These days, you hear the same murmurings everywhere you go. Stations have the ratings, but sales are lagging. Market caps have shrunk since the recession. Revenue is flat or down. Sales continues to be the top priority.
In speaking with many programmers over the past year, a visit by the corporate team is often focused on the sales effort. It’s not that ratings, brands, and content don’t matter. They do, of course. But in so many situations, the ratings are there but the sales aren’t.
Radio simply has found itself in the uncomfortable position of having to demonstrate its core value: after more than 70 years of being a part of consumers’ lives.
The storied relationship between ratings and sales has broken down. It used to be that if you got great ratings, sales would naturally follow. Many of us have experienced the joy of working for stations that consistently had great numbers, book after book. And as a result, sales teams were pretty much able to set rates, terms, and conditions.
Today, nothing is easy. Even stations with great track records, heritage morning shows, and monster brand equity are fighting for every buy and every dollar.
A new study from Forbes Insights and Brainshark reiterates the importance of sales to all companies, corporations and brands. Bruce Rogers, an executive with Forbes Media, gets to the point:
“Put plainly, sales productivity matters to top leaders today – and it should. Results show that it’s the most important management focus for companies, more critical than any other factor.”
I’m seeing scores of radio executives nodding their heads in unison, because what Rogers is saying is true.
eMarketer breaks it down this way:
In a study of more than 200 U.S. based executives about sales productivity, eight in ten point to a sales rep being able to demonstrate the value of their product over its price. And let’s not lose sight of the second most important variable – consistency. And that translates to dependability.
And isn’t that essentially the challenge facing radio’s sales teams? The Three R’s – ratings, rankers, and rate cards – no longer drive decisions, nor do they necessarily connect to results.
The leap of faith that advertisers have taken for decades – buy radio ads and hope they reach core consumers – is rapidly being replaced by ROI, accountability, and value. A salesperson’s ability to show clients that, in fact, “radio works,” goes to the heart of the challenge.
We saw this over two days at DASH earlier this month. Whether it was the head of Ford Direct (the branch that allocates co-op dollars) or the presidents of local car dealerships, the need to demonstrate radio’s core value is essential to keeping the industry vital and relevant.
Radio has to prove itself all over again.
Now we know what it feels like to be a start-up.
In the last 10 years, we’ve seen the slide decks from fledgling new companies calling themselves “game changers,” we’ve watched wannabe entrepreneurs on Shark Tank, and we know how elevator pitches work.
So if radio didn’t exist, how would you pitch the concept to Mark Cuban and his shark friends on a Reality TV show? What would you say to Elon Musk about why he should market his new line of Tesla SUVs on your station if you were lucky enough to step on an elevator with him on the 72nd floor of a skyscraper? How would you go about convincing Jeff Bezos to choose your local cluster to announce his newest Amazon Prime offering?
For radio sales teams, this goes well beyond demonstrating reach or that 90% of Millennials turn on a radio every week.
In fact, it has nothing to do with:
- The first quarter sales trip to Cancun
- Throwing in the fourth station in the cluster
- Live reads
- The van, the card table, the tent, and the prize wheel
- Value added
It is about proof of concept, demonstrating the value of the medium and its brands as an effective marketing platform.
It has everything to do with these ideas:
- That radio’s personalities are an essential part of consumers’ lives.
- That radio is moving into new content and delivery models, like podcasts, streams, and video.
- That radio is a “windshield medium,” essential to drivers as they commute, shop, and spend leisure time.
- That radio is an essential part of communities, connected to the values of local residents.
- That radio provides one-to-one companionship while people work and drive.
- That a call to action on the radio performs better than any other medium.
- That radio can deliver targeted groups of listeners effectively.
- That radio can provide ROI along with mass reach.
- That radio’s digital and terrestrial assets can influence behavior, from physically showing up at a store or even to clicking on a link.
- That radio can solve an advertiser’s problems with integrated combinations of marketing assets that move the needle and generate store and web traffic – and commerce.
The doors are open. It’s time for radio to step into the elevator and make the pitch.
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