Plan a successful spring strategy for your station: 

1. Personality is paramount. Recruit and groom creative, passionate talents who sound interesting and relish sounding great. Review performances often and provide help. Establish a climate of improvement; provide the necessary tools to complete the job. 

2. Establish a unique sound and Stationality. Positioning, branding, and imaging are essential. Image the station so exclusive benefits are constantly sold. Show listeners ways to use the programming in the morning, at work, and in the car.

3. Aggressively promote digital listening—to the website stream, to the station’s app, and to smart speakers. About 14% of all radio listening occurs digitally, while 18% of Canadian AM/FM radio listening occurs via streaming. The percentage of dedicated radio station fans (P1s) is far higher, estimated at 38% of listening.  This is radio’s future.

4. Sound exciting with innovative contests and features designed to attract and hold the listeners’ attention. Make promotions fun, easy to enter and play, and entertaining. Offer the best prizes and heavily promote before and after each promotion.

5. Focus on extending TSL and listening occasions. Give listeners a reason to stay tuned. Always go into a commercial stop set with a tease of what’s coming up – such as music, weather, or a contest.  Provide listeners with a reason to stay tuned, and they will!  No one does this more effectively than Dateline, Entertainment Tonight, and TV network newscasts.  They effectively employ the “promote-ahead” concept to hook viewers to stay tuned.  Employ this tactic creatively.

6. Promote the upcoming artist with a tidbit of information derived from show prep. Tease something about the artist or song without saying the name. Use Songfacts.com.  Don’t promote several artists coming up.  Nobody likes a laundry list, and radio listeners don’t like lists.

7. Tease the next benchmark or contest, especially in the morning show when creative bits and benchmarks are liked as much as songs. Always tease with the benefit to the listener, not just the name of the bit or feature.

8. Promote ahead the weather or traffic in the morning. Consider “what’s in it for the listener” – i.e., “hot again today!” “bottleneck on I-80.”

Pic designed by lightfieldstudios for Envato Elements.

John Lund is President of the Lund Media Group, a radio programming consulting firm with specialists in all mainstream radio formats. Did you find this article useful?  You can leave a comment below or email John at John@Lundradio.com.