Growing the Radio Pie

The Ratings Experts at Research Director, Inc. have created a series of articles to guide radio sales people on strategies to grow the radio pie. Peruse the categories and get your learning on!

Advertising Categories – Highlighting types of advertisers a seller can pursue

Don’t Always Fish Where the Fish Are: Find and convert those accounts that have not chosen to advertise on radio and, digging further, businesses that are not advertising at all.
It’s All About Politics: Learn how an election season yields political advertising dollars and how to bring that money to radio.
Using Your Geographic Strengths During this Election Year: Promoting the use of congressional districts and political segmentation.
Home Sweet Home: Advertising categories related to housing and taking advantage of the home sales boom.
Grab Those Last-Minute Political Dollars: Voters don’t listen only to News Talk and the AM dial but also listen to FM and music stations.
Hungry for Sales: Quick-service and sit-down restaurants are a growing advertising category.
Winning the Political Ad Race: Strategies for going after political dollars.
Selling with New Scarborough Categories: CBD and sports/online gambling are hot categories and great Scarborough data is available to help sell them.
Prepping for 2023 Top Categories: Using qualitative data to promote your listeners for categories expected to grow in 2023.
Don’t You Forget About Me: Boomers Are Still Top Consumers!: Demonstrating the value of advertising to the Boomer generation.
Radio Is the Perfect Medium for Recruitment: Radio, and your station, can offer prospective employers a new way of recruiting members to their team.
Radio Connects with Young Adults!: Demonstrating the value of advertising to Generation Z.

Selling Strategies – Promoting best practices for selling

What Is Your Sales Brand?: The elements of a solid sales brand.
The Value of Being the Information Resource: The benefits of being the leading voice in the radio field and how to achieve that status.
The Art of the Effective Presentation: The benefits of having a solid presentation and the rules of pitching to an advertiser.
Know Your Client’s Client: The importance of knowing the ultimate end-user of an ad.
When the Buyer Says No: The steps a seller can take when an advertiser says doesn’t want to buy.
Win by Being an Information Hog: Using various datasets to win a negotiation.
Events Are Back – Time to Cash in: The importance of not only advertising about an event but also at the event.
Data Alone Won’t Win Sales: Supporting your data with other elements to close business including emotion, professionalism, quality materials, and follow-through.
Growing Sales in a Tight Labor Market Part 1 & Growing Sales in a Tight Labor Market Part 2: Recruitment advertising in a labor market that is looking for workers.
Sell Yourself … Not Just Your Station: The importance of selling yourself and providing the foundation for a long-term selling relationship.
Your PD Can Boost Sales: Think of your Program Director as a resource when selling.
Prospecting I – Finding New Radio Advertisers: Identifying advertisers that would benefit from advertising on radio.
Prospecting II – Uncovering New Categories for Radio: Identifying categories that are idea for advertising on radio.
Growing Revenue with the Right Spot Load: Translating the advertiser’s goal into the appropriate spot load.
Effective Presentation Skills: Three components that are essential for every pitch.
Telling Your Story … Easy as 1, 2, 3!: Improve your odds of moving the advertiser to the next phase.
Improving Your Skillset to Increase Sales: Eight essential skills for selling radio.
Sell Out Your Weekend Inventory: Position your weekends as a valuable daypart, not just a throw-in.
The Value of Consumer Spending Power: Use spending power to position your listeners as consumers.
Dealing with Objections About Your Listeners: Use qualitative data to show advertisers that your station is right for their target audience.
New Market Populations Make Great VBRs: Educate advertisers about how population estimates affect the ratings.
The Secret to Your Success Is Differentiation: Advertising is not a commodity.
Focus on Your Core: Don’t ignore radio’s chief source of revenue – selling broadcast commercials.
Closing Difficult Sales with Closing Ratios: Use Closing Ratios to close business.
Creating Your Station’s Elevator Pitch: Strategies for creating your station’s elevator pitch.
Profiling Your Listeners – Part I: What to look for when pulling quantitative data.
Profiling Your Listeners – Part II: What to look for when pulling qualitative data.
Showcasing Your Market: Tips on how to show the strengths of your market.

