I'm always looking for creative ways to win more advertising dollars especially in small markets where the number of potential clients is limited.
I really liked the station that charged for their 'Tradio' or 'Swap Shop'. It was cheap and in fact mirrored the price of a classified in the local weekly ($7). They charged $7 a week or $2 a day. Payment with the ad required. The station owner's thinking: the newspaper charges, why not us? They called it the Radio Classifieds.
Another station had done what many small town stations have done. They effectively got spot rates up high enough that only the larger businesses could run a regular schedule and medium businesses on targeted flights, say twice a month.
The owner got that left much on the table as most businesses in his listening area likely had sales under $100,000 a year and they could never afford a meaningful campaign at $20 a pop. He created a twice a day 'community announcements' styled program where people could pay to be heard. It was a per day charge for two airings, once in the morning and once in the afternoon before school got out.
You heard about Church Revivals, Bake Sales and such (anybody that was raising money or passing an offering plate in the non-profit realm paid to play). Next, if you signed a statement your annual gross sales were under a certain amount (and even show the company's last tax return if questioned), you could qualify to buy airings on the program.
They charged $10 a day or $40 a week. Sure this is 'peanuts', but the concept was the client wrote the copy and paid in advance. The DJ read the announcement.
In a short time many non-profits had them in their budget and the small businesses, part-time businesses and hobby businesses were embracing the idea. Many new businesses advertised and later became regulars.
Aside from the non-profits and churches, many businesses took advantage but listeners got creative too. They bought to announce weddings, salute graduates, say happy birthday or happy anniversary. Some kids, say looking for babysitting jobs or lawns to mow in summer, advertised. Pampered Chef, Avon, Mary Kay and other local sales reps bought.
In about a year the station was trying to find a way to keep the program from sounding boring, so they had a male and female talent to bring variety and even added a bit of trivia to make what had become an almost 40 minute twice a day feature that was taking in about $3,000 a week.
Granted this was a small town station with maybe 40,000 to 45,000 in the county that was the listening base. They were the lone broadcasters except for a satellite delivered format on a competing FM and a couple of translators (a religious and NPR distant signal). The program represented about 22% of their gross, something that they missed out on.
I felt it wise to limit sales for a business to qualify since the risk is a cheap business owner could drop the $20 spot and buy $5 airings in the programming. In fact, those that balked, which were few, got an occasional bonus in the program. After 3 years they added commercial breaks where some of those $20 spots get cleared in that program that now is capped at an hour. Instead of the program waning over time, it has become a must listen to stay up on what is going on locally, an institution if you will.
I though this a novel idea of expanding income from non-traditional advertisers.
Has anyone out there have some ideas such as this that failed or worked well?
I am in a small market of 14,000 people on an island in Alaska. We have a non profit rate and our policy is if they pay for paper advertising then they can pay the non profit rate for radio. We use short term promotions and sports sponsorship to get non traditional advertisers on the air. In a years time, we have about 60 non profits that advertise with us. In a small market, every client and every penny counts.
Julie Lekwauwa
