Impress Them With Your Media Kit
Greg Murray for Radio Ink Magazine 

Have you taken a look at your media kit lately? Go ahead and take a look at them today with a pair of “fresh eyes.” That is, when you look at it, look at them as if you were a business owner or agency buyer seeing them for the first time. After all, the truth is your media kit is the first tangible item that advertisers often receive