all printed advertising can now be strategically replaced by much cheaper online applications.

Think about the old-fashioned way of local businesses promoting a preferred customer sale or event as an example. Prior to the Age of Electronic Media, advertisers had to pay to print the invitation, buy and stuff envelopes, pay the post office for delivery, and affix stamps and addresses to every envelope.

Today, thanks to electronic media, the preferred customer sale can be promoted via email at virtually no cost! And remember when advertisers had to pay extra for color in their printed ads? How much extra do they pay for color in their online ads?

Anything online today is a cheaper, faster, and better alternative to old print product; this leaves more money for radio advertising at the expense of print when we embrace a strategic mix of broadcast to inspire, Internet to inform.

Radio can now legitimately claim the lion?s share of the traditional media share of local budgets.

So here are the 10 reasons you need to embrace digital media:

1.) You will look like a dinosaur if you don?t embrace digital. Your advertisers are hearing about, and reading about, the latest, greatest shiny new media daily. You?ll be swimming upstream to claim you are better than digital media. It will be far more productive to teach clients how compatible we are with new media.

2.) Digital media are free or cheap, relative to their print alternatives. When advertisers can have their flyers or coupons online without the expense of lumberjacks, pulp and paper mills, truckers, printing press operators, and delivery people, there is more money left in the budget for radio. Newspapers that used to charge $5,000 for a full-page printed ad, are finding it difficult to get $1,000 for their online page.

3.) It is the Age of Electronic Media. A strategic mix of radio to inspire and Internet to inform is a powerful combination in any marketer?s toolbox.

4.) Digital media need ?drivers? to succeed. Using radio to create a pre-need preference for a business, and to drive more prospects to their online media, makes radio the new must-have medium.

5.) SOM (Share of Mind) is proven to be the best SEO (Search Engine Optimization). An ENS Media study of more than 12,000 consumers reveals that the overwhelming majority do not click on the first name at the top of a search engine page if they?ve never heard of the business. Rather, they scan ahead and prefer to click on the first name they are familiar with.

6.) You can now capture two budgets in one call; you can claim a larger share of the traditional media budget, as well as a share of the growing digital media budget on the same call. 

7.) Telling an integrated radio/online story is our foot in the door to advertisers who were previously comfortable placing the bulk of their budgets in print and would not listen to our radio story. Now, they are not so comfortable. One recent study revealed that 69 percent of advertisers are seeking ?new? marketing solutions. They know the world is rapidly changing and are desperately seeking new solutions. A broadcast/Internet mix can be the "new" solution for businesses that previously did not invest in radio.

8.)  We are the targeting kings! In a world that has begun to focus on geographic, demographic, and psychographic targeting, old print account executives who claimed their newspaper or coupon envelope ?reached everybody? are having difficulty wrapping their heads around targeting. The best radio account executives have always understood, and have been able to sell, more narrowly targeted audiences.

9.) Fragmentation and confusion are rampant. Knowledgeable, integrated media account executives who understand how to articulate the strategic radio/Internet media mix can help confused business decision-makers sort through the long and growing list of media, trying to capture their share of the pie. Advertisers who previously thought radio was ?fragmented? now realize the competition for radio audiences is minor compared to the list of competitive websites, Web directories, search engines, social media, mobile applications, and more.

10.) Digital has killed the yellow pages. Yellow pages historically captured more money from the services and professional sectors in every market; more than all of the retail radio budgets combined. These sectors understand the yellow pages demise and can be sold on placing their huge budgets on radio to drive more traffic to their websites. Send this video link to your heavy yellow pages advertisers and you are almost guaranteed to get an appointment when you promise to drive more traffic to their sites.

Wayne Ens is the president of ENS Media Inc. Go to www.wensmedia.com to subscribe to your free ENS on Sales weekly 30-second radio sales tips.

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Embrace Social Media and Blogging to Create an Advantage

by Kerry Brewer

The latest studies and research show that stations that use blogging and social media to supplement their online presence, gain more in listener loyalty than stations that do not. The use of social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can be very creatively used by any radio station today to not only instill listener loyalty, but to drive branding as well. As a matter of fact, by not embracing social media and blogging, you are telling today?s progressive online listener that you do not care to cater to their demographic requirements.

One of the great benefits of embracing social media to promote your station and its online streams, is that it is free. I definitely do recommend however, that if you are going to use social media, and particularly blogs, that you need an in-house staff member that knows the details of your marketing mission and can effectively create and maintain that online effort. After all, the everyday events, remotes, interviews, guests and promotions that a radio station is involved with on a day-to-day basis, has to be then translated over to these mediums by someone with integral knowledge.

