There is a new trend in radio advertising, and that is to sell digital advertising too. The problem is, they are killing radio in the process.
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I have a long history in radio, my father was in radio news for a long time and I have been in radio sales, promotions and digital promotions in my career too. About 10 years ago I left to start one of the first social media management companies in the United States, but my love of radio has never gone away.
My love for radio is why I'm upset at the industry. The execs think it is a good idea to sell digital advertising to their radio clients.
At first this sounds like a good idea. You have sales reps becoming more of a marketing consultant, but there are a lot of problems with it.
1. Digital advertising is growing incredibly fast and radio is slipping. One of the reasons is that sales people are not as dedicated to the product anymore.
2. Selling digital isn't really advantageous to a client. They are paying the rep's commission, the station's fees, the third party's fees to do the ads and then the actual ad platform. It there are two middle men.
3. Local businesses don't know what to do with digital traffic for the most part. Their websites are not set up to convert the additional digital traffic to customers. The effectiveness is almost completely up to the client and how they convert the traffic. Most don't know how to do that.
4. Most radio stations will offer a ton of digital ad options, but few offer Facebook advertising. Facebook has built the largest and most efficient ad platform in the world. Not using it is a disservice to the client and can limit any digital campaign.
5. Most sales reps don't really know much about digital advertising and if you ask them how you can "test" your ad, they will likely have no clue. Anyone that is in digital marketing better know how to "test" and "optimize" their ads and conversion pages.
One problems is that stations sell radio ads or digital. Sometimes they sell them together, but they don't know how to use them to work together.
If stations were smart, they would sell ad schedules that included digital only. That way they can use the digital ads to boost the results of the radio ads and make radio indispensable in local advertising. They would have an in-house person that ran and built the campaigns and landing pages and the stations would bring it all under one roof. That isn't happening either.
I hate to see what is happening to radio, and they are doing it to themselves. Almost all of the digital ad opportunities they offer are or will be obsolete in a couple of years. It is a hard industry to keep up with, and almost impossible for people not truly invested in the technology and digital marketing trends.
I hope stations will wise up, but it is unlikely. Most don't even realize they are sitting on content generating machines and how to use their daily activities to increase their own digital awareness. They don't even rent out their email lists.
Radio is way behind the digital curve and unless something changes soon, local radio in it's current form will not exist in 8 years.
What are your thoughts on radio advertising and radio selling digital?
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Thanks for reading.