This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 10:46 am and is filed under poll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Radio Managers: Visit Sales Imaging | www.salesimaging.com
What’s a better use of your time? Selling radio or interactive
4 Responses to “What’s a better use of your time? Selling radio or interactive”
Leave a Reply
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:29 pm
That is a great question, interactive or radio. Love radio but what about GSM’s who want you to sell buttons, skyscrapers and banners on the radio station website because we have such a large cume and we can drive them to our website and then to the clients? Isn’t selling buttons, banners et al so 90’s? Any thought on how station websites should be sold?
May 24th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Tony-
Selling web banners and radio programming websites aren’t my forte. However, my friend Jim Taszarek, at http://www.tazmedia.com sure is (you should get to one of his web camps…good stuff!). But you bring up some good points. Here are my thoughts:
I don’t think the world is spinning so fast that web banners are “90’s.” Holy cow, if that’s the case, what would that make radio/tv/cable air time, print, and all traditional media. All the research out there indicates that internet ad spending continues to skyrocket. And banner ads are still a large share of that growth. Sure, click-through’s may not be as high as they once were, but banner ads create exposure just like any advertising vehicle.
I do completely agree with you that there is wayyyyyyy too much focus on radio sellers marketing websites instead of good ole’ broadcast air time. I saw some research recently where only 15% of radio listeners spend any quality time on a station’s programming website (for contests, streaming, etc…). I just can’t figure out why we’re spending so much time trying to sell a banner ad for those 15%, when we should stay focused on the 100% of those people that are listening to their favorite radio station everyday.
If you do have to spend a lot of time selling programming websites, I know that Taz at http://www.tazmedia.com has studied how it’s done most effectively.
July 17th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I MUST AGREE WITH LILIAN. THIS IS VERY MUCH LIKE OUR SO CALLED MANAGER, THAT HAS NO CLUE OF THE REAL WORLD. JUST SITS IN HIS OFFICE ALL DAY PLAYING GAMES ON COMPUTER AND TAKING ANY AND ALL SALES CALLS… A PREACHER WITH NO AUDIENCE KUDOS LILIAN:
Of course you dont think internet/interactive is the most profitable for the station or advertiser and 15% come one - thats your market not the real world! and just so you know, when it is most profitable for the advertiser it is most profitable to the station. My guess its not profitable for you, cause you have no knowledge or expertise on the matter. Perhaps job security? I don’t know, but its time to step into the real world. Unless you are selling Lawrence Welk radio just ignore the rest of this. This is 2008 you may have a very good grasp on 1970-1990 traditional radio sales techniques, don’t you agree it’s really best for your audience/clients to educate yourslef and step into the real world of interactive-thats where the listeners=buyers are. Do yourself and you clients right.
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Web sales is going to be an ever growing part of our income; selling banners and the other less than effective inventory on my stations websites is just not in my clients best interest at this time. The ROI is not even close to there and is clearly not understood by management.
Radio is still populated by the old guard and this “web” stuff (call it effing interactive all you like Dude, most radio websites suck!!!) scares the crap out of them. So our company buys a pig in a poke from a US radio group that standardizes the websites across the whole country - 53 stations all look pretty much the same. Genius - Not! Plus making changes are ridiculously difficult. (I’ve developed lots of websites, I came into radio with a diverse background)
Airtime has a clear and super proven track record; like 14x the results of an equivalent newspaper ad.
Proper modern website advertising like PPC, custom landing pages for promotions, clever use of email lists, text messaging, virtual remotes, etc can all deliver competitive ROI for our clients.
Banner ads on only one site or even across a cluster of 4 stations? Bah! At the prices I’ve seen they make NO sense financially for my clients. The management teams need to get their heads out of their asses and get educated about what’s possible with web advertising and development, and then invest in getting some young and driven people in to build the proper infrastructure.
Build useful websites, that actually grow in traffic and then monetize with high ROI tactics. If they do that, the web sales will be a no brainer. we ain’t there yet…