Twitter is perfect for setting up a page to send your playlist information to, and display artist/title/album, album art and/or show information. This is a very easy thing to do. All you do is set up a free Twitter page, and export your playlist metadata to the page using an API script. Ok, so that may not be your expertise, but that?s why you have a tech department, webmaster, or web development firm. It takes 5 minutes and then you can start promoting it, linking it on your site, telling your listeners about it on-air, and by whatever other means you use to get the word out.

Setting up a Facebook fan page is also very simple to create and maintain. Here is another chance to promote your station and events, document interviews and guests, create discussions with fans and more. Facebook also give your listeners the ability to post messages and comments, and also click on your ?Like? button, linking themselves to you. This information is also shared with others and a viral effect takes place, pushing your brand out there even further. Listener-interactivity is the key to keeping listeners? attention longer. The more ways you have to communicate with your listeners, the higher the loyalty rate and recognition factors.

Set up a LinkedIn page if you haven?t already. This may be more applicable to the individuals in the organization, as LinkedIn is seen more as a corporate and business networking platform. It?s a great way for the execs and DJs to establish a profile, backgrounders, create links to your other social media sites, web sites and blogs and further promote your image and mission. LinkedIn also has many industry organizations that you can join and link up with others of the same business and networking mindset. Easy to do, but like the others, it takes time to create and maintain. Again, this is more of an individual thing.

Blogging is one of the easiest and best ways to promote what you are doing on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. Anyone can set up a free blog using something like WordPress or Blogger, customize it pretty much any way you want, add heading, titles and keywords, and start publishing your own material intra-day of you want. You can set up an email subscriber box so visitors and listeners can join your mailing list and keep up with the station?s events and promotions. You can pull RSS feeds, and even your Facebook and Twitter posts can all be integrated into the blog using simple APIs that are already built-in. The blog allows you the ability to become a publisher in real-time, and at the same time, pull all your social media together into one nice and neat piece of online real estate.

All of these things done together, by the right person, using up-to-date content and information of interest, will definitely help to set you apart from the competition. You need to show the listener that you care about them by using these common forms of new media, which are not-so-new anymore. The right staff member that knows your organization can easily enhance and shape your image like never before. There was a famous Clint Eastwood spaghetti western called, ?For a Few Dollars More.?  All it takes is a few dollars more, or a few hours more, spent on creating and maintaining your social media profile to notch yourself up in the game. It?s not ?new media? anymore, it?s a required action for every broadcaster, big or small.

Kerry Brewer is Sr. Managing Director at Securenet Systems, a leading provider of online streaming services to the worldwide radio industry. He can be reached at kbrewer@securenetsystems.net or on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/kerrybrewer.

(5/25/2011 6:15:53 AM)
It’s no brainer to see that social media is here to stay for good. Given vast variety of the existing channels to choose and stick with, it’s time for such a hot space to enter into a new category. There is a need for a portal to provide a quick and intelligent decision for both the consumer and the enterprise about their online connections.

A Platform to Help us to Distinguish Our Quality vs. Quantity Friends, Fans, Followers, and Companies

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Flickr and others have been doing a decent job of providing additional marketing exposure and even in some cases, additional revenue. However, as more and more social networking sites pop up, how do you manage your brand across all these channels? Maybe more importantly, which one of these sites should you select as the one that will help you best reach your target audience?

This glut of information reminds me of the early 90’s when WWW was adopted broadly by the general public. Every company rushed to have a presence, to the point it became literally impossible to find the right information on the Web. That’s when a better generation of search engines – at first the Yahoo! and then Google – entered the market and helped us find the most relevant information by just typing simple keywords in their search box.

Then came Web 1.0 & 2.0 – Youtube, Flickr, myspace, Facebook, Twitter and countless others have turned everyday people into content producers, influencers and experts. We basically tripled down on the information overload How do you know which channels to select for deploying your social media strategy? How do you know which one is the right channel to let your fans and followers to find you, your products, and services? Most importantly, who is Joe Smith that is recommending that person, that company, that product?

I hope my awesomize.me can accomplish such a mission. The site is not another social networking platform. Yet the portal to all your existing social media channels. The platform helps you, your fans, your potential clients to make an intelligent decision as to which company to connect to or follow via which social media channels and why? It’s free!

Elias
CEO & Founder
http://awesomize.me

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