10 Things Great Managers Believe In

What do the truly great market managers, general managers, operations managers and program/promotions/marketing directors believe in?

1. Managers must believe that people are innately good. Without this core belief and faith in people, great management is not possible.
   
2. Managers believe they do not work on their people, they work with them; they ENABLE and EMPOWER them.
   
3. Managers believe that “empowerment” comes from within, and has more to do with self-motivation and innate talent than with the acceptance of authority. They get their cues from the person, not from the task or process.
   
4. Managers believe that all people have strengths which can be made stronger, and that their weaknesses can be compensated for to become unimportant.
   
5. When it comes to training, the great managers do not believe they train PEOPLE, they believe they train SKILLS and offer additional knowledge.
   
6. Managers believe they COACH and MENTOR people, and they love doing so — not “like,” LOVE.
   
7. Managers believe that the people they manage are more than capable of creating a better future. They hold great faith and trust in the four-fold human capacities of physical ability, intellect, emotion, and spirit.
   
8. Managers believe in the power of positive, affirmative thinking,and they have a low tolerance for negativity. They are confident and eternal OPTIMISTS.
   
9. Managers believe it is their job to remove barriers and obstacles so people can attain the level of greatness they are destined for. They believe that “can’t” is a temporary state of affairs, and that everything is only impossible until the first person does it.
   
10. Managers believe that their legacy will be in the other people they have helped to achieve worthwhile and meaningful goals. They believe that success is measured in people who THRIVE and PROSPER.

[from managingwithaloha.com]

Ask Before You Air

Here are four questions to consider before you put anything on the air:

• Why should this content be on?
• What is the listener benefit/payoff ?
• Is this relevant to my listeners right now?
• What do I want my listeners to think or feel about this?

Email Marketing 101

Sometimes the basics of email marketing need to be re-examined if your station is looking to start, tweak or upgrade its email campaigns. Here are 10 Focus Areas for optimizing your email program.

1. Timing: Map out the customer or user experience in order to fully understand the process from the customer experience point of view.
2. Volume: Have an opt-in email database and leverage every touchpoint to encourage customers to sign up to receive your emails.
3. Relevance: Only collect data that you can use and make the process as easy and efficient as it can be for the customer. Offer more options for different lists and expand the list of preferences to help increase overall opt-ins.
4. Engagement: The first email a customer receives is the one most likely to get opened and read, which means that any untargeted, irrelevant messaging will result in a faster decline in engagement. A good first impression is a necessity.
5. Lift: Each email campaign must work toward best practices for creative such as subject lines, layout, header, CTA’s, direct response, standard templates, custom landing pages, etc.
6. Learn: Gain a full view of your overall program by understanding your objectives and having the ability to report on those metrics.
7. Integrate: Integrate your campaign across all marketing channels including email, on-air, web, print/direct mail, mobile, and on-site promotions.
8. Automate: Increase engagement by setting up personalized emails to be triggered by events such as point levels for a loyalty program, birthdays, anniversaries, contesting, etc.
9. Optimize: Continuous testing allows for constant optimization of your program. There could be hundreds of factors to test ranging from subject lines to including strike-outs.
10. Scale: Understand your full email process in order to streamline large and small campaigns.

The Philosophy Of Marketing

The marketing concept is a philosophy. It makes the customer, and the satisfaction of his or her needs, the focal point of all business activities. It is driven by senior managers, passionate about delighting their customers.

Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialized activity at all It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of the final result, that is, from the customer's point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise.

- Peter Drucker

I.G.N.I.T.E. Sales Tip: 7 Ways To Overcommunicate Anything

Have you ever heard someone say:

“You can’t over communicate.”

Do you agree or disagree?

According to author and speaker Scott Ginsberg, here are a few reasons to disagree if you want clients/customers to view you as an “approachable salesperson.”

You can talk too much.
Which means you’re not listening that much.

You can listen too actively.
Which comes off as annoying and fake.

You can ask too many questions.
Which turns you into an interrogator.

You can be around too much.
Which might give someone the impression that you’re spying on her.

You can violate someone’s boundaries.
Which makes them feel uncomfortable.

You can use someone’s name too often.
Which appears unnecessary, forced and inauthentic.

You can check up on people too much.
Which demonstrates a lack of trust and unwillingness to relieve ownership.

What do YOU think?

Geometric INSIGHT: Ten Basic Rules For Setting Up An Online Music Test

1. Make sure that your hooks are cut the right way with fade in and fade out.
2. Music hooks should be the right length, 6 to 8 seconds is perfect.
3. Audio quality of your hooks should be good. Online requires better quality than telephone hooks.
4. Make sure that the music hook files are as small as possible to avoid delays in the user interface.
5. Play the hooks to your panel in a random order. Respondent fatigue is an issue in all research methodologies. Randomizing gives every song the same chance/opportunity.
6. Your list of songs to be tested should ideally contain a mix of current and older hits—just like the average radio station. This helps to prevent panel burn and skew.
7. Do not name the artist and the title of the song. This will have influence on the results. People should vote on what they hear not read.
8. Give your users a chance to save their answers at a particular point for continuing later.
9. To increase your participation rates include a contest or chance to win a reward amongst those who successfully complete the test.
10. Make it fun.
    

[from MyMusicTest.com]