05 Feb Make Your Imaging Work Harder
Create or update your imaging plan. Station imaging sells continued listening and audience benefits. How often do you update your imaging? Weekly? Here are ten imaging suggestions to make your station sound great:
1 – Clean up your music sweep. Keep the transitions between songs free of info, promos, and teases in music sweeps. Traffic, weather reports, and contesting don’t belong in music sets because they stop the music’s momentum. Keep your imaging between songs to 10 seconds or less. Otherwise, you risk the audience perceiving a stop in the music flow:
Imagine going to a concert, and the headlining band interrupts their set to instruct the audience on how to exit the show. You lose all the momentum of the music sweep and violate your promise of going non-stop.
2 – Never say “Commercial-free” and then play a spot. Avoid music imaging that sells music quantity and/or quality (positioning statement) going into commercials. The optimum placement is between songs and the kickoff after commercials to reinforce your music images. New research says to avoid saying “commercial-free.”
3 – Promote at-work listening live and with imaging often. Listening on the job results in longer TSL. Promote it during the hours of your largest cume, normally 8 AM-7 PM Monday-Friday.
4 – Sell your “local identity” in liners and jock comments. Localize by mentioning landmarks, roads, shopping areas, neighborhoods, event venues, major employers, new stores, local events, and concerts. Help plan your listeners’ leisure time and talk about things your target audience likes to do.
5 – Promote digital listening hourly. Sell the advantages of listening on smart speakers, listening to the stream on the app, and reasons to go to the website. Position the “Listen” button on your website in a prominent place.
6 – Sweepers need a sense of humor. They can poke fun at general lifestyle, work, recreation, pop culture, and talents, but not the music. Use frequently updated liners to make the station sound fun and memorable. Avoid sarcasm as it is perceived as “mean.”
7 – Have listeners promote the station. Listener endorsement imaging is easy to capture; record them when doing remotes and at personal appearances. Don’t play canned ones from services that say, “It’s my favorite station.” Coach people to say the station name, what they like about the station (music), and where they live or work. They should sound passionate about the music, talents, and station.
8 – Promote the morning show often, at least once an hour, after 10 AM. Don’t have a laundry list of what’s on the show, but sell one benchmark and say the time it airs. A short, funny clip from a previous show is good but watch the repetition. In addition to a produced promo every hour, support it with one live liner an hour. Always include when to listen; a generic “tomorrow morning” is not specific enough.
9 – Space out imaging that airs between songs. Alternate imaging with the “live” talent in sweeps to keep the talent’s presence and not sound like automation runs the station. Always have a “live” talent presence every quarter hour.
10 – Promote your major contest often, every twenty minutes, with a combination of produced promos and live mentions. Start the promo with what the listener will win, not the name of the contest or what the listener must do to win.