Using your radio station’s airwaves to drive traffic back to content on your website can be a challenge. After all, it’s much easier to share a link on social media or in an email that brings people back to your site with a single click. But when people listen to the radio, they are often doing something else — driving, working out, cleaning the house, etc. — so they are not in a position to go online and visit the station’s site.
One way to encourage listeners to go to the website on the air is to use vanity URLs. Vanity URLs are short, easy-to-remember links that are easy to include in produced elements or live DJ breaks. For example, something simple and memorable like wkrp.com/concerts would redirect to the station’s concert calendar webpage.
Here’s a list of of webpages where you may want to use vanity URLs and I’ve listened simple examples of how they could be worded.
- Event Calendar: wkrp.com/events
- Out of Commercials: wkrp.com/advertise
- Keys Shows: wkrp.com/morningshow
- Vanity Sweepers: wkrp.com/afternoonDJ
- Contests: wkrp.com/win
- Core Artists: wkrp.com/adele
- Concerts: wkrp.com/concerts
- Playlist: wkrp.com/music
- Big Concert or Station Event: wkrp.com/bigpicnic
- News Headlines: wkrp.com/news
- Donation Page: wkrp.org/donate
Once you have redirects for each of these URLs set up, figure out how the best ways to use them on the air. For example, DJs could end every concert mention by saying, “For more concert info, go to WKRP-dot-com-slash-concerts.” A produced bumper that says, “Radio advertising works. Find out how at wkrp.com/advertise.” And so on. The more you promote these URLs on the air, the more traffic you should see to your radio station’s website.
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Good stuff, Seth. In the early days we started using “keywords” – which apparently didn’t really catch on. The “slash-(whatever)” is used pretty much universally these days. Thanks