For Apple, Amazon, and Google, it was a pretty damn good holiday season for smartphones and tablets. Their total sales numbers aren’t in, but with Amazon reporting 4 million Kindle Fire sales in December, we can easily conclude they’ll be huge. At jacAPPS – our mobile app developing enterprise – we see the data from a different perspective.
As we have opined in this blog in the past, radio stations and companies that have taken the leap into mobile would do well to do more than build apps. That’s a start, but it means little without crafting strategies and tactics that drive downloads and usage. That planning is a big part of what we’re doing here at Jacobs Media and jacAPPS.
Google reported 3.7 million Android applications just on December 24-25, so think of the millions of other folks who got a new smartphone or tablet over the holidays as new cumers moving into your metro. They now have these cool new devices and they’re dying to use them. I get hit with the question all the time: “Any cool new apps you’d recommend?”
Well, if your station (or company) has a mobile application, why wouldn’t you focus your promotional energy on these peak times when consumers are even more likely to download apps? Like right around Christmas and Hanukkah?
So to see if that strategy works, we pulled app download data from more than 250 of the jacAPPS apps we’ve developed during a two week run, starting on December 5 and going right through Christmas. Here are the results:
This is no surprise. Now think about how much higher radio could have driven downloads (and usage) on Christmas Eve/Day and beyond with a targeted series of promos or better yet, a dedicated email blast about your apps that included links. Talking about your app, encouraging downloads and listening, and making new smartphone and tablet owners feel good about their purchase is as important to your internal marketing as playing Christmas music, A-to-Z, or anything else you were programming or promoting late last month. Timing your messaging to the times when new smartphones are being taken out of their little boxes is just smart.
This is what we’re doing at Jacobs Digital – an extension of our programming consulting specifically for mobile/social/digital – that works with radio to create strategies that make sense. We get together with radio management teams to set priorities, create digital hierarchies, and to work with staffers to achieve goals. And we do more than talk about what to do. We roll up our collective sleeves and build, create, and innovate.
I’m not going to tell you that our execution is perfect, but one brand at a time, we are making progress in helping radio brands craft coherent digital schemes. Radio should enjoy the fruits of the technology movement rather than sitting on the sidelines wondering what to do next or simply taking a shotgun approach that gravitates to the bright, shiny object that is generating buzz.
It’s time to end these random acts of digital.
Broadcast radio needs a true digital strategy.
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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New additions to my (digital) family this recent holiday season:
1 iPhone4s
1 Kindle (Touch-Screen)
1 iPod shuffle
Xmas cash from Grandma to be used for a new MacBook
(It was a slow holiday season)
So, you talkin’ to me…?
The day radio companies come up with, commit to, and implement a real world digital strategy is the day I drive the pace car in the Indy 500.
Radio is woefully behind most of the business world and far behind most other media in developing a true digital strategy. Ask he group heads what their digital strategy is and you’ll be stunned at how random and outdated it is. Most group heads and their programming overlords do not understand digital, do not want to understand digital, and think they can compete with digital.
FD: I’ve worked with JacApps in a company that let my station have an iPod app, but wouldn’t let me have an Android app until a certain number of iPod apps were downloaded. THAT was their digital strategy, even tough in the market I was in, there were nearly twice as many activated Android devices as there were iPhones.
I’ve seen it. I’ve talked to the big thinkers at most of the groups. They are clueless as to what goes on in the real world.
Mark, I believe things are changing – sometimes slowly – but we are working with more and more broadcasters that are tackling many of these challenges. I get more questions about digital tactics and strategies than I do about rotations and minimum separations. That may not signify a sea change, but there is movement. I’m not saying we start that Indy Pace Car for you this weekend, but progress is being made. Thanks for commenting.
I remember a year ago a General Manager asked a friend I know “Just what is this Twitter thing?” If ya looked at that station’s website now you can see the digital dollars being wasted. Radio needs to adapt and embrace the new technology. Those that do will win and be profitable, those that don’t will still be trying to figure out Twitter.
Danny, it is often a matter of keeping up with all the different innovations and tools that come along, knowing they won’t all become viable. In the case of Twitter, Pandora, and others that reached beyond critical mass, they cannot be ignored – and there is a great deal to be learned by integrating and/or understanding their strengths and weaknesses. Thanks for writing. (And I’m still trying to become good at Twitter!).
As a sidebar to all of this, I see that Pandora passed ONE MILLION active sessions in November (https://www.radio-info.com/news/pandora-crosses-the-1000000-active-sessions-mark-in-triton-digital-ranker)
Let’s be honest with ourselves here. Much, probably most, of that listening came at the expense of local radio. Yes, some will say that people listened to Pandora instead of recorded music, but recorded music sales, both physical and downloaded, were up a bit in 2011.
Managers and group guys like Danny mentioned don’t see the real threat of mobile and online taking away TSL from radio. TSL is a zero sum game, and if you’re listening to something more, you’ve pretty much got to be listening to something else less.
There’s no questioning Pandora’s growth, Mark. But if I’m an advertiser or just a guy living in any American city or town, local radio still has the advantage – the power to connect on a personal basis & the ability to deliver customers. Radio has every opportunity to be able to adapt to the times, bolster its strengths, and find a modified place in the overall media hierarchy. I still believe the glass is more than half full (and I’m a glass half empty kind of guy). Best of luck with the consultancy & thanks again for chiming in.