Bill Scott “More Money, Less Work”
I’d love to tell you this strategy works every time but it’s simply not true. I interact with a ton of stations, both client and non client on a regular basis, and here’s what I found.
Everyone I talk with wants to raise more money for their station. I get that, who wouldn’t want more income to help fulfill the vision the Lord has given them? The one big problem I see with this is some stations are putting less and less work into their product and yet the passion for more money continues.
My friend Dave Kirby always says, “you have to be worth more to get more.” That means more work in connecting with your audience. This means someone needs to be meeting with your major donors, working your mid-level donors and finding ways to surprise and delight your donors through the year. This takes a lot of elbow grease but always has a big pay off when it comes to fundraising.
More and more stations are using voice trackers for their shows. Some stations have only one live show daily while the rest are tracked. Yes there are some pros to having voice trackers. 1. You save money over a full-time announcer. 2. In some cases you can get a better talent on the air. 3. You don’t have the effort of managing another employee. However, there is one big downside, you raise less money during most voice-tracked time slots. You don’t have a personality answering the phone, connecting with her by putting listeners on the air, which translates to the connection with the listener being a lot less. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good reasons to voice track, but know that you may raise less in your fundraising.
Everything you do impacts your fundraising, as does everything you don’t do. If your music is not nailing it, your fundraising is impacted. If your announcers are not connecting, your fundraising is impacted. If you are not out in your community connecting with listeners, you fundraising will be impacted. If your receptionist isn’t kind while on the phone, your fundraising is impacted. If your on air sound technically isn’t great, your fundraising is impacted. Everything impacts your fundraising!
The bottom line is this, you don’t just get more money because you need to raise the goal. It takes hard work all year long in order to be in a place where you are in a position to raise more money. I’ve seen more than one station coasting and yet they always increase their goals. There is only so far you can go with that mind set.
It’s time to roll up your sleeves and connect with your audience in a way you have never done before. When the hard work has been done, then THAT is the time where you can increase the goal and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
You can do it, but the time to start putting the work in is now!
Bill Scott is Chief Content Officer with Vidare Creative / www.VidareCreative.com. Contact Bill at bill@vidarecreative.com
Respectfully, I’ve seen specific advantages to having tracked talent but not all tracked talent is the same. As we all know that it’s not just the music that keeps the listener coming back, it’s who’s between the music. According to Jacobs Media, listeners are coming back more for the personality than the music. This continues to trend upward. With CCM stations music is similar – but the personalities are what’s really building cume. Case in point – many non-conglomerate stations are 100% tracked with A-list talent that are great at “being local”. This allows for employees to go into the community and make connections, build relationships with listeners and donors. Because of this I’ve seen those stations reach 100% of their goal. Those stations have great CUME and CUME equals more donations. Non conglomerate stations have some major competitors they’re able to “hold at bay” due to their A-list tracked talent. In many cases they’re beating the conglomerates. For fundraising, some talents are brought in to drive donations. All this to say I’m not against having LIVE in studio talent by any means, BUT it has to be able to compete with some of the big dogs in the market. If not – I believe you’re loosing listeners to stations with better talent.