Knowledge To Be Shared

Traditionally, local radio has been one of the key components to any media buy, along with television and print. Many of us can remember the days where Radio created all of the awareness and interest. This awareness and interest created opportunity for radio stations to thrive, thriving to meet the needs of the clients and even the broadcaster themselves. If the local radio station had an event at a local dealership, it would use the microphone to bring local community to that dealership. Radio has always been great at bringing the audience closer to the products and services of the clients. It has always been woven within the fabric of the local community. Building relationships with the local community has always been a big part traditional media success.

With the advent of digital marketing on the internet the landscape has changed dramatically. The internet has brought your audience opportunities in many forms, but to date none greater than search. Now if Radio, Television, and Print created all of the awareness and interest, would they still continue to be the only ones to benefit? The answer is no. While traditional media continues to stay the course of creating all the awareness and interest, search benefits from their lack of direction. Think about how you live your day-to-day life. In the past, most of us would get our information from Radio, Television, or Print. If you heard something on the local radio station, your interest would peek and you would react based on the tools available at that time (yellow pages, 411). If the advertisement had a local store location, you could remember the location and visit. If the advertisement needed you to contact them directly, they would tag their commercial with a phone number. Search has dramatically changed the landscape. If your listener hears something on your local radio station, they just hop on their favorite search engine and find what they’re looking for. The problem is, in most cases search engines take liberties, and send your listeners away from what they were looking for. For instance, your listener hears about a great deal at a local car dealership on your radio station, but can’t remember the name. They may try and go to your station website, but in most cases it’s just not there. They might even call the station and say, “I heard this commercial about 0% financing, but I can’t remember the name of the dealership”. The receptionist contacts the traffic department to help locate that offer. However, since search is readily available, most listeners just go to their favorite search engine and type in “0% car financing”, but what is delivered is much different than what your client was advertising on your radio station. Basically your listeners have been switched away to their advertisers. While local radio creates all of the awareness and interest, the search engines get all the benefits. As you can see, search has been built on the backs of traditional media. The question now is how can traditional media survive with all of these lost opportunities? Remember, search engines equal switch engines for traditional media.

Some broadcasters have been known to employ search boxes that are not truly search engines. The problem that occurs is these search boxes create a facade of a real search engine and diminish the overall outcome for the listener and the station. In most cases these are single word “keyword” boxes, so that if a listener searches for something not in the system, nothing is delivered and the result is a negative experience for the listener.

Some benefits can be found in partnering with search engines, but you need to keep in mind that the same will apply if you don’t deliver local search results that relate to your broadcast first and foremost.

Traditional media has the opportunity to get some of the market share back from these digital giants, one station at a time.

More information: History of Search

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