Banner ads and E-blasts are so 2005

I recently met with a prospective client who's budget wasn't huge, so most of our meeting was spent talking about utilizing a station's website to stretch the dollars more effectively.

So where did I point this person?  Banner ads?  Skyscrapers?  E-mail blasts?  A Poll Sponsorship?

No.  None of the above.

As the title of this post suggests, those elements are so 2005.  Banner ads and E-blasts are elements radio stations throw at companies for added-value which are now mostly ineffective (when's the last time YOU clicked on a banner ad on a website?).  What really makes these elements dangerous is that they are also the parts of the Internet that most people are familiar with (now that they've been around for a long enough time).

No, what we talked about was the very-popular (and often times overlooked) Listener Loyalty Programs that most stations are now using. Rewarding listeners for interacting with your brand and then allowing listeners to "buy" your stuff with their points is the new "rage."  And it works.  It's what marketers call "Participatory Marketing" and it is the absolute best way to capture targeted individuals for very little money.

E-mail blasts are better than banner ads, but there again, it is a spaghetti approach HOPING that people are in the market for what you are offering. Say a station's loyal listener database has 5,000 people - 3,000 may have opted-in to receive e-mail blasts and probably 1,000 at any given time actually open the blast. The numbers aren't as big as account executives make them sound (shocker...). In the Phoenix Market, listener loyalty programs could have anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 people in their database, so e-mail blasts can be fairly successful in reaching a lot of people, but it is still not what low budget clients should be using to drive traffic.

The other downfall of E-blasts and banner ads (and poll sponsorships and the like) are their distorted measureability.  I use the word distorted because many times, these elements are sold based on impressions, not actual click-throughs.  If they were actually sold on click-throughs and held accountable, many fewer companies would be paying money for these elements.  Instead, they are sold as website traffic-drivers when in fact they are mostly branding methods.  If you are McDonald's and in the "branding" phase of marketing, that's all well and good, but most local business owners aren't spending money this way (especially nowadays).

Local radio station websites are still one of the most efficient and effective ways to target a specific audience in any Market, so make sure to keep them in mind in lower-budget situations.

I'll have more blog posts on Loyalty Programs down the road, but for now, just know that there are better ways to use radio station web properties than those "old" 2005 throwbacks.