Components of Radio – The various estimates and metrics that make up radio listening

Make Sure the Shoe Fits: The best way to improve your odds of a renewal and recurring revenue is to make sure that your radio station is right for that potential advertiser.
Don’t Sell Snowballs to an Eskimo: What to do when you realize that your radio audience is not right for this advertiser.
Fighting Perception with Facts: Having effective and well-sourced facts and how to get them is the best way to counter misconceptions.
Take Advantage of the Weekends to Develop New Business: The benefits of advertising on the weekend, considering 40% to 50% of a typical radio station’s total week cume can be reached on the weekend.
Your Personalities Are Influencers … Use Them That Way: How a stations’ personalities can increase billing.
Convert Your Listeners into Dollars: The benefits of your listeners’ spending power.
Documenting That Your Listeners Are Not Typical: The benefits of qualitative research.
Making a (Gross) Impression: Defining industry-specific terms such as Cume and Gross Impressions.
Sell the Value of Your Older Audience with Pride: Refuting the stereotype that the older segment of the population is not a desirable target demographic.
Don’t Forget Your Core: In the days of digital and social media, this article cautions against ignoring radio’s chief source of revenue, which is selling broadcast commercials.
Making Money From Your Loyal Listeners Part 1 & Making Money From Your Loyal Listeners Part 2 & Making Money from Your Loyal Listeners Part 3: The benefits of a loyal listener; from time spent listening, to first preference audience, to showing your station reaches an audience that cannot be reached by other stations.
The Secret to Your Success: Differentiation: Differentiating radio from other advertising outlets, and your station from other stations in the market.
Don’t Get Caught in the CPP Trap: Cautioning against using CPP as the only factor in the decision-making process.
Use the Latest Nielsen Survey to Your Advantage: Learn the benefits of weekly and daily listening.
What Is the Right Spot Load?: Helping your advertiser determine the amount of spots based on what they are trying to achieve.
Not All Rating Points Are Created Equal: Learn the importance of focusing on target audience and its components – and not just on how many points a schedule delivers.
Your Geographic Bonus: Show advertisers the importance of your listeners who reside outside the metro – your bonus audience.
Your Listeners in Dollars and Cents: Learn the value of a station’s listeners’ spending power.
Listeners on the Move: The importance of consumers who listen away from home.
Use Your Geographic Advantage to Win New Dollars: The importance of geo-targeting; focusing on where your listeners actually live and not where just your signal reaches.
Use Your Format’s Strength to Grow Billing: Selling your format group and being the ideal station within that group.
Impressive Impressions: Defining the term impression and how it relates to radio.
Benefit from Your Market’s New Profile: Understanding how population changes can affect your market and station.
Are Sales Demographics Really Important?: The sales demographic is an important thing to consider but an even more important aspect is qualitative segmentation.
Qualitative – Is There a Right Approach?: Using a hybrid model of showing qualitative data; showing both qualitative target persons and qualitative composition.
This Is What Happens When You Assume: Advertising sports betting on every station, not just sports talk.
Selling Audience Loyalty: Promoting the dedicated listener using First Preference, Time Spent Listening/Average Weekly Time Exposed, and Duplication.
Be Your Best at Being a Resource: Introducing Research Director, Inc.’s Nielsen Bulletin Board and becoming a resource for advertisers.
REACH Where No One Has Gone Before!: Be sure to include REACH in your client-focused presentations.
Building FREQUENCY of Your Advertising Message: Strategies for selling based on frequency.
Closing Sales with Qualitative Data: Three basic ways to position your station’s qualitative story.
Showcase Radio and Your Station’s Targetability: Show that radio and and your station match the characteristics of the ideal consumer.
The Changing Face of AWTE: Average Weekly Time Exposed and Time Spent Listening are an important number to look at but evolving in a post-pandemic world.

