If you own more than one radio station, hopefully you’re not missing an opportunity to expand your market reach and revenue using a cluster or parent company website.
When I worked for Clear Channel Radio, the local competition sales people were always quick to point out that our company was a huge entity that didn’t care about small local ownership. Some markets had a cluster website to combat issues like these, but we didn’t. Just think of the missed sales from a new business searching for “(insert your town) radio advertising”.
If you don’t have one, the first step in gaining an edge over all other media in your market or region is to create a company/cluster website. This will be the hub of all sales information for your radio station properties and better establish your brands in the marketplace. Our “Market” website product is a perfect example of this.
Once you have that in place…
Go social. Put your company/cluster brand on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram – or any other platform that your advertisers are using – and start joining in the conversation. Make them laugh, give them great, useful information, or just answer their questions. Be sure to use #hashtags. Those will improve your reach even further.
Boost your search rankings. If you really want to increase your exposure and start ranking higher in Google, Yahoo and Bing; choose thoughtful keywords, optimize your pages and content, and make sure your site is easily crawlable by search engine spiders.
Start blogging. If you have the human resources at your cluster, blogging can really be beneficial to reach more customers on the web. For one, it establishes you as an authority in your space – one that people can go to when they have questions, want information or just need guidance. It is also the best thing you can do to boost your search engine rankings.
Create infographics. Infographics are hugely popular nowadays. They’re quick and easy to understand, they don’t require a lot of time to digest, and best of all, they’re super shareable. This makes your chances of getting a retweet or share (and added exposure) even higher! An easy way to make an impact on your sales, sellers and website is to convert ratings (if you are in a rated market) into an infographic and host it on your website. Below the graphic, post a form to inquire about advertising opportunities. Promote this on social media to drive traffic back to the website. Have the sellers e-mail the link to their clients with a unique subject line like “WXYZ in the Top Position for your Business Client Demographic. Click to see the numbers.”
Give away free things. Everyone likes free stuff, include your station clients. Give away free tools, planners and templates, or just offer downloadable PDFs or ebooks. Just make sure it’s something your clients will find valuable. If they like it, they’ll be coming back for more in no time.
Want to reach more clients on the web? Check out our “Market” website product. It provides easy access to station composites, media kits, production samples and much more. We’re eager to help smaller market radio succeed beyond their terrestrial signal. Contact us for more details on how we can help your station group expand it’s market reach.
