Why Local Radio's Losing Out

If you’re moving your mate’s enormous sofa, you need an estate car. A perky runabout just won’t do the job.

Likewise, if you’re popping off to the inner city and need to find a handy parking spot, you don’t always want to be behind the wheel of something long and hearse-like.

Different jobs require different tools. You can often ‘make do’ with the wrong equipment, but if you want to get the job done properly, you need the right tools to do it with.

The radio industry is no different; but so-called experts keep pretending it is.

Local vs. Regional

In the radio game, there are two breeds of stations. Local and regional.

The regional boys cover a large area, encompassing at least one urban hub. Local stations, on the other hand, are much more… well, localised. They tend to be centred around a single town or city.

Traditionally, they’ve battled it out for whatever advertising budget their TSA can scrape together; and local radio always comes off worse.

That’s because the perception is: it’s not a level playing field.

And at the moment, it isn't. With radio being such an incestuous business, you often see the same personalities lugging their inflexible sales models from regional stations to local and back again. They keep selling the same way, blaming failure on the stations, not themselves.

But if local radio is going to succeed, the preconceptions these sales people have about 'local radio' need to be chucked out of the window.

Why Local Radio Doesn't Sell - A Salesman's Perspective

Preconception Number 1: Local Radio doesn’t offer effective coverage.

Don’t think of local radio’s coverage as ‘limited.’ Think of it as ‘targeted.’ There are plenty of local businesses that only have clients from the very nearby area. Local radio will always be a better choice for them to advertise with because it eliminates costly wastage. All a sales person needs to do is tell them.

Preconception Number 2: Local radio isn’t cost effective.

It’s a familiar opinion in the radio biz: “Radio is Expensive.” Well, it shouldn’t be. For local businesses, radio is just one of many forms of advertising. To compete against them, it must be priced effectively.

A weekly campaign on radio should be price matched to a weekly campaign in the local press. If it’s more expensive, it’ll always be a less attractive prospect for a business with limited funds.

Preconception Number 3: Local is Limiting.

Forget teaming up with nearby FM stations to create a pseudo ‘hub.’ Local radio stations need to bask in their ‘localness.’ From locally focused news and traffic reports, to coverage of local sporting events and appearances by local personalities on-air, a local radio station needs be the very aural identity of the town.

Forget group wide imaging and networked shows. Provide local coverage and you’ll get local listeners.

What's gone wrong?

The problem with so many radio ‘groups’ is that focus has been taken away from a station’s individuality. A station shouldn’t exist as part of a ‘chain.’ It needs it's own identity and presence.

That takes advertising. Street activity. Support of local music and charity. It takes a small, but dedicated programming and sales team that have burrowed deep into the roots of their community.

A radio station that embraces it’s town or city breaks free from local radio’s so-called ‘limitations.’

But achieving that takes three things.

Time, Money, Courage

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In a local community, it takes time to build identity. A radio station needs consistency and presence; not a re-brand every six months.

It takes money to cover the costs until the revenue slowly builds. Money to pay for marketing and events to raise the station’s identity. Money just to keep things going until things can pay for themselves.

And most importantly of all, it takes courage.

Local radio has been shown to succeed - by hard work, great customer service and establishing an important place in the local community.

But that can never happen while the larger radio groups keep getting cold feet and swapping money-losing stations like they were premiership footballers.

Unless there's the courage to stick with it, there will never be enough consistency for local radio to actually live up to it's potential.

Roland Hulme admits he is one of the world's least qualified people to talk about local radio marketing and how to give it a boot up the arse. But he was a salesman with two radio groups once and got to drive a shiny blue VW Beetle with bright yellow dots on it.