Moneyball: Are You Leaving Money on the Table?
• NTR. Events. Concerts. Pop-ups. In 2024 radio is working hard for every dollar to try to offset the declines in spot revenue. For the right brand, station merchandise has tremendous upside when fans want to wear designs from favorite stations, beloved morning shows, revered hosts. Back in the day, stations gave away lots of merch as a promotional tool with listeners – and lamented the number of tee shirts (or better) that never got worn and never provided the hoped-for promotional value.
Today, running a station merch store to make money (rather than using merch as prizes) can be tempting, but there’s:
A) Anticipating what items, sizes, styles, colors, etc. will sell (vs. sitting in your closet).
B) The cost of the inventory (and the liability if it doesn’t sell).
C) Fulfilling the orders, communicating with customers, etc.
D) Keeping track of the enterprise.
Of course, we’ve set up this tricky situation just to be able to suggest NuVoodoo’s solution. PowerAMP is a cloud-based merch solution, entirely turnkey and white labeled. Your station brand is reinforced at every step with the store, packaging, and even inserts. AND every piece is sponsorable — offering you another revenue stream.
Best of all, there’s no upfront cost for your merch. The expense of site setup can be amortized via store purchases. Merch still makes great contest prizes and marketing, and personal information gathered from customers is a highly effective for collecting first-party data. That means PowerAMP is a revenue stream, a database driver, and a marketing channel all in one.
Busy stores can have a lot of support requests — we handle all of it. Every order is tracked from checkout to delivery and available within our platform. A live dashboard keeps you up to date on the action and can track other metrics like website and social media for you as well. If you’ve got local merchandise to sell, PowerAMP can help with that and provide a seamless experience for your customers.
A PowerAMP store can work as a standalone shop or a companion to your existing website. For more advanced sites that publish a lot of content on channels like YouTube or Podcast Platforms, the Media Engine in PowerAMP uses automated workflow tools and platform integrations to seamlessly import and publish content from your other channels. The store is integrated with features like contests, discount clubs, and interactive features. PowerAMP can also be used to set up options for clients, partners, and vendors (even more revenue opportunities).
More information about PowerAMP is available at poweramp.nuvoodoo.com.
We’re showing off programming and marketing micro-tactics from NuVoodoo Ratings Prospects Study 23 in a second season of Moneyball for Radio. You can find new videos every Thursday at nuvoodoo.com/webinars. We’re focusing on the radio version of “the butterfly effect” — the incremental things you can do that can add up to the additional tenth of a rating point that is the goal for stations in rated markets.
