Citadel’s Boise stations are hoping for a shot of non traditional revenue with a new “buy it for half” promotion. It works like this: Clients fork over gift certificates in exchange for radio exposure. The station sells the certificates for half price on its website, gives a cut to the vendor (in this case, IncentRev) and keeps the rest. The station gets some cash, the client gets exposure and the listener can save some money.
Here’s an example from KIZN.
(Others have done this as well - including KRVB, etc.)
on Jun 9th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I have talked with 2 radio clusters (influential people,d.j’s and sales) which shall remain anonymus, but I want to get every one’s opinion…good or bad. Being in the business we all share a common goal……Numbers!I would like to hear your opinion of how radio is doing in the Boise Metro area?
on Jun 10th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
My personal experience with certificates from years ago in the SLC/Provo market was a disaster. I would never reccomend it to any station. Regular clients find out and want in, and after they trade out goods, it is harder than hell to get them to pay again. The station I programmed had what they called “The Radio Mall” and was organized in similar fashion. It’s the easiest way kill a radio’s revenue stream, even if it is well-intended. I cannot fathom why Citadel would want to enter into such a venture, although I wish them luck. Radio dollars, especially agency bucks, are getting much more scarce and the industry has to adapt somehow.
on Jun 10th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
We just got done doing this at two stations in a top 20 market. We ended up selling 10 cards, ran 4-500 promos per station and now we have 20k worth of “trade” to try to burn through. bad move.
on Jun 10th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
From my experience on the On-Air side of things was that whenever a station was doing lots of these there was a problem somewhere. I doubt if Sit-A-Spell is having problems but a few of the stations I saw the dreaded trade out, on air auctions, Tradio, etc, were close to having a near death experience. It usually meant a piss poor sales manager, absentee owner or sometimes someone, somewhere in the mix, pocketing the money out the back door…. But hey, times are hard……
on Aug 28th, 2008 at 11:40 am
In my market, 2 tv stations and 2 radio groups (clear channel with 4 stations & cumulus with 3 stations) have offers each week and most of them sell out pretty quickly. That’s 700 +/- gc’s being sold each week but less than .05% Household penetration for the market. I have bought and used several of them w/o any hassle.
As someone w/ radio & tv sales and sales mgmt experience I think that the idea can work if executed as a station promotion. The sales dept cant run out and trade a bunch of crap then try to sell it for a discount. You need to target restaurants and services that fit your audience and get them along with station management to buy into the concept.
Most of us have web budgets in 2008 and those web budgets in 2009 will be increased by 50-100%. This program will drive new visitors to your website each week and could prove to be a valuable tool for generating web dollars. Why not try to make some money with all of those promos that we already run saying “for more on this story…” or “for more on this contest…”