Three Things More Important Than Your Music

Ours is an industry (and I'm talking about the broader radio industry) that believes their brands are everything. That if you use the magical positioning words and the even more magical song list, listeners will come and come again.

This narrow view of what brands and marketing are are as old as Reagan-era Ries & Trout (Google them, kids), and the 80's are precisely the era to which most radio branding dates.

But great brands are bigger than their positioning, such as it is. And they are certainly bigger than their music libraries.

There are three things bigger than your music and your positioning.

First, what a fan's use of your brand says about the person who uses it - their identity.

We think people buy products, but they don't. They buy identity. They buy a story about who they are and who they want to be and what they want the world around them to think about them. That's identity. It's not positioning.

Can you spell out what story your brand says about the people who love it?

How do you echo that on and off the air?

Second, the one thing someone gets from you that they can't get anywhere else.

And if you think that's just your list of music, then remember Spotify has a much larger one.

What is your superpower? Every Marvel character has one, and they're all different. What's yours?

Third, how you make your fans the heroes in their own story.

Do you give away prizes in contests, thus dooming 99% of your audience to be losers? Or do you make it possible for every listener to "win" because they can be a part of what you do that makes the world a better place?

I often talk about inviting listeners to tune-in in order to trigger something good for somebody else (just as Tom's Shoes once gave away a pair to the needy for every pair they sold). I have yet to see this effectively done on- or off-air.

It's not "listen and win" it's "listen and be a hero to others." The former creates 99% losers, the latter results in 100% winners.

In today's social media-driven era, this is not that hard to engineer, so what are you waiting for? Please listen, report that you listen on social media, we measure the social media and reward those in need for every heroic listening occasion we receive.

Will it juice ratings? Maybe. Who knows? But will it make the listeners your accomplices in good works without even requiring their hands and feet? You bet it will. And will that enrich their identity story and their relationship to you? Yes, indeed.

So remember, it's not the music that's most important. It's not the positioning. It's not the talent. It's not that you're local. And it's not even your values.

It's the story I get to tell about me because I love you and I want everyone to know it.

Mark Ramsey Media does audience research for Christian Media - Perceptual research, digital studies, donor studies, underwriter impact studies, music studies, etc. Learn more here. Call Mark at 858-414-4191 or email markramsey@mac.com.

And if you want a strategy to solicit major donors to pay for your research, look here and download this Listener Impact Study solicitation for donors from WAKW-FM.

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