Hear! Hear! Online Radio and Audio Web Content Burn Up the Ear Waves
How does a wholesale seller reach buyers who work on Alpha Centauri time? (According to Tommy Lee Jones in the film Men In Black, that’s a 39-hour day!) How do you reach a younger audience with marketing messages if your targets do not read newspapers or magazines? One solution is to give them an “earful” straight from a web site. A Telephone, A Computer and 3.2 Million Thou’s
A start-up launched by a telecommunications entrepreneur has offered free service to amateur online “broadcasters” for two years. BlogTalkRadio estimates over 3,000,000 people listen in to live Internet radio talk shows enabled by their service, which requires only a phone line and computer.
Whispering in Business Ears
Now BlogTalkRadio works with a growing number of business users who want to reach employees and customers anywhere, anytime, with online radio. The start-up company is still working out its business model; but it plans to profit from both sponsored advertising (keeping consumer use free), plus income from $7,500-per-month licensing fees to business users (currently counting Intel, Sun Microsystems and Golf Magazine) for turnkey technology that lets a business create and run its own streamed, live, web radio shows.
Notes co-founder Alan Levy: BlogTalkRadio is like an audio form of blogging; and “… every company is looking to be part of the conversation.”
Industry Groups Can Hit the Audio Button More Cheaply
Though monthly licensing fees might put BlogTalkRadio out of reach for individual small businesses, it can be an efficient shared-cost option – including an ad-subsidized operation — for professional, association and industry-focused groups.
An example is wsRadio-dot-com, which carries the Online Marketing Internet Radio Show hosted by RSS Ray. Professionally focused on all aspects of marketing online, RSS Ray streams live Internet Radio interviews with experts, provides audio placement and advertising opportunities and serves recorded audio podcasts to any computer or iPod user. This professional interest Internet radio site also posts tie-in articles by interviewees to its blog.
Lend an Ear to Top Ten Wholesale’s Jason Prescott
We have the perfect example of business-based Internet radio that offers practical tips – stuff you can put to work right now – from an interview with the founder of JP Communications, sponsor of this Wholesale Newsroom:
· Listen to a lively interview on using vertical search marketing to find your place in the wholesale limelight: (1) Go to RSS Ray Internet Talk Radio site for the August 6, 2008 show titled: A Marketer’s Guide To Using Vertical Search Engines for Part 1 … or How To Promote Your Business on Vertical Search Engines for Part 2. (2) Click your choice of playback: AUDIO to listen from the web site, or MP3 to download the audio interview to your MP3 player. (3) Other options are automatic audio feeds to an iPod or RSS Feed Reader … if that’s playback you prefer.
· Eyeball Tie-In for Blog Readers: Check out Jason’s blog post tied to the audio interview to get more Insider Tips for Search Marketing Success … including using Tribal Knowledge in the wholesale industry. (Note: Online Radio Interviewer RSS Ray declared these blog tips and tactics to be: Absolutely Dynamite and A Fabulous Article. Not sure, but we suspect he liked it.)
Talk to the (Customer) Ear
Use the pull of the spoken word to reach customers who are too busy to get through your carefully written emails. Talk to targets who will not read all the details on your generous returns policy or new product line sold in smaller minimum lots. One low-no-cost tool is called Do It Yourself Audio . You can add audio promotions to your business web site or embed them in emails to potential customers.
