Wednesday, August 28, 2019

02 Sep Wednesday, August 28, 2019

This Week in The Lund Letter:  
>   Become hot and exciting this fall
>   Mornings focus on “you” not “me”
>   Monitor your competition
>   Radio’s most popular morning benchmark
>   Back to school shopping is only half-over… plus other Trends

Lund Fall Strategy: Refresh Your Brand, Part IV

Successful stations remain connected to their core audience yet strive to sound special and exciting to entice new cume.  With the fall rating sweep upcoming, consider these ways to energize your station:

>   What will make your station hot, new, or exciting – beyond the music?  Consider a new contest or promotion, a new syndicated feature or show, or a special guest on the morning show.

>   Prepare to embrace topicality in your imaging, like saluting a core artist who may have passed or congratulating a local team on a win.  Create special imaging for local events like festivals.  For the fall, have special imaging for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

>   If you are repeating a successful contest this fall, ask yourself, “what else?”   What twist can you add?  Brainstorm ideas with your staff on ways to build on your success.

>   Review your social media assets and pages to better connect with your fans and friends.  Listening to what they’re saying and respond quickly.

>   Consider focus groups to talk with listeners about your station and improvements they suggest.  Lund Media Research utilizes expert moderators to conduct focus groups with your listeners.

>   Utilize external marketing for your brand to reintroduce your station to new listeners.  Consider partnerships in the media community where you can conduct a joint promotion.

What have you done to refresh and energize your brand?  Email your success stories to John Lund.  Sounding special is essential for cume and ratings growth.  We’ll have more ideas for you next week as the start of the fall sweep gets closer.

Lund Programming Clinic: Rules of Great Programming, Part VII

In recent issues we’ve listed the rules for playing the right music and morning show rules.  Morning show rules continue… other talents should consider following many of our suggestions as well:

Mornings Rule #24: Don’t give the listener a reason to dislike you.  Be likeable and positive; stay away from politics, race, and religion (unless you host a talk show).

Mornings Rule #25: Get the listener involved.  Encourage listener interaction and participation. This may be in benchmarks and games, and via phone or social media.

Mornings Rule #26: Promote, promote, promote.  Produce a “coming up” promo right after the morning show.  Run it every other hour promoting the next day’s show.

Mornings Rule #27: Confide in your listener.  It’s okay to be vulnerable.  That’s how you get a true emotional reaction and attraction.  Let the listener in on your life, assuming you have one!

Mornings Rule #28: No more me, me, me. Ditch the “I” myopia.  Don’t talk about yourself too much; most bits shouldn’t start with a story about you.

Mornings Rule #29: Be social.  Open the virtual “doors” via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, your website, texting, and email in addition to the phone.  Tell listeners how they can reach you without jumping through hoops, and demonstrate that you respond.  It’s called “social media” for a reason!

Mornings Rule #30: Know your market.  Learn local events and activities, and wire yourself to the information sources that help you track the details.  That may start with a “master calendar” from the local chamber of commerce.

Mornings Rule #31: Be visible. Take your morning show, or a key cast member, to local events and high traffic places in your area.  Get local people on your air in tightly controlled segments that don’t waste the listener’s time – but do display your local involvement.  Involve listeners as ambassadors in social media and as your eyes and ears on the air.  A new movie or concert in the region?  Use listeners to review that event on your show.  Have a local “The Voice” or American Idol-type judging panel that becomes a part of your show.

Beyond Music and Mornings, the third M, Marketing, is crucial in the holy trinity of ingredients that make up successful stations.  Marketing is both internal (promoting ahead to lengthen TSL) and external (advertising to expand cume).  That’s coming up next week.

Your Music Software needs a check-up!

Playing the right songs and managing your music software are vital to your station’s success.  Lund Media provides a comprehensive playlist review and software tune-up.  Are you playing the top researched music in the rotation?  We can help tune your station for fall.  For a comprehensive music software analysis and tune-up, email John Lund.

And if you just need a best-researched “safe list” for your format, we have that also.

