Grab that local opportunity from your website
Posted on Sunday, December 28th, 2008 at 1:48pm. #
The Old Custom House, Ipswich, Suffolk. Photo: Xavier de Jauréguiberry – used under licence
Yesterday, I told you of the “Heart is coming” radio station formerly known as SGR FM. SGR has been a local brand in Ipswich for over fifteen years, and along with Radio Broadland and SGR Colchester, that brand will disappear on January 5th.
The ‘seek’ button on the radio brought me to Town 102, the ‘other’ radio station for Ipswich, which has been going for less than two years.
The perception, now that SGR FM has disappeared, will be that the radio station has been replaced by something that isn’t local. New boy Toby Anstis is a recognised name (at least, for being a children’s TV presenter), but he’ll not be talking about the local area since he’ll be doing the show from Leicester Square. So, if Town 102 were crafty, they’d be playing the local card, to really prove that they were the local radio station from the heart of Ipswich (if you’ll pardon the pun).
I tuned in eagerly. The music, less chart-following than “Heartiscoming”, was nice to hear and a welcome respite. The signal was clear, and they had a live presenter who sounded considerably more chirpy than the man on Heartiscoming. His first link proudly told me what I’d heard, what I was about to hear, and that it was Boxing Day morning. Oh.
Later, he read out two emails from listeners telling him why today was called Boxing Day – but didn’t read out where these listeners were. Seems to me that it was a prime place to play “local”, saying that Danny had emailed him from Martlesham and was the big supermarket open today, Danny, and tell us what the queues are if you can see it… strange. Instead, the emails (which were almost identical) were duly read out, and then I managed to be told what I would hear next after the break, and then I was told what kind of music Town 102 played. Nobody had really mentioned Ipswich yet. Disappointing.
Emails are less good than phone calls, since you can’t ask for more information. So that’s one reason why you shouldn’t be reading out email addresses on air. Ever. “Contact us on our website, town102.com” will give you a guaranteed couple of page impressions, and a way to communicate with your listener.
And the ‘Contact us’ form can also do more for you. It can offer to join your listener to a mailing list for more information and great offers from your station. It can automatically answer some of the questions you get every day. And it’ll let you ask your listeners (optionally) for their telephone number and where they’re from. The telephone number’s so you can turn a great email into a great piece of radio. The “where you’re from” is so you can mention the place where I live, or the place where my friends live.
If your biggest competitor isn’t sounding as local any more come January 5th, you can sound more local with just a few tweaks of your website – and take your unfair share of their listeners.
Richard
Hi James,
They did this in New Zealand some years back – replacing most programmes on previously local stations with a networked programme. When they finally did breakfast there was an uproar in many communities, and in the last few years there has been a small resurgence in low-power local(100w) stations. The networked stations have lost many of the small local advertisers they used to have – they either don’t advertise at all (because of the way they were treated), or put their dollars into what local print is left or a local private station if there is one.