Pro-Radio – Promoting radio as an advertising medium

Radio Needs to Defy Adam Smith: Arguing against Smith’s theory of supply and demand by using differentiation.
Making Lemonade: The benefits of a radio stations’ stream.
Don’t Let Your Advertisers Define You: Combating advertisers’ misconceptions about radio and your station with well-reasoned facts.
Prove That Radio Is the Perfect Complement: The importance of advertisers shifting some of their dollars into radio and how radio can complement other media.
Be a Great Advocate for Radio: Refuting myths and misconceptions about radio.
Don’t Let Advertisers Define You & Your Station: Combating misconceptions with well-reasoned facts.
The Panel: Ways to analyze the ratings with changes to the panel.

Radio vs. Other Media – Comparing radio to other advertising options

Reality Is Catching up to Television: The high profile of alternative services like Netflix and Hulu (not to mention the dramatic increase in cord cutting) have made advertisers more aware of declining viewership, and it is finally catching up to broadcast TV.
Yes, Size Does Matter: Size, in this case, is how many potential consumers a certain advertising outlet will reach – the bigger the reach, the more likely the message will reach potential buyers.
Beating Television at Its Own Game: By showing a potential advertiser that your cluster reaches more of their target customers than the individual TV stations, an effective sales rep can take a portion (if not all) of the TV budget.
Use the 80/20 Rule to Attack Television: 80% of the consumption comes from 20% of the users; a small segment of the population watches the bulk of broadcast TV.
Who Are Your Market’s Non-TV Viewers?: Correcting the misconception that television viewers are younger and more affluent than the general population.
Who Is Targeting Non-Broadcast TV Viewers?: An exercise showing that, by relying on TV, a large segment of potential consumers may be missed.
Growing Your Billing with Heavy TV Viewers: Heavy TV consumers are sometimes not the right target consumers.
Can Quintiles Help Me Grow My Billing?: An introduction to radio and television quintiles.
So What About Radio?: Further analyzing radio and TV quintiles.
Pandora’s Box Is Just a Greek Myth: Detailing and refuting myths about the audio service Pandora.
Why Be One of Many When You Can Be the One and Only?: Promoting the use of automotive radio commercials and warning against airing ads during television breaks that have multiple automotive ads.
Focus on These Heavy Listeners: The importance of quintile analysis.
What Are People Watching?: Viewing has splintered from 100% broadcast TV into cable and streaming services, and broadcast TV does not have the impact it once did.
Don’t Try to Be a Digital Expert: Cautioning against being a jack-of-all-trades, master of none; sellers should transition from being a radio expert to a marketing expert.
Sell More Radio by Showing Heavy Media Consumption: A comparison that shows radio’s heavy listeners are a more attractive target than TV’s heavy viewers

The New Normal – How selling and business has been affected by the pandemic

Your Success Is Only Limited by Your Creativity: Emphasizing the use of creativity in radio selling.
The Art of the Effective Presentation: The benefits of having a solid presentation and the rules of pitching to an advertiser.
Radio Cares: How the radio industry helps each other and their communities.
Educating Your Existing Advertising Partners: If an advertiser continues advertising and marketing during economic downturns, they will maintain their brand and make their company stronger once the crisis ends.
Empathy Is Good Business: As the economy opens up and marketing dollars start to flow, advertisers will remember the emotional support you gave them.
There Is Light at the End of the Tunnel – Are you Prepared?: Reminding sellers to be prepared for when the economy re-opens after the pandemic.
How to Use Nielsen as a Currency: Promoting the use of Nielsen’s quantitative reports to advertise.
As Commerce Opens, Radio Is Perfect: The benefits to using radio to entice people to return to businesses.
Your Marketer’s Message: Gordon Borrell’s four important steps for messaging during an economic downturn.
Don’t Lose Your Sales Brand: Exploring three types of sales brands.
Zoom to Success: Best practices for selling over Zoom and other web-based software.
The Dilemma of Annuals: The best way to handle annuals after a pandemic.
Selling Through Economic Uncertainty – One Year Later: The importance of continuing to advertise in an economic downturn.
Don’t Let COVID Habits Impact Sales: Stressing the importance of habits acquired during the pandemic not lasting forever and promoting face-to-face selling.

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