detectiveWe find ourselves in an strange situation right now, as various parts of the country are in various stages of reopening. As I indicated last week, every individual is returning to “normal” life at their own pace . The same shall be valid for local firms. Some are ready to rock, while others are cautiously steering neighbourhood regulations and implementing procedures to keep their customers safe, and others are scrambling to find employees. Many occupations are facing “re-entry” challenges, and anything your radio station can do to help its patrons address these challenges is valuable.

As your crew sits down to design promotional planneds that it can sell patrons into, think about the snags that potential clients are facing, and scheme planneds that will assist them overcome these specific issues. Stations that can solve problems for patrons will prosper; terminals that try to return to business as usual with the same old programs will not.

For example, let’s say that our marketings unit hears from countless patients that they are getting ready to reopen, and that these patients need to let the public know that they are open again, and to drive traffic to their points. Here’s an example of a program that could help multiple jobs with this issue 😛 TAGEND

The Hashtag Scavenger Hunt

WKRP LogoWKRP in Cincinnati has decided to drive its listeners to many local enterprises using a hashtag scavenger hunt. Here’s how it works: Each week for twelve weeks, WKRP berths clues about a different location on its website. Listeners have to provide their email address to see the clues. They are also welcome to receive the clues in response to a text message opt-in. Once they have figured out a location based on the clues, they go there, take a selfie, and announce it to social media — tagging @WKRP, calling the neighbourhood business in question, and including the hashtag # WKRPScavengerHunt in their post. Everybody who posts a selfie with that hashtag is entered to earn the splendid pillage — $100 knack authorizations to each participating location.

Our radio terminal promoting the development of this competition on the aura. Regional businesses pay to be one of the locations in the scavenger hunt. That reward include an on-air recognise schedule.

Here’s how we perform this advertisement 😛 TAGEND

1. Create a webpage for the scavenger hunting.

This is the page where we will send your listeners to see the evidences, so we’ll demonstrate it an easy-to-remember vanity URL, such as WKRP.com/ scavengerhunt. At the priorities in the sheet, you’ll want a concise description of how the contest handiworks. Beneath that, you’ll want the evidences for the locations. The key, nonetheless, is that you don’t want to people to be able to see the evidences until they’ve signed up for your radio station’s email list.

To do this, you’ll need to use a “content locker, ” which hides the content until it’s been unlocked with a shape submission. If your station’s website is built in WordPress, you can use a plugin to hide the contents.( On the Jacobs Media website, we use the Opt-In Panda plugin; you can see it in action now .)

There are a couple of different ways you can do this on your website. You could obscure the evidences for all the locations behind the content locker, or you were able to remain this week’s location open to see, but obscure the evidences for the place from previous weeks behind the locker. Either way, don’t delete previous weeks’ sites from your website; you want to give your listeners several weeks to enter the contest.

2. Enable listeners to receive the clues via textbook word.

In addition to showing the clues on your station’s website, enable listeners to get the clues for this week’s location by texting a keyword to a number. For example, we’ll set up our controversy so that if listeners text the “WKRP Hunt” to the number 55555, an auto-responder will reply with the evidence to this week’s location. We can mount this up using a service like Textiful or Join By Text. When listeners text in for the clue, these services will likewise asking questions if they want to subscribe to our email roll by respond with their email address.

3. Set up a hashtag raffle exploiting contesting application.

hashtagNow that we have a place to give out evidences, we need to set up the hashtag raffle. The theory is simple: When beings post to social media use a specific hashtag — in such cases, #WKRPScavengerHunt — they’ll be entered to earn the gloriou prize. We’ll need software to collect all of these hashtag enters and randomly draw a win. WooBox, Shortstack, and Wishpond are three a few examples of apps that can do this. Be sure to give yourself enough time research different application dealers and set up test safaruss; these expeditions can be tricky the first time “youre running” them.

You may not be able to use every social network for records. For example, privacy restrictions on Facebook limit entires to poles by Facebook pages but not personal Facebook charts. As a solution, you may decide to confine your game to Twitter and Instagram entries.

4. Sell regional organizations into the contest.

Now that our webpage and contest expedition are set up, we’re ready to find local businesses to include in the contest. For WKRP, we’ll run this contest for twelve weeks, with evidences to a new place each week. So we need to find twelve participating clients.

Listeners can participate the contest up to twelves occasions — once for each place — but they can take selfies for prior places at any point during the course of its contest. For example, they can still take a selfie in front of the Week 3 Location during Week 12 of the contest to enter.

The rolling nature of the contest has two advantages: first, our sales unit doesn’t need to sell all twelve units into it to start the campaign. In fact, worst case, we could shorten the contest if we aren’t able to find fairly participating transactions. Second, we can add businesses that open up eventually in the summer to the contest when the timing best fits their needs.

We’ll create a one-page document that asks the contest to help our marketings organization tone it to clients and price it accordingly. Of route, we can’t mention the name of the sponsors in our race promotion the way we normally would, because that would defeat the point of the scavenger hunting. Instead, we’ll include a regular spot schedule for the clients( which will not mention the contest) and include them in all post-contest promotional materials, such as a webpage that displays the photo entries.

Remember, each of the businesses that participates in the contest must also provide a endow authorization as part of the prize package. You may want to allow the participating business to write the clue( s) for their orientations, but keep these simple: the object of the contest is to drive listeners to the location , not to stump them.

5. Promote the contest.

You know how to do this part: apply recorded promos, live mentions, email explodes, portable app notifications, social media announces, etc. Be sure to reshare enters on your station’s social media details to urge more entries.

6. Pick a win.

TrophyAt the end of the promotion, use your rivalry software to randomly select a winner. Make sure that the selected entry features a photo in front of a valid point. When listeners enter a raffle employing a hashtag, the only contact information you have for them is the social media handle that they used to enter; they haven’t accommodated an email address. One practice to get around this is to ask for their social media handles when they access the clues through the content locker. This method, you can match their social media handles to an email address and being informed that they have won.

Once the contest is over, update the scavenger hunt webpage to expose all of the entering photos. This provisions added advertisement for the participating businesses.

This type of promotional campaign is aimed at solving one of the challenges that businesses in your busines will face as they rebound from the pandemic. It’s ideal for arts and entertainment venues that have been shuttered, such as eateries, concert venues, and clubs.

Can your radio depot develop a similar campaign for consumers that are facing a different post-vaccine challenge, such as finding works? The better your depot is at designing solutions to help local business overcome the specific impediments that they have during this time, the very best your terminal will fare.

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