Participative Marketing for Local Radio Newsletter

This newsletter on publicity for community radio poses the question: "Do you have an audience?  Is anybody listening?" It describes a number of ways to increase radio audience numbers and how to measure the audience and programme impacts.

Promoting the station:

1. Off-air publicity promoting the station (not individual programmes), e.g. make a deal with another media outlet, perhaps a local newspaper, along the lines that "if you publicise us then we will do the same for you." Use trusted media, and, possibly, summarise stories from these partners to use on the air.
2. Press (media) releases - "The more the release relates to a public-interest matter and complements the work of the media who receives it the greater the likelihood of it being mentioned."
3. Launch events with appropriate guests and potential stakeholders - "For community radio, representatives of local civil society organisations are likely to spread your work much faster than local politicians."
4. Billboards with an evocative picture linked to the station name, possibly using blank building walls to lower costs.
5. Word of mouth publicity, with a reward for getting friends to tune in, e.g., the right to request a song to be played at a specific time or a free micro-ad (message).
6. Radios in public places playing the station - "The most valued listeners for this purpose are the managers of electronic-product shops (including radio/TV repairs), as they can tune every radio in their shop to your station." 
7. Station visits and, possibly, locating studios in a central place.
8. Outside broadcasts - An old vehicle can be reconditioned as a travelling studio, as well as a mobile billboard.

Measuring the impact of programmes:
"An organization can measure three kinds of things: inputs, outputs, and impacts.

• Inputs are the resources you use, to do whatever you do: money, equipment, and time that people spend.

• Outputs are what you produce: newspapers produce issues and copies, radio and TV stations produce programs...

Impacts measure the effectiveness of the outputs....List the inputs, or causes.

• List the outcomes and impacts, or effects.
• Try to work out exactly how the inputs cause the outcomes."

The article gives a sample of program logic modelling, including, for example, measuring audience size, how many people remember listening, and how many people actually did something and what was it they did.

For measuring listenership, the newsletter lists examples of:

• Counting daily text messages to the station.
• Keeping track of membership in listener clubs.
• Conducting a survey.
• Tracking increased resident demand for radio receivers noted by local retailers.

It discusses in detail:

• Using response cultivation instead of surveys: "numbers of visitors, phone calls, faxes, emails, music requests, subscribers, advertisers, queries about advertising, active volunteers, published mentions, number and value of donations, visits to web site, page views on the web site ... and so on."
• Sharing surveys between stations or combining with community surveys for other purposes.