Maybe you’ve heard: The audience is busy. They aren’t paying that much attention. They’re distracted. It’s harder and harder to command attention, let alone retain it.
There’s a lot of stuff out there, a lot of options. Some of them good, a few of them excellent, but most of them average or less. If you’re going to stand out amongst the clutter, you have to be great. There’s a premium on quality, but that’s only half the battle. In fact, it may be even less than half. The real challenge is how to communicate your message: promotion. If it’s not clever, creative, specific, and valuable, it’s just noise. And radio creates a lot of noise.
Promos to “Read our Blog” won’t get it done. What’s your blog about? Why does it exist? How does it add value to my life? Why is it worth my time?
Messages that “We Play (Your Market Here)’s Most Music” go in one ear and out the other. In fact, I’m not sure they even get in the first ear! It’s clutter. It’s not meaningful.
“Visit our website and win fabulous prizes”? What prizes? Why? What do I have to do? It’s another hollow, empty claim that doesn’t generate response.
“A lot of great stuff is coming up in a few minutes” is too much talk because it doesn’t say anything. It just fills time.
Air personalities constantly invite listeners to call in by asking generic questions that don’t captivate or prompt a thoughtful response, then wonder why “the phone doesn’t ring”.
Many times, promotion efforts fail because we just don’t take the time to make it specific, compelling, creative, interesting or direct. It’s harder to write short, specific copy than slap some generic words together and add a few adjectives like “most”, “best” or “great”.
Try an experiment. For the next two weeks, force yourself to do fewer things and do them better. Devote the same amount of time to creating fewer messages, but concentrate on each promo, each liner, each weather forecast, each invitation to engage your audience. Use action words. Apply specific, descriptive copy to everything you touch. At the same time, remove every message from your station that is vague, generic or lacks impact. Don’t worry about replacing every message. Listeners won’t miss them. And response won’t decline, because those promos weren’t helping you to begin with. Require or encourage your entire team to be part of the experiment: Promotions, Digital, Air Personalities and even the Sales Team can all improve performance with more attention on specific. It’s okay to start slow, but start.
Then, measure the response you generate. I think you’ll be amazed. Now, repeat every day until it becomes a habit. Change your habits, change your results. And let me know how this works for you, either in the blog, or send an email. Be specific. What were you doing, and what did you change? What were your results?
I’ll share some of the best responses, and give you credit or keep you anonymous if you prefer. Let’s all help each other and learn from one another.
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Tracy Johnson