Lund’s Top 3:  Competitive Morning Show Monitor
  
Take a morning to monitor the competition. Start at 5:30 AM and continue to about 8:30 AM.  Make notes of everything you hear. Consider these listening points and analysis areas:

1.   Positioning. How is each station positioned, and how often is it sold in a typical hour?

2.   News, weather, and traffic. Are content, scheduling, and delivery appropriate for the target?  Is a formal newscast really needed?

3.   Promotions. What are they, how often are they scheduled, and are they executed well?

For more Top 3 lists, check out www.lundradio.com.

Fresh Imaging Liners

Don’t allow your imaging to sound stale.  Get new creative imaging liners to perk up your station sound.  Order the Lund library of liner scripts that you need …

>   200 Fun Imaging liners (for all music formats)
>   200 At-Work Listening liners (all formats)
>   200 liners for News-Talk stations

Refresh your imaging with hundreds of new liners, now on sale.  Use the links below to order and we’ll email your scripts immediately.

+   Creative Imaging Liners for music stations
+   At Work Liners
+   Fresh News-Talk Liners

These sweepers will sound great on your station!


Promotion of the Week: Impossible Trivia

This is likely the most popular morning radio benchmark in many formats.  Your morning talent asks a single question that comes from a “poll” survey.  One example: “54% of women think a man who has this is sexy.”  Answer: a bald head.  The talent takes callers until someone guesses the right answer.

Need a Fall Promotion?

Stimulate your listeners with a fresh radio contest or promotion geared to fall.
The “Fall Promotions Guide” outlines over 100 radio programming and sales promotions, contests, sales promotions and show prep ideas.  Get topical promotions geared to 4th quarter – from Back To School to Halloween to Thanksgiving.

This Guide will help make your station sizzle through fall … and help the sales staff lock in new dollars. Click here to order your copy.

Lund Trend Watch:

Did You Find It?

A study by SparkToro and Jumpshot reveals that 94% of all US searches occur on a Google property (this includes Images, YouTube and Maps).  The weird part?  As of second quarter 2019, 49.7% of all Google searches end without a click (the searchers never go beyond the results page).  More recently that number has jumped to over 50%… so most Google searches end on the search page and not by clicking through to a new website.

We Know You Were Looking

In a move that could weaken their overall ad revenue but may help them seem less creepy, Facebook has introduced Off-Facebook Activity.  The new tool lets users see what companies are tracking their data and then sharing it with Facebook.  If the tool is turned off, the data is still shared with Facebook, but they don’t use it to plant targeted ads in your feed.  So no more seeing that sweater you checked out from a sales email in your Facebook feed later that day… but they’ll still know you looked at the sweater.

Let’s Make A Back-to-School Deal

It’s not too late for retailers to make good on back-to-school sales.  Despite many schools already having started (and most of the stragglers will begin next week after Labor Day on Monday), not all back-to-school shopping is done, according to NRF and Prosper Insight & Analytics.  On average, as of August 2-8, back to school shoppers had completed only just over half (54%) of their shopping.  What do they still need?

+   73% of them still need school supplies
+   59% need clothing
+   45% need shoes
+   20% need electronics

The places they plan to go? Department stores, discount stores, online retailers and clothing stores are the top four destinations.  Another big factor in the decision making process?  Who has the best deals?!


Planning Your State Broadcast Convention?

John Lund’s positive, fast-moving presentation, “The Science of Growing Your Audience,” includes training and coaching guidelines on the basics of attaining higher ratings and more listeners.  Topics include the “basics” of radio programming, America’s top formats: who listens and why, tactics to get more listeners, talent coaching, and how to make voice tracking sound live and local.  This presentation will be customized and expanded to meet your members’ needs.  EmailJohn Lund for availability and more info.

Next week in the Lund Letter: A needed shot of adrenaline.

Thanks for reading
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About Lund Media

For over 20 years, the Lund Media Group has provided programming, music consulting, operational guidance, and research to broadcast stations throughout North America and overseas. With specialists in every format, the Lund Goal is to help stations get more listeners and keep them listening longer.

Call John Lund for more information about how the Lund Media Group can help your stations achieve more listeners, higher ratings, and more revenue.
Phone: 650-692-7777.
Email john@lundradio.com.