Ignore The Hype

A couple days ago, I blogged about the company Airspun, which gets independent artists commercial radio airplay via 60 second commercials presented as artist showcases. As I elaborated in my post, in most cases Airspun is a waste of money.Wouldn't it be great if someone could improve the Airspun idea, giving you access to many more radio stations, and giving you total control over when your song spot will run and what the content of the spot will be? Well, believe it or not, that service exists right now, and it is owned by Google.

The company is called dMarc, and Google bought it to connect its Adwords advertisers with commercial radio stations. What does this mean for you as an aspiring recording artist? It means that Google has just streamlined the same process that Airspun uses, only its service has hundreds more radio stations, more accountability, more creative control, and is quite likely cheaper. After all, Google purchased dMarc for the simple reason that the system is designed to be affordable and easy-to-use for their long tail of advertisers.

Here's how it could work for your band:

• Contact dMarc and create an advertiser account

• Figure out what cities and what demographic target you would like to reach
  
• • You should know your audience. Pick a demo that would be similar to them.
    

• Figure out what time of the day you would like your spots to run

• Prioritize based on the most-listened to dayparts: Morning drivetime, afternoon drive time, middays, nights--in that order. Don't pay a penny for overnights, and avoid weekends unless they specifically exclude overnights.
  

• Estimate the cost of a reasonable number of spots to run
  
• • Remember from this post that you want a schedule that will reach each listener at least three times. So purchase at least 30 or 40 spots. I know, it's expensive, but anything less than 20 spots will be a waste of your money.
    

• Put together your 60 second spot via the production resources that Google provides or do it on your own

• Google uses professional radio people, so that's an enticing option, but it won't hurt to do it yourself. Be more economical than Airspun, which takes 25% of the airtime for talking and sponsorship announcements. Succinctly give the name of your band and the song title at the beginning and then close by again giving the band name/song title, along with where listeners can get more information
  

• Buy your airtime!
  

The opportunity here is immense because of the flexibility you have in dealing with the airtime you have purchased. This is a huge difference from Airspun, which prepackages your spot for you. With Google/dMarc you can even play the same games the big boys do. For example, with a Google ad buy in place, you could go to your local independent record store and say, "Hey, I just bought a 40 spot schedule on the local rock station. If you sell my CD on your front rack here, I'll mention your store in every spot." This is just one example, but it should illustrate the opportunity in having a plan in place to support your airplay.

Here are some other ideas:

• Try to leverage your newfound advertising muscle with local clubs or, as mentioned, music stores.

• Odds are that many of them aren't savvy enough to know about dMarc and thus assume they can't afford radio advertising. You are literally approaching them with free advertising and a legitimate marketing plan based on radio airplay. That would certainly get you a second look from a store buyer or a club owner.

• Approach the station program director (not the music director) about augmenting your schedule by giving away some CDs or something similar on the air.

• This is a long shot, but worth the attempt, especially if you also...
  

• Have your friends work the phone lines and station email addresses. Have them request the song and leave emails about how much they love it.
  

• All of these things help create that cause-effect connection between the airplay you are getting and a listener response/community excitement. That is a very powerful selling point to radio programmers.

The bottom line is that radio exposure is an incredibly powerful tool, but to really get the most of it, you need to leverage the power across multiple points of attack. How much impact would a 40 spot schedule run on a station have? Well, think of it this way: If you purchase 40 spots on a rock station, in all likelihood your song will be receiving more airplay than the biggest rock song in the country on that station. For that week, your song is the number one hit song in the city. Now go market it like one.

Labels: Airspun, Google, marketing, radio airplay

Posted by Jack on Saturday, January 20, 2007 at 3:37 AM | Permalink