I spent most of my career as a programmer. I worked in sales for about a year and 15 minutes. That qualifies me to say, with some authority, that I am not a sales expert.
But it was long enough to see the business from the other side of the hallway — and it changed how I think about what we’re selling.
Programmers think about what we create. The brand. The personalities. The music, the promotions and the connection to the community. Advertisers are thinking about something much simpler: Did it work?
That gap made me wonder whether radio communicates its value in the way advertisers actually need to hear it.
The Three Pots
From where I sat, advertisers fell into three pots.
The first pot is the believers. They understand radio, and they’ve probably seen it work. Serve them well — and don’t take their budgets for granted.
The second pot is the nonbelievers. Some had a bad experience. Some don’t personally listen to the radio, so they assume nobody does. And some have simply decided the medium is obsolete. You can spend a lot of time trying to convert someone who has already made up their mind. I’m not sure it’s the best use of anyone’s afternoon.
The third pot is the persuadable middle. They aren’t anti-radio. They just aren’t convinced. And they may believe radio builds awareness but question whether it drives action. And they’re open to it if we can make the investment feel less risky.
That third pot may be radio’s biggest growth opportunity.
The persuadable middle doesn’t need another argument about why radio matters. They need us to remove some of the reasons they’re afraid to buy it.
Making Yes Feel Safer
So what’s holding them back? Cost and commitment, for starters. Then come the questions. How much frequency is enough? How long does it need to run? Are we reaching the right people? How does this compare with digital? Is the creative any good? Did the last campaign fail because radio didn’t work — or because it was never built to work?
And the big one: How will I know it worked?
That isn’t a no. It’s a request to make yes feel safer.
The good news is that radio’s attribution story is changing. Ratings, reach and frequency still matter. But we can now point to trackable calls, landing pages, promo codes, search lift, streaming data, foot traffic, retargeting and brand-lift studies. Attribution isn’t perfect. Still, we’re well beyond handing someone a ratings book and wishing them luck.
The key is having the measurement conversation before the campaign starts — not after the client calls asking where the results are.
Radio is no longer limited to telling advertisers how many people might have heard their message. Increasingly, it can show what some of those people did next.
The Programmer Comes Back In
This is where the programmer in me wants back into the conversation.
Radio should be great at storytelling. Yet too often the commercial becomes the free thing thrown in with the schedule. A bad spot can make a good media buy look ineffective. One idea. One message. One clear action. The creative and the schedule have to work together.
We also need to stop overselling what radio can do. Radio usually works through repetition, familiarity and trust. It isn’t always an instant-response medium. A campaign needs enough weight and enough time to get a fair shot. Selling too little might get an advertiser on the air today — and create another radio skeptic tomorrow.
Testing radio is reasonable. But it has to be a fair test.
Maybe we also need to stop thinking about radio by itself. The advertiser isn’t really trying to buy radio. They’re trying to acquire customers. Or, to borrow the buzzword their marketing team uses, they want marketing qualified leads — MQLs — not just impressions. Put broadcast, streaming, personalities, social, events, email and retargeting together the right way, and the conversation shifts from selling spots to accomplishing an objective.
And here’s the part I actually know. Programming creates much of what sales has available to sell: the personalities, the music, the brand, the events and the trust listeners place in a station. But those things don’t automatically matter to an advertiser just because we believe in them. We have to connect them to what the advertiser is trying to accomplish.
Fred Jacobs has written about the bond listeners build with personalities and how that relationship can move people to act. That’s the story programming and sales should be telling together.
Win the Winnable
Take care of the believers. Don’t exhaust yourself arguing with the committed nonbelievers. Spend more time with the people in between.
What’s keeping them from saying yes? Can we reduce that risk? Can we make better creative? Or, can we give the campaign enough weight? Can we show them what happened?
Radio has a great story to tell. I’ve watched it work for more than 30 years. But the persuadable middle isn’t waiting for us to believe in radio harder.
So stop just asking advertisers to believe in radio. Give them a campaign they can believe in — and a way to see what it accomplished.
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