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I often get asked for advice by coaches and authors who want to start their own radio show. They think that if they have their own radio show it will position them as an expert in their field. Their right, it really can! That’s exactly what it did for me. During the last the last 18 months I’ve hosted over 100 radio shows and I’ve been amazed at how it’s transformed my business and the opportunities it’s opened up for me.
But, I think there’s a better way!
You probably shouldn’t host your own radio show. To be honest, it takes a heckuva lot of energy and time to put together a top rated radio show. Most people don’t realize the tremendous amount of consistent promotion it takes to build up a sizable audience of subscribers on iTunes.
You can still get all the advantages of hosting your own radio show without all the work. How? By being a guest on radio shows. They’ve already built the listener base for you. And guess what. They’re looking for guests to interview!
OK, so maybe you knew that already.
But I’m going to tell you 4 reasons to add radio interviews to your marketing, which you may not have thought of. Hopefully it’ll motivate you to make it a priority to get booked on radio shows as often as possible.
4 Reasons Why You Need to Add Radio Interviews to Your Marketing Strategy
1. It’s the best way to reach a large, highly targeted, affluent and receptive market. Who’s listening to online radio? Here are some statistics that I recently came across:
• This audience is large! It’s estimated that internet radio reached over 300 million people in 2009.
• They have money! According to Arbitron Inc. and Edison Research “Online radio listeners are more likely to be upscale, well-educated and employed full-time.”
• They’re Special! Really! This is not some ordinary audience. Internet radio listeners are special, because there’s a high chance that they’ve found you because they’ve done a Google search. They’ve done a Google search because they were specifically searching for information on your topic of expertise. Why? Because most likely, they’re ready to take action to solve a problem. They are actively searching for a solution and consequently they’ll be more receptive to the solution that you’re providing. Now, that’s a highly targeted audience.
2. Bonding with your market. Internet radio can be quite interactive and personal. As the guest, often you’ll be given the chance to take questions from listeners, and I highly recommend that you do that! When people hear your voice and have the opportunity to speak with you it builds trust and loyalty, which can sometimes make the sales process effortless. You know the saying, “People want to buy from people they know, like, and trust”. Well, this has to be one of the easiest ways to get people to know, like, and trust you.
3. Being a radio guest is one of the fastest ways to build your Expert Status. Experts earn more and can command higher fees. There are lots of advantages to being recognized as the “go to” person in your field.
4. It’s easy, it saves time and money. Okay, well that’s really 3 in 1, but it’s true. It’s easy to add radio to your marketing and it does save a lot of time, and a lot of money.
How does it do that?
When you’re a radio guest you’re being interviewed on a subject that you’re an expert in, and that’s usually 20 minutes or more of essentially free advertising, in exchange for you providing an educational and entertaining presentation for their listeners. Obviously, your focus should be on providing value to the audience and your interview shouldn’t sound like a sales pitch!
And it saves time in two ways…
Your time not wasted traveling. You can be a radio guest multiple times a day right from your office, just by picking up the phone.
And the other way that it’s time efficient is that you’ve multiplied yourself. Now you’re reaching one of the largest audiences that you can. Instead of speaking to individual customers, or a small audience of 25-50 people at your local rotary club or networking breakfast, with an online radio interview you’ll be reaching everyone who is listening to the live broadcast (which could be as few as 10 or as many as a thousand)…but your interview is recorded and syndicated. This means that it gets sent out all over the internet to many other sites and will probably end up with a listener count in the thousands within a few weeks.
That means that the 20 minutes you spent being interviewed has been highly leveraged and is now reaching thousands of people all over the world who are searching for information on your topic. And this is happening even while you’re sleeping!
Ok, there’s one more reason…
5. You have to, if you want your business to thrive. Really!
This is the biggest reason why you can’t wait any longer. Marketing is rapidly changing, and down-loadable audio is now getting the lion’s share of your market’s attention. This is truer each day. You need to have your marketing message in a format that is easily consumed by your target market. That means it needs to be easy to feed to portable listening devices like iPods and cell phones, because that’s what everyone has with them all the time, and they’re downloading from the internet with these portable devices…all the time.
You need to be able to capture their attention in the few moments in a day when and where they are able to listen to your message. You want to be there when they’re commuting in their car, when they’re exercising at the gym, or standing in line at the bank, or in the doctor’s waiting room. Those are precious moments that you could capture. You could be there.
So, I think you can see now why you need to add radio interviews to your marketing strategy. This is an opportunity to get ahead of your competition before they fill that space.
In my next blog post I’ll tell you how to find top radio shows in your niche that are looking for experts like you.
