Work Creatively With Radio Stations and Other Advertising Outlets

If you are even a little bit like me you love music and love listening to the radio while you work. For me, it is a good way to pass the time during the day while sitting at my desk.

Recently a friend of mine, who runs his own promotion company, expanded his business to concerts, bands and other musical acts. His first show in this genre is a style of music called freestyle. To me, freestyle music is old school club music, although there are some newer acts on the card, from what I was told.

Being that this was his first event, as you can imagine, he was a bit nervous. A slowing economy, music that is not so much main stream anymore and to top it off the show is booked at the Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton, NJ which holds about nine thousand people.

To his delight and not really any surprise to those that know my friend, the show sold out in a few weeks. He used a wonderful marketing effort combined with some creativity on a local radio station out of Philadelphia, PA.

The first step was to get the radio station to agree to plug the concert. That was fairly easy to do since he paid for that portion of it. However he wanted the radio station to go above and beyond just the normal advertising package that he purchased. He wanted them to plug the show every hour or so leading up to the date the tickets would go on sale. My friend’s request, however, did not stop there. After the tickets went on sale he wanted the station to plug the show every hour. At first they thought he was crazy and said there is no way they could do that. So here is what my friend offered.

Beyond the normal cost of what he had already agreed to he offered them two things. The first being the radio station would receive compensation on every ticket sold. This meant each ticket sold would produce more revenue for the station. By accepting, the station agreed to the terms above. The second part of what my friend offered was 200 comp tickets to the show. Once the show sold out, the radio station used these tickets as a way to maintain listener ship to their station. Listeners had to stay tuned throughout the day and when they heard a certain song they were to dial the station’s phone number and be the 96th caller. The winner would receive a pair of tickets to the show.

This was a win-win situation for everyone. My friend was willing to part with a portion of the profit, knowing that if the radio station had not plugged it as often as they did, it might not have sold out. The radio station made out because they earned more revenue then what they originally expected and were able to bolster their listeners to the station by keeping them tuned in throughout the day.

Whether you are working with radio, television, newspapers, online advertising agencies, are you thinking of creative ways that will benefit everyone involved? This is a great form of partnership that everyone enjoys. When making partnerships, such as my friend’s, everyone involved has to equally benefit from it (or close to it as possible), otherwise one side will seem like they were taken advantage of.

Get your creative partnerships going to jump start your business, product sales and services that you offer. It worked wonders for my friend, it works well with us, and it should work well for you.