Radio, Why are you ignoring the elephant in the room?

Why does it appear that radio is the last of the media groups to truly embrace digital?

 

The numbers can’t be lying: the audience is moving to it and your advertising dollars are moving to it.

 

I think the real issue at hand is that stations across the country would have to look themselves in the mirror and face the fact that they can’t sell digital. RadioInk released a survey earlier in the week that asked owners and managers to give their opinion on the state of their sales forces, and how that translates into digital sales. You can read that article here.

 

The overwhelming concensus was that the majority of traditional sales reps aren’t as knowledgeable in selling digital. If the radio industry wants their advertisers to invest in digital, the station needs to take the first step in investing in itself, and properly train its sales staff on the power of the digital platforms.

 

But we don’t want to point out a problem without solutions. Important things to understand when it comes to digital ad sales are the metrics and how that applies to specific demographics.

 

Whether you are selling website ads or selling mobile ads, be sure that your platform has an analytics tool (Google Analytics is a free and easy to understand tool) that can measure user behaviors on your platforms.

 

Take some time to research national trends – doing so you may learn that web radio advertisers, when surveyed, gave nearly a 58% higher ROI than terrestrial broadcast radio advertisers. Much of that is the ability to introduce a visual ad as well as a nearby platform (computer or smartphone) to act upon the call-to-action.

 

In the end it comes down to taking the time to understand what the market is doing, and what your advertisers truly need – even if they do not know it just yet.

 

Most people are slow to change, but don’t let that be you.