Radio Believes in Marketing. It’s Time Radio Started Marketing Itself.

Radio has spent decades telling businesses that marketing matters.

Build your brand. Stay top of mind. Be consistent. Tell people what makes you different. Give customers a reason to choose you instead of the competition.

We believe every word of it.

There’s just one problem.

Radio doesn’t always take its own advice.

At Cedar Valley Marketing, we think there’s an enormous opportunity for radio stations to start thinking differently about how they market themselves—not just to listeners, but as brands within their communities.

Because ultimately, your radio sales team can only sell the product you give them.

Your Station Is a Brand, Too

Think about the conversations radio Account Executives have with local businesses every day.

We tell the HVAC contractor that being good at HVAC isn’t enough. People have to know who they are.

We tell the car dealer that inventory and price aren’t the entire story. Their reputation and brand matter.

We tell restaurants, attorneys, retailers and service companies that they can’t simply open the doors and expect customers to show up.

Then we go back to the radio station, play the music, run some promos, post something on Facebook and assume everybody understands why our station matters.

What if we marketed radio with the same conviction we use to sell marketing to everyone else?

That’s the idea behind Cedar Valley Marketing’s approach to radio.

Radio Isn’t Just a Playlist

This may be the most important distinction radio needs to make.

If the product is simply a collection of songs, consumers have more choices than ever.

But that’s not all radio is.

Radio has people.

It has the morning personality listeners have heard for years. The afternoon host they see at the grocery store. The sports guy who knows every high school coach in the market.

Radio has Friday night football. Local news. Severe weather coverage. Remotes. Concerts. Community fundraisers. Contests. Local businesses. Inside jokes. Familiar voices.

Those things aren’t side features surrounding the music.

They’re marketing assets.

And stations should be relentlessly telling those stories.

Your personalities shouldn’t disappear when the microphones turn off. Your community involvement shouldn’t end when the remote broadcast ends. Your promotions shouldn’t only exist for the people who happened to hear the promo.

Your station should exist as a recognizable brand everywhere your listeners—and potential advertisers—spend their time.

Marketing the Station Helps the Sales Department

This is where station marketing becomes more than getting additional likes or making your social media look better.

Imagine two Account Executives walking into a local business.

One represents a station the business owner occasionally recognizes from the dial.

The other represents a station whose personalities the owner recognizes, whose community events they’ve seen, whose social content regularly crosses their feed and whose brand seems to be everywhere around town.

Those sellers are having two very different conversations.

Great station marketing gives great salespeople something better to sell.

Your Account Executives aren’t really selling thirty- and sixty-second units.

They’re selling an audience.

They’re selling personalities.

They’re selling community influence.

They’re selling credibility.

They’re selling association with a brand.

And the stronger you make that brand, the more compelling the story becomes when your salesperson sits across the desk from an advertiser.

Marketing isn’t a replacement for radio sales.

It can make radio easier to sell.

Programming Creates the Product. Marketing Builds the Brand. Sales Monetizes It.

Those three departments shouldn’t operate as separate islands.

Programming creates something people want to consume.

Marketing gives people reasons to notice it, remember it and care about it.

Sales turns that attention and connection into revenue.

When those three functions reinforce one another, you have something much more powerful than a radio station that happens to have a Facebook page.

You have a brand.

And that’s where Cedar Valley Marketing comes in.

A Marketing Company for Radio Stations

The radio consulting space isn’t exactly empty.

There are talented consultants who specialize in programming, music, ratings, talent coaching, operations and sales.

That’s not the lane we’re trying to occupy.

Cedar Valley Marketing is a marketing company for radio stations.

We look at your station through a marketer’s eyes.

What are you known for?

Are you properly marketing your personalities?

Does your social content actually reinforce your station’s brand?

Are you showing your community involvement or merely doing it?

Are your promotions creating attention beyond the people who happen to be listening at that moment?

Does your public presence demonstrate the value your Account Executives are trying to sell?

And perhaps most importantly:

If someone encountered your station today for the first time, would they understand why they should care?

Those are marketing questions.

Sometimes You Need Execution. Sometimes You Need an Outside Perspective.

Every station is different.

Some stations need help developing an overall marketing strategy.

Others have great people internally but need an outside perspective to identify what they’re overlooking.

Some need help marketing personalities. Others need better social content, stronger promotions, clearer positioning or a better connection between programming, marketing and sales.

That’s why Cedar Valley Marketing can work as both an agency and a consultant.

Sometimes we help you develop the plan.

Sometimes we help execute it.

Sometimes we simply look at what you’re already doing and ask questions that are difficult to ask when you’ve been inside the same building for years.

The goal isn’t to turn your radio station into something it isn’t.

It’s to do a better job marketing what makes your station worth listening to—and worth advertising on.

Radio Has Spent Decades Marketing Everyone Else

Maybe it’s time we turned some of that expertise inward.

Radio still has tremendous assets: personalities, local relationships, community presence, immediacy and the ability to create shared experiences across an entire market.

But having those things isn’t enough.

People have to know about them.

That’s marketing.

And when listeners understand what makes your station special, when the community recognizes your personalities and when local businesses see a station that looks active, relevant and connected, your salespeople walk into the marketplace with a stronger story.

That’s the opportunity we see at Cedar Valley Marketing.

You market everyone else.

Let us help you market the station.

Ready to take an outside look at your station?

Cedar Valley Marketing offers radio marketing strategy, consulting, station marketing audits, social and content strategy, personality marketing, promotions and brand positioning for individual stations and clusters.

Your station. Your market. Your opportunities.

Let’s talk radio.