Stuart Wilde, a self-help author and lecturer, quips: “You’ve got to know what you’re selling.”
It’s so obvious, but also so universally ignored in many businesses – including Radio. Right now, Radio is going through a truly transformational process, as we try to morph our business from the single platform (:30 and :60 spots) to multi-level campaigns that integrate other media (websites, texting, social networking, databases, etc.).
One of the challenges is teaching Radio’s veteran sales people how to sell and market these off-air digital offerings. According to Gordon Borrell, and the team at Borrell Associates, perhaps there’s a better way to go. As you may recall, Gordon spoke at Summit 11 in Dallas, and while he unveiled a huge online revenue opportunity for Radio, he simultaneously cautioned against using Radio’s account reps to get this new job done.
The numbers don’t lie. Here’s an updated chart from Borrell’s newest report, showing a telling comparison of local website revenue – with and without dedicated sales reps. A focus on the little green squares tells the story. Borrell estimates that newspaper sites with dedicated reps average 87% more revenue; TV sites garner 26% more, while Radio sites scores 497% additional dollars. Now in Radio’s case, that may be 497% of a relatively small pot of dollars, but we know that online revenue dollars are growing exponentially, while traditional advertising is stagnating.
Borrell also estimates that of the $8.5 billion in local online advertising dollars in 2007, Radio attracted only about 1%. It’s interesting that we used to complain about Radio only pulling 7% of total advertising dollars back in the day when Mel was a broadcast radio CEO and there was no Internet. To companies with the vision to build for the future, 7% of this online pie wouldn’t be a bad goal for 2010.
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