Stephanie Winans

Business & Marketing Strategy Consulting

internet sales

Why A Competitive Analysis Can Help You Succeed With Digital

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Whether you’re developing a strategy for social media, planning to update the station website, creating a business model for streaming, or wondering why you aren’t getting advertisers’ digital dollars, conducting an analysis of the competition is key.

Why? An online analysis of the competitive landscape yields information you may not hear by monitoring the on-air product. You can capitalize on their weaknesses, or reveal your own by finding out what they’re doing better. You can also determine whether competitors are generating revenue from advertisers.

Program Directors spend time listening to the competition. It’s time to start listening online, too.

What To Review

  • Their website for design and content. Is the design modern and easy to navigate? Is the content updated frequently? Is the air talent posting blogs, videos and audio regularly? Is the station providing any content you aren’t? From a listener standpoint, is their website more interesting, and does the content give you more reason to visit often?
  • Advertisements on their website. Make notes for your Sales Manager. Who are their sponsors for promotions and contests? Is there a video pre-roll advertisement? And don’t forget to listen to the stream.
  • Engagement on social media platforms. In addition to the vanity metrics (Facebook likes and Twitter followers), review how many comments and likes each post receives. Is your station getting similar engagement from listeners?
  • Social media content. What categories do competitors include in their social media strategy? Are they posting about music and promotions? Do air talent post during their shows? Or is their engagement empty, a product of off-brand internet meme updates?
  • Their social media sponsors. Is there any indication that advertisers are spending money on social media? Look at promotional banners or timeline photos, and read posts for mention of sponsors. Look for a contest tab for an advertiser-sponsored contest.

Who To Look At3249473645_0c81fab970

  • Competitors in your market. Go beyond stations with similar formats. Do an online analysis of all radio stations in your market that share your target demographic, as well as all stations that boast strong ratings.
  • Similar stations outside of your market. Review the online presence of stations in your format that are successful in similar size markets across the country.
  • The best [your format] station in the country. While many ideas you glean from market #1 may not be practical in your market, you can tweak some and execute on a smaller scale. If you’re going to learn from competitors, you may as well learn from the best.
  • Non-radio brands in your market. Review the websites and social media strategies of local TV stations and companies who do digital well. It is likely that advertisers aren’t giving your piece of their digital budget to other radio stations, but other non-radio brands.

What Next?

  • Use what you’ve learned to improve your digital presence. If you’re missing content categories on your website, add them. If other stations’ talent are more involved online, work with your jocks to increase post frequency. If your website looks like it was built in 1999 and your competitors are rocking a 2015 design, it’s time to push hard for a design update.
  • Help your Sales Team target digital advertisers. Give them a list of companies who advertise on both the radio and non-radio brands you reviewed. Explain the different types of sponsorships, ads and contests you saw to begin brainstorming for ideas. It’s easier for Account Executives to sell a great idea than to sell a generic banner ad.
  • Set up a Google Alert to monitor your competitors (and your station, too). Add keywords for station and show names, and Google will email you once daily with any news or blogs posted.
  • If you haven’t ever run a Google or Facebook ad for the station, do it now. Not only will it improve your website traffic and increase Facebook likes, respectively, but it will show you another realm of competition. It’s important to understand the way Google and Facebook ads work, so you know what potential advertisers are getting from these ads (and what they’re paying for).

Photo credit: Harald Hoyer/Flickr via Creative Commons

What metrics or entities do you include when analyzing competitors? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Can Radio Monetize Pinterest?

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Can You Sell It?


I haven’t seen a station sponsored pin or board yet, but I believe you can. Pinterest is all about visual content. Be picky about which clients you partner with and choose based on the custom content you can provide visually. If you’re weaving clients into a well-developed content strategy, listeners won’t care that some content is sponsored.

For example, weddings are a hot category on Pinterest. Partner with a local wedding boutique to share wedding and bridesmaids dresses. Pin their images (with the attached link to their site) over a period of time, mingled in with other wedding content like catering, music, decor, etc. You could include a pinned coupon, or a repin promotion to win one of the dresses pinned.

Create the content idea first with your demo in mind, then present it to the client. Be protective over your Pinterest account so it doesn’t become a dumping ground for client products and events.

Your followers on Pinterest will be paramount to any future success you have with clients. So create a content strategy and get pinning first to establish your station as a “pinner to follow”.

Selling Social: Are Social Media Endorsements a Good Idea?

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Social media savvy radio clients are inquiring about online endorsements, creating revenue opportunities for both radio stations and air talent. However, with opportunity comes responsibility.

Stations and talent have built online communities based on trust. Listeners trust that your social media content will be a reflection of what they hear on air- an extension of your station brand or your on-air personality. They also trust that you won’t spam them.

A friend (and high profile morning show talent) recently approached me with questions about social media endorsements. He is hesitant to accept sales offers for social media endorsements, rightfully afraid to taint the delicate relationships he has built with his 20,000 Twitter followers and 35,000 Facebook fans. Our discussion had me thinking of ways to get online endorsement revenue without upsetting the balance of trust you have with your online community of listeners.

Here are some guidelines to help you if you’re considering social media endorsements:

Be Transparent

Make it clear that it’s a sponsored post or tweet. Your social relationships are based on trust, so don’t try to trick your followers or fans into thinking the tweet or post isn’t an ad. They’ll know you’re lying. Michael Brandvold, Music marketing consultant, speaker, author, expert and Klout Star, shares his experience on endorsements with the music industry:

“Endorsements are fine, but you need to be clear that the post is a paid endorsement. You should also only endorse items that you do believe in. So if a discussions starts you can talk intelligently and with passion.

I always tell a story of how [the band] KISS has never been afraid to say they are doing something for money, complete transparency and honesty. But other artists I have worked with would say they want to earn the money that someone like KISS would make, but can they do it in a way so their fans won’t think they are in it for the money. You can’t fool your fans or listeners today. When they find out you were trying to fool them you will have much bigger problems to deal with.”

On Twitter, you can use a hashtag like #Sponsored or #Promoted to let listeners know the tweet is a paid endorsement. On Facebook, you can use parentheses in your status update to indicate an advertisement.

Follow Your On-Air Rules

Michael Brandvold also mentions that it’s important to accept endorsements you believe in, and this is an essential tip for air talent. Follow your own guidelines on whether to accept a social media endorsement; be picky in the same way you are when choosing to accept an on-air endorsement. Your reputation is important, and you are the one responsible for protecting it- not the station, and not the client.

Consider Sponsored Online Content

Think about an on-air Traffic sponsorship, where the content already provided is tagged with a sponsor ad. Offer to create a similar social media sponsorship in lieu of an online endorsement. Provide your own content, along with a note that it is sponsored by [your client]. You can use content you already provide regularly, or create something tailor made for the client (for the right price, of course).

Don’t Do it Often

If you accept endorsements as a station or an air talent, don’t do them often. Your goal is to gain followers, not to lose them. Posting endorsement ads often won’t help anyone. Your listeners will be annoyed, and that’s not good for your brand or the client’s.

Do It Once, Naturally

One last endorsement option: If there’s a client you truly stand behind, share honestly online one time. Not disclosing that it’s an ad will only work once. Choose the time you tweet or post carefully to maximize exposure for the client, and write the copy yourself so it really is just you sharing information about a brand or product you support.

If you have any endorsement stories or tips of your own to share, I would love to hear them. Leave a comment or send me a tweet @StephanieWinans.

You can check out the genius of Michael Brandvold on his website or on Twitter.

This article was written for Radio Ink.

Location, location, location! Location Targeting and Your Database

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You post on Facebook that you’ll be at AT&T from 11 to 1 today. The first comment is from Jessica who says “When will you be in my town? I want to see you guys but that’s thirty minutes away.”

Both Google AdWords and Facebook use location targeting to target company ads to specific locations.

Your station can do the same using your loyal listener club database.
Imagine emailing Jessica for the next remote, concert or event in her town with an email targeted to her (and other listeners who live in that area). You create exposure for your event or remote, plus you sound local when you call out small segments of your market by name. You aren’t just the market’s station, you are that town or suburb’s station, too.

The opportunities location targeting provides advertisers go beyond email alerts for nearby remotes. You can create a special offer based on your advertisers’ needs. Email special offers or grand opening alerts to listeners who live nearby the advertiser’s location.

If your client wants to compete with a business in another area of the market, email special offers to listeners who live near their competitor. Maybe your client has locations all over the market, but wants to promote a different product or message in certain areas. Location targeting will allow you to serve these needs.

If you have a franchise owner who is hesitant to buy digital because he doesn’t want to give free advertising to other franchise owners in your market, promote location targeting as a way to reach his location’s customers, not all customers of the franchise chain.

Kim Willoughby, Senior Consultant at The Center For Sales Strategy, says “tailoring a special offer to the particular target was essential in creating many successful campaigns.” She describes a digital campaign that involved advergaming:

“For a local jeweler, an email was targeted to specific zip codes, linking to a landing page that hosted an interactive game. As a reward for completing the game, listeners received a special offer good for a limited time. The store owner said it was the best radio campaign he had ever done. It also happened to be the first time he had purchased digital with a local radio station.”

Kim’s example also provides you with one more metric to measure success. You now have the email statistics (open count, clickthroughs, and bouncebacks) plus traffic statistics (page views, unique visitors, etc. ) for the advergaming page on your website.

Many database systems are sophisticated enough to do most of the work for you, segmenting your database using the information you plug in (city or zip code). For those that aren’t, you can organize your database manually by creating lists for each zip code in your market.

Adding Social Media to the Digital Revenue Menu… Side dish or À la carte?

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The news broke in late 2009 that Kim Kardashian is paid $10,000 per sponsored tweet.  While some followers were amazed at the price tag, most were disgusted that they couldn’t tell which of her tweets were real and which were just paid ads. This got companies thinking about their own policies.  Is social media a great opportunity to build digital revenue or territory better reserved for building the company brand only?

What about your NTR strategy?  Do clients belong on your station’s Facebook and Twitter accounts?  If your Sales and Programming departments haven’t had this conversation yet, they will… so get ready.  Clients are frequently pushing Account Executives to promote their businesses on Facebook and Twitter.  National clients send us written commercials for status updates, and local clients want all of their business events and radio remotes announced.  Programming may make a convincing case that clients don’t belong in social media, but pressure to increase digital revenue pushes radio managers to consider ways to sell it.

Revenue from social media should be viewed as a side dish to your client’s entrée of spots, sponsorships or web advertising, and not as an à la carte option from the digital menu.  The goal is to make clients happy by giving them results, not by giving in.  Using social media to reinforce the client’s message in their spot schedule or web advertising will be more successful than using social media to create that message.  Making social media buys available as an add-on will increase revenue, while providing a filter to ensure your social media accounts don’t become a dumping ground for client ads.

Here are two scenarios to explain the difference.

À la carte scenario: Burger Castle just placed a buy for 2nd quarter. Included in the added value notes are dates for a Facebook post with the copy “Hungry for lunch? Stop by Burger Castle and try their new bacon cheeseburger.”  You make the post and receive backlash from your fans.  “Gosh, I know you need to keep the station running, but a Facebook commercial, really?”  “Thanks for the ad, WABC. Not why I like your page.”  The comments are more in disgust of the “sell-out” than excitement about the brand or product you were pushing, which is not in the best interest of your client.

Side dish scenario: When Burger Castle’s 2nd quarter buy comes with the Facebook copy, you make suggestions to improve their request.  You ask for coupons for the new bacon cheeseburger.  You upload a picture of the burger to Facebook before lunch, with the post “Doesn’t Burger Castle’s new bacon cheeseburger look delicious?  We’re giving away lunch for two at Burger Castle to the next five people who comment ‘Yum!’”  Now your comments are from fans who are excited to win lunch from Burger Castle, will visit their location, and hopefully have a positive experience with the brand and the new product.  You have given your client a positive result.

The side dish strategy is about weaving clients into your station’s social media tapestry without diminishing the integrity of your brand.  Do it successfully and Programming won’t mind, and your listeners will be responsive.  Here are five quick ways to use social media as a side dish, giving clients the results they want without bastardizing programming territory.

1.    Offer your fans something and you will have interested people opt-in without annoying the fans that aren’t interested.  Listeners love to win, so if the prize appeals to your demo, give it away regardless of the monetary value.  Set your contests up for success by keeping them simple for less-valued prizes.  Timing the giveaway during the client’s spot schedule reinforces their marketing message.

2.    Have your client sponsor an on-air promotion and agree to mention their name in the tweets and posts you make on Twitter and Facebook. “Listen to win free gas in ten minutes from WABC and Mercedes.”

3.    Draw your next promotion’s winners from your Facebook fans or Twitter followers.  Just be specific when writing the liners.  There is a fine line between saying “Please like us on Facebook to win” and “We’ll be drawing our winners from Facebook, so if you haven’t become a fan yet, no big deal.  You still have time to do so before Friday at 7:35.”  The key is to sell the inside scoop for our Facebook fans or Twitter followers, not we’re desperate for more online friends and this is the only way we can get them.

4.    Have listeners upload fan photos that relate to the client’s brand.  This requires more participation, so make sure the prize is a big one.

5.    Send your Street Team on a Scavenger Hunt, posting clues to their whereabouts on Facebook and Twitter.  Sell the stops to clients, and predetermine the copy for the clues.  You have provided a fun game for listeners to win their favorite concert tickets, while reinforcing the brand for your client, and providing foot traffic to their business.