CPR Promotional Check-Up - Mar 19, 2015

Instagram Contests

Thanks to Bel Boschi, CPR Director of Computer Stuff, for this excellent piece on how to effectively do contests on Instagram.

How to Run an Instagram Contest: Four Easy Steps

Social Media Juice

Post this pic and ask listeners to "Come up with a name for this band". And you're welcome.

Stickers

The best line of 2012 was from a PD who asked "Are bumperstickers still relevant in the era of PPM?" His station was in the midst of pumping all their marketing dollars into outdoor that was going to feature three artists and a positioning statement.

If you're in a market with lots of traffic, they're especially outstanding, are just basic grass roots marketing and now is the time to be selling them.

Often, selling the backs with coupons is going to set you up for angry clients. "We put 300,000 stickers on the streets and only 49 got turned in!" For softdrinks and food, coupons will work. The rest, like oil changes and services, can be kind of a challenge.

If you truly want to get them on cars, then doing the big, mega-stops is hands down the most effective way to do it. Just sticking blocks of them on the counter at Hy Vee is setting yourself up for a poor showing.

March (Thing) Madness

B-96 has done March Ab-ness. And it was big. One of the stations did March Ticket Madness and awarded movie tickets and lottery tickets all month. WPGC regularly did March Music Madness and did a bracket of songs that were narrowed down to a winner. In Seattle, KUBE actually got an insert in the daily paper that people could fill out with their predictions of who would win all the head-to-head music battles and what song would be the eventual winner. Or, and I love this, one of the iHeart stations is doing The Big Burger Bracket to determine who has the best burgers in town.

The Phrase That Pays

One of the big CHR's reached out about that contest and was inquiring as to an alternative. Their thought was that it had been done quite a few times AND by several other stations in town.

The best alternative was The Paragraph That Pays which was a tongue-in-cheek contest done by KZIA that had listener recite a thing off the site:

"Z-102.9 plays (whatever their position was) and because we're not owned by a company that has 18,000 radio stations, all of the winners will be right here in Cedar Rapids. No smoke-and-mirrors and your chances of winning are better than getting hit by an asteroid, which is about what your chances are with the other station. Plus, Mo Holland has excellent hair."

They changed the phrase every week. It was great.