Radio Companies Are Marketing Again

Once upon a time two or three very high profile TV production companies dominated both the NAB Radio Show hospitality suites and the exhibit hall floor.

Today, as a number of high profile radio programmers churn out music video-based TV spots for radio on their home computer, stations invite listeners to create spots for them via You Tube, every small town cable TV operation has the high-tech video/audio production bells and whistles that used to cost millions, TV production companies appear to be no-shows at the 2011 NAB.

However, at the risk of leaving out someone I may have missed yesterday I won't mention names, but I have run into at least eight different direct/interactive marketing for radio suppliers demonstrating impressive state of the art multi-media resources which are laden with innovative smart mobile, email internet and address-based geo- and values-targeted direct mail database-driven tricks which promote usage, regularity and relevancy not even the largest radio companies have in-house.

Lesson 1: if you're not marketing in some way, there are at least eight other stations in town which these folks are trying to sell new tactics which are designed to hurt your ratings shares.

Lesson 2: (from someone who has made this mistake): never market a poor product. Nothing will kill it faster than great marketing.

Lesson 3: if you have anything but a terrific product, you're especially vulnerable to lesson 1. It's called being a sitting duck.