Friday, September 9, 2016

Helping The Sales Team

With all the opportunities we have to market and build brands with all of today's Media options on so many platforms, your sales team has to really hustle to hit those budgets and build the revenue line. This probably isn't 'breaking news' in your shop, but has it become 'old hat news'?  Is it just a 'slump' that seems to go on and on?   Are we giving up on opportunities we could take advantage of or create?

But, what can the programming team do to help?  It's a sales issue, right?

Radio advertising may look like just selling 30s and 15s in the 2-3 spot islands we have in most hours, and while that probably makes up much of the revenue, we have a lot more opportunities.
The Potential to work outside the cluster boxes to build brands, draw customer traffic, and help brands integrate themselves in the community.


Many of these opportunities involve embedding opportunities outside of the clusters - an integration right into the product.  A place where your message is a lot harder for the audience to pass over.

It's sponsorship of features, events, promotions, studios, weekends, whole dayparts, and anything else we can dream up.  Too often we look at these as 'inventory' on a list that the sales team needs to sell.  How about if we changed the 'optics' to - opportunities for brands/clients/advertisers to engage their message front and center on the product.

Programming needs to take a leadership position here and look for opportunities that fit the product and don't intrude on it.  Next, we need to outline the opportunities and create the guidelines so the sales team and the client knows what to expect.  It may sound simple, but do you and your team have a real plan here?  Or do we just wing it when the client brings it up?  Maybe it's time to work with your sales team and develop your plan.