Radio advertisers and operators, in markets large and small, far wealthier and wiser than I, identify what they want radio to do, but is still not doing.  In evidencing what happens when their insights are put into action, I preface their call to action with two "boots on the ground" experiences that I've faced:

With dozens of digital advertising alternatives, our advertisers are beset by countless options, making "the right advertising choices" more confusing than ever before, and making it much harder to attribute results to our stations and their digital properties.

The solution is simple:  deliver our advertisers what they want most - a documented result.  I've seen the face of a radio advertiser light up when he told me how well his one station, small market restaurant schedule worked: counting $307,682 in sales as a direct result.  The needs of our advertisers were further driven home when I received the sales report from a small metro market grocery store chain (not the "Metro" brand) counting $64 million in sales, directly as a result of a two radio station campaign - both stations (not the market leaders) being owned by a smaller radio company that didn't have the resources of bigger players in our industry.

Ratings, readership and programmatic can't touch that.

The more that we deliver what advertisers want, the more that we'll shorten our sales cycle, and the more dollars we can justify for our radio and digital campaigns, as there's more results that our advertisers can measure.  

Our advertisers spend more on advertising than they invest in their RRSP.  They'd fire their financial planner if they weren't given a piece of paper each month, on which an irrefutable number in the lower, right hand corner told them how much their investment made in the last 30 days.  Yet our industry sets low client expectations with ROI selling, but we continue to not give them info on the outcome of their ad spend, yet we insist that they continue to blindly spend their advertising dollars with our radio and digital properties.

As one huge auto advertiser says "I don't want to pay for ears.  I want to pay for actions" - and he doesn't want to prioritize ratings, "listen to win" contests, or online "Listener Club" entries, clicks or Likes or Shares or Retweets or downloads.  

What he wants are more actions at the cash register.  Here's more from him, plus other radio advertiser insights, so we can make it instantly discernible to our clients as to why they should buy more from us at higher rates. 

Last edited by Andy McNabb (April 18, 2016 10:21 am)