RELENTLESS RADIO

 

Author:	Ken Hammock
Published:	September, 2000

 

It's the magic time of year. Layaway lines are long, presents are being wrapped, decorations twinkle and lights glisten. Kids are happy, parents throw credit-limits to the wind, and retailers hope fourth quarter will change the color of their bottom line, from red to black. But fourth quarter offers radio an exceptional opportunity to do the same. Many radio stations survive the first three quarters of the year just to edge over that black line in the fourth. Right now is the time to finalize your fourth quarter sales plans. Many advertising agencies have already placed their buys for the holidays, and some have even finalized next year's budgets. If you are just starting to plan your holiday sales efforts you will definitely miss a lot of potential sales budget that, if you had planned earlier, could improve your bottom line. If you do have a late start, it's not too late to recover some of that missed budget. There are several considerations: 1. Year To Date Billing: Where do you stand for the year? How much budget needs to be recovered, and how much over your current budget does your sales force need to accomplish? What is your current sales budget and how much can you stretch beyond that budget to make this the best year ever? 2. Available Inventory: What is your current inventory load? How much time is sold and what commercial inventory is available? What is the potential income that you can generate from the available inventory to meet your income budgets? How do you plan to make the potential income a realization? 3. Special Sponsorships: What other revenues can be generated from sponsorships of on-air holiday programming, special events, station or retail-driven promotions, and from multi-media or in-the-market efforts? 4. Target Prospects: What organizations, companies and retailers are likely candidates to help you accomplish steps two and three? Like no other time of year top-of-mind recall and brand awareness is the primary key for advertising success. Consumers are bombarded with so many offers from so many advertisers that comprehension and retention of the advertisement content may be somewhat diminished. Retailers, corporations, manufacturers and non-profit organizations are looking for sponsorship opportunities that generate dominance among the consumer's top-of-mind recall. Create some ideas from the following four categories that will help your current and prospective advertisers accomplish their marketing goals and help exceed your own sales goals. 1. Current Holiday Programming: Discover what holiday programming is currently scheduled for your station and find sponsors for these. Design packages that use on-air jock-liners, opening and closing billboards and non-prime inventory to promote. 2. Creative Holiday Programming: Design and initiate special holiday programming that will not take away current inventory but add revenue potential. This could be special evening album features of Christmas music by your core artists, the year in review music specials, vignettes from the best of your morning shows from this year, and special holiday guests. There are dozens more Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas, End-of-Year, and New Year programming opportunities that you can create yourself or use pre-produced canned programs from other sources. 3. Special Events: Find special events in your community for station exposure and build sponsor partnerships. Here are a couple of great examples to get your creative juices flowing: A. Provide a live broadcast from a local mall for the Salvation Army and have sponsors partner with you to put a little "jingle" (coins dropping in the bucket) in the holidays for those less fortunate. B. Have your station personalities become Santa's helpers at the local mall and have station gift packages for every family that has their pictures taken with Santa during the time you're there. These gift packages are crammed with sponsor coupons, product samples, and contest entry forms that generate a bounce-back redemption. C. Have a church choir sing-off or town tree lighting at the mall or park with holiday food samples, wassail, sponsor booth displays, and fun activities. Or, create your own annual event and have sponsors build that partnership. Sponsors can receive on-location exposure, on-air exposure, and multi-media opportunities. 4. Build Your Own Promotion: A. Have a grocer and their vendors help you feed x-number of homeless (equal to your dial position)...AM-1370, Local Grocer and Hefty Bread wants to feed 1,370 homeless this holiday. See if the grocer can provide you an in-store display or end-cap for exposure of the event. B. Display Christmas trees of cash at area retailers and have listeners stop by for chances at winning the cash on the trees. Make the cash equal to your dial setting and have your sales reps take a sample tree with them when they present the proposal. C. Track Santa's journey around the world. Make it educational for the kids, and have a grand prize winner of a trip to Santa Claus, Georgia or some other unique place or resort. (And yes, there really is a Santa Claus, Georgia). Remember, with a plan of action and some great ideas, all you have to do is find the wherewithal to make these ideas a reality. Like no other time of year you'll find retailers, corporations, manufacturers and non-profit organizations with unused budgets, pre-established public relations budgets, and product-specific budgets that are set aside to gain market awareness during the holidays. Research, discover and pursue every opportunity. Many corporations, manufacturers and vendors have a marketing/advertising department. But they also have public relations departments with separate budgets totally unrelated to advertising. Pursue the human resources departments for recruitment dollars. Work through regional offices to target specific locations or specific products. Don't get stuck in the advertising and marketing department. There's a lot of money on the table in uncommon sources. Creativity will help you find additional budget with or without commercial inventory. The right idea presented to the right revenue source can help you cross that black line. But now is the time to do it. Wait much longer and you'll need to focus your energy on first quarter for next year. Now that you know what to do, go do it.   About The Author Kenneth Hammock has been an account executive, sales manager, and general manager at radio stations throughout Georgia.