Wednesday, September 4, 2019

09 Sep Wednesday, September 4, 2019

This Week in The Lund Letter:  
>   Energizing your shows
>   Attaining more listeners
>   Conduct competitive morning show check
>   Rock resuscitated… and other Trends
>   Meet John Lund at GABCON

Lund Fall Strategy: Refresh Your Brand, Part V

Stations need ongoing shots of adrenaline to spike listenership and energize the sound.  Continued from last week, here are more ways to spark your audience:

>   Do a media sweep to learn what other stations are doing.  Check out station websites, industry blogs and newsletters, and online listening.  Explore ways to keep your programming fresh and fun.

>   Embrace topicality on the morning show – severe weather, a local team or player winning a championship, a local hero doing good, a major concert or event coming to town, a hot TV show or movie for the target.  Current events and topics keep a morning show fresh.

>   Conduct a SWOT test of your programming – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats… those things that you have some control over and can change.

>   Develop a marketing plan which includes updates of some or all of the imaging every week this fall.  Change your imaging copy more often if the copy is humorous.  Don’t run the risk of sounding automated or becoming “audio wallpaper.”

>   Create a speaker’s bureau and offer civic organizations the Program Director or morning personality as speakers.  Create a PowerPoint presentation that tells the station’s story and why thousands listen to it.

>   For News-Talk, reengineer your hard-news writing style to appeal to younger listeners.  These listeners don’t want news dumbed down; they want depth and context – but they don’t want news that sounds dated or cheesy (according to a Northwestern University study).

Next week – Refreshing your brand and fine-tuning your station for the fall rating sweep.

Lund Programming Clinic: Rules of Great Programming, Part VIII

The fall ratings sweep begins a week from tomorrow (9/12).  What governs winning the most listeners?  The 3 M’s are Music, Mornings and Marketing.  In recent issues we’ve listed the “rules” for playing the right music and conducting a great morning show.  Beyond Music and Mornings, the third M – Marketing – is crucial in the holy trinity of ingredients that make up successful stations.

Lund’s Laws of Marketing

Radio stations are ratings-driven.  The goal is to achieve the largest audience that will contribute to selling commercials at the highest rate.  Marketing is one of the most important tasks in a station operation.  Actually, stations have a dual-marketing mission.

Marketing to current listeners (internal marketing) on the air achieves higher TSL and more listening occasions per day.  External marketing is advertising via external sources to expand cume.  We cite four sequential steps that must be taken to insure marketing is effective.

Marketing Rule #1: Identify the target audience.  Know the target demo and gender, their music tastes, and morning requirements from the station.  The better a station researches the target, the easier it is to serve and satisfy them.

Marketing Rule #2: Create a product that will attract the target.  The product includes station elements – music, information, air talent, content, and promotions.  The total product is harmonious and continuous, and is designed to lead the audience in the same direction.  The audience must have a clear picture of what the station represents.

Marketing Rule #3: Position the product in the mind of the target.  Formulate a distinct sales proposition that promotes the station to present listeners as it attracts a new audience.  All businesses have a “positioning” slogan that serves this purpose.  A station’s posi¬tioning statement must meet these criteria: It must be unique, credible, beneficial, and be constantly sold on air and in outside media.  Positioning is key to marketing.

Marketing Rule #4: Promotion advances the position of the product to the target.  Once the positioning slogan is in place, promote it aggressively on-air and in other media.  Consistent advertising has merit.  Potential listeners should be exposed to the station’s message wherever they go.

Once these four rules have given you the right marketing direction, keep going!

Marketing Rule #5:  Stage promotions to gain exposure.

Promotions accomplish one or more goals:

+   Build cume, station visibility, and time-spent-listening
+   Increase “street talk” awareness locally
+   Establish a personal bond between listeners and the station
+   Aggressively position the station’s image
+   Generate ad revenue from joint sponsors

Promotions are aggressive and listener-driven.  Prizes match the listener’s lifestyle.  For added exposure, the station always maintains a major street and community presence.  Conduct “alternative” marketing tactics like database emailing and texting to gain instant tune-in.  Contests are simple, fun, designed for both the active and passive listener, and award great prizes.

Coming up next week, Marketing Rule #6 – what separates good stations from great stations.

Want More Listeners?

Lund Media has a remarkable track record in all mainstream formats. We’re highly skilled strategists having launched and programmed hundreds of top stations.

What makes us unique?  We…

>   Analyze your market with precision to find opportunities and deliver ratings.
>   Possess a winner’s instinct to lead your station and staff to win more audience.
>   Focus to put your station on top and keep it there.
>   Work with your staff and budget to integrate programming, promotion and sales.
>   Success is more than just a winning music format – it includes developing and coaching personalities, plugging in to your city, and sounding terrific.

Interested in taking your station to the next level?  Contact John Lund for more info. 

Lund’s Top 3:  Competitive Morning Show Monitor
  
Take a morning to monitor the competition and note everything you hear. Consider these listening points and analysis areas:

1.   TSL extenders. Log promoting ahead, cross promoting other talents, website and stream, contests and promotions.

2.   Morning bits. Identify funny, fun, or exciting benchmarks; detail the bits you hear, at what times, their execution, and listener interaction. Note local relatability.

3.   The Big Event. Catalog the major morning topics, execution, and frequency.

Summary: How interesting is each competitive show; how do they compare to yours?  Evaluate their music.  Compare stop set times to yours. What changes are needed on your station?  The goal is to have the best morning show.  Write a summary for the GM and your consultants, and get their evaluation to maximize your station’s morning show.

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: Office Raid

People who listen to the station in their office register on the station website or social media to be entered for a chance to have their office raided.  The raid includes lunch for the office (remember to make the number of employees at the location a mandatory part of registering).  Also include a new chair or desk for the person entering the office if co-sponsored by a furniture or office supply retailer.  The station must actually be tuned in at the office for the win to be official.

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:

Rock Recovery

More Americans are listening to Rock now than four years ago according to an analysis of Nielsen data by DEFcom Advisors’ Doug Ferber.  81% of music listeners say they listen to Rock often or occasionally.  48% identify as fans of the Rock genre.  Gender split is nearly 50/50.  And Rock fans are more likely to listen via traditional media like radio and physical owned music.  One third of their total listening time goes to Rock radio (including AM/FM, satellite and streaming broadcast radio).

Out of Print Magazines See New Life

Magazines that have left print have a way back to it that more and more are using.  Special Interest Publications (SIPs… no, not the Nielsen kind) are not a new concept, but more publishers are using them as a means to revive their magazines.  The cost is higher for the consumer, but there are fewer ads to flip through to get to the content.  Hearst has done it with Seventeen, Meredith with Coastal Living, and Condé Nast plans to try it with Glamour.  The SIPs are also a tool to lure readers to the publications’ websites, where more content (and ads) wait for them.  Meredith shows SIPs can be a reliable revenue stream: in the last fiscal year they sold 17.8 million copies of SIPs with a cover price of $8.99 or more.  Are podcasts radio’s version of an SIP that will lead interested parties back to traditional media?

“The Most Annoying Digital Ad Awards goes to…”

Which types of digital ads are annoying? Bizrate Insights, on behalf of eMarketer, surveyed a panel of US digital buyers.  The most annoying – with two thirds of people finding them annoying – are automatic video ads with sound that open when going to a website.  A bit less (55%) find automatic video ads without sound frustrating.  Audio ads and targeted ads (based on purchases or browsing) fell in the 47-to-34% range.  Will visitors find the ads on your website annoying or useful?  Figure it out to further aid your clients in their ad goals.


The Science of Radio Programming

What programming/marketing tools are essential in 2020 for programming a great sounding, top rated station?  What plans do you have Saturday, September 28?  You’re invited to Atlanta, GA to attend a special radio programming/management workshop focusing on radio programming basics, formatics, digital necessities and developments, and the future of radio.  This workshop is being presented by the Georgia Association of Broadcasters at their convention (GABCON).   If you program or manage stations, if you are on the air or you coach air talents, if you want more listeners in order to better serve your advertisers and community, you won’t want to miss “The Science of Radio Programming.”

To attend the Saturday workshop, September 28, at the Hyatt Buckhead in Atlanta, contact Ben Henson.

If you are not a broadcaster in Georgia (but one of 10,000+ readers of the Lund Letter), contact John Lund to speak at your state convention or corporate meeting.  John’s topical, audio-visual presentation is totally customized for your members.

Next week in the Lund Letter: Executing the first week of the fall rating sweep.

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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.