Week in Review – April Week 3
This Week in Review will be taking a look at two brand new radio stations. One targets tradespeople and the other allows users to create and upload their own radio show. In other news, more and more radio stations are using dashboard displays as an advertising platform. Additionally, internet ad spend in the UK has surpassed £10bn!
Radio Stations Using Dashboard Displays as Ad Frontier
More and more radio stations are putting adverts in the messages that scroll across the dashboard display on car radio receivers. Most stations have been using Radio Data System technology to display artist and song info or the station’s name and logo. However, for savvy operators, such as Beasley Broadcast Group and CBS Radio, the technology is being used as a form of marketing. Broadcasters can use RDS technology as both a station-branding platform and a growing sales tool.
Fix Radio is Giving Away Free Bacon Butties as a Marketing Strategy
New radio station Fix Radio, which will launch this Wednesday (26/04/2017), will give away 20,000 bacon butties over the first 40 days of broadcasting. The station, aimed at tradespeople, will provide “music and cheeky banter” according to the owners. Three branded bacon butty vans will visit 1,400 building sites serving free hot food and promoting the new station.
UK Internet Ad Spend Passes £10bn
Despite the masses of advertisers who have pulled money from YouTube amid concerns that their ads were appearing next to offensive videos, internet advertising spend has surged above £10bn in the UK last year. Companies have more than doubled the amount they spent on mobile video ads. The overall trend is for growth. Last year’s increase, the biggest since 2007, was fuelled by a boom in mobile ad spend. Ad spend rose by 51% to £3.9bn.
Upload Radio Plays Users Generated Content
Upload Radio, a new radio station, which launched today, allows users to create and upload their own radio show. The digital radio station gives podcasters, individuals and also businesses the opportunity to buy an hour of airtime to broadcast anything they want, withing Ofcom guidelines. Upload Radio will be available on DAB in Surrey, Wrexham and Gloucester, and each area will follow their own schedule. At the moment, Upload Radio charge a small fee of £20 for an hour-long show for each area. This gets the show broadcast on DAB Radio once and then it’s available online for 30 days after broadcast.
3 Reasons Why Your Radio Station Can No Longer Ignore Snapchat
April 25, 2017
Your radio station can no longer afford to ignore Snapchat. It now has 158 million daily active users. It is the platform of the moment to reach a large and active audience. Your radio station should be actively working on engaging and recruiting listeners on Snapchat. Read on to find out why.
1. Share Original Content
Most radio stations are very good at staying active on social media, but they usually do this by posting or sharing other people’s content. They share memes and links and hope their listeners will engage with each post. However, reproducing used content does nothing to show a radio station or DJ’s personality.
The thing I love about Snapchat compared with other social media sites, is that it makes sharing other people’s content extremely difficult. Instead, it encourages sharing your own, original content. With Snapchat, you cannot share links and there are no likes, no shares and no comments. Just stories and messages to allow your station’s personality to shine through.
With Snapchat, your station needs to be sharing content often, because it expires in 24 hours, and this content needs to be fresh and exciting. Snapchat will allow you to share exclusive behind the scenes footage, which is the ultimate way to show how real you are. You can show off a slice of your station’s life without having to plan your content out. The content you share is exclusive and will encourage people to get involved with your station.
Another great thing about Snapchat is that your Snaps do not tend to get lost in the masses of content. Because content expires every 24 hours and sharing other people’s content is not easy, there is a lot less content for the viewer to see.
Furthermore, Snapchat currently has no algorithm to make one account less visible or make other accounts more visible. Users currently see Stories from accounts they follow in chronological order. This means that your Stories will be visible no matter what and you will therefore get a higher amount of viewers. Plus, Snapchat users tend to click through each and every story that their contacts post so a vast majority of your active followers will see your Story.
3. Reach a Younger Audience
Ever since Facebook went mainstream, or ever since parents started using Facebook, young people have been leaving the platform one after the other. In fact, 30% of Snapchat users have claimed that they use the image messaging app because their parents don’t use it. If your radio station isn’t currently targeting a younger generation, you should at least consider it (Reminder: young people are the future, and those under 30 are the largest demographic in the United States). If your radio station targets a younger demographic, or wants to start targeting younger people, Snapchat is your go to, with 71% of Snapchat users being under 34 years old. Furthermore, Snapchat is the only proven social media network that young people regularly use.
Snapchat will give your radio station a chance to have one-on-one, personal interactions with a younger audience. Start using Snapchat today and you will be ahead of other competing radio stations who have not yet considered this powerful social media platform.