9-12-2012
As a professional radio marketing consultant, you need to be able to articulate the marketing buzz words your clients are exposed to in their trade publications and at their industry conferences and clearly position radio as a player in the new media environment.
Today, there is a great deal of buzz about the alleged decline of "paid" media, and the surge in "owned" media and "earned" media.
"Paid" media, of course, are the commercials or space advertisers pay for in various traditional or new media.
"Owned" media include newsletters, emails, websites, or any of the marketing communications vehicles that marketers produce and distribute for their company.
"Earned" media are the media exposures "earned" by doing or announcing something newsworthy or "buzz-worthy." Going "viral" online, spreading a story via social media, or achieving traditional media news coverage are all types of earned media.
Unfortunately, many of your clients and prospects are lured by the misconception that earned or owned media are "free." They certainly are not.
The cost of paid media is admittedly more obvious via invoices for spots or space.
But owned media consumes often-hidden expenses in man-hours, software, webmasters, and expertise to produce and distribute, and earned media costs include grossly underestimated hours for planning, organizing, writing news-releases, and managing the buzz.
For radio to become an integral part of your client's media strategies, you need to acknowledge the role of owned and earned media in the new media landscape, and highlight the powerful synergistic role intrusive media like radio can play.
Your role as a radio marketing consultant is to teach your prospects and advertisers that earned and owned media are not free, and to achieve a higher return on investment in those media, radio is the perfect partner.
The intrusiveness of radio can increase awareness and credibility for the new love affair advertisers have for new media. Radio will drive more new consumers to paid and owned media efforts and provide repetition and a valuable reminder to those already exposed to your client's new media.
The multiplier effect of utilizing two or three of these media forms in tandem is always greater than the impact of any one of these media types in isolation?1 + 1 can equal 4, and 1 + 1 + 1 can equal 6 or more in terms of impact, awareness, and results.
But many advertisers who use all three types of media, don't do so with a synergistic strategy. Often their paid and owned media sound or look like traditional advertising, and the message bears no resemblance to the more newsworthy or buzz-worthy content in their earned media.
You can intensify your role as a sustaining resource to your clients by counselling them to make their on-air and online messaging congruent.
For example, if your advertiser has helpful tips in her owned media, but only shouts and screams about sales on-air, she is creating a huge disconnect in the minds of consumers. Creating a campaign of similar tips for on-air, or promoting her tips and driving more traffic to her owned media, can create more impacts, awareness, and audience.
If an advertiser has a new post on Pinterest, Youtube, or Facebook, radio can drive more traffic to those sites for the advertiser.
Educating clients on the powerful synergies between radio, earned, and owned media is the key to radio's success, and to your client's success. Today's successful media strategy is simple: radio inspires, the Internet informs, and the cost of print production and delivery is responsible for print going the way of the dinosaur.
Wayne Ens is the president of ENS Media Inc and producer of SoundADvice, the radio e-marketing system and advertiser seminar that is persuading local advertisers across North America to drop their print advertising in favour of a radio-internet media mix. He can be reached at wayne@wensmedia.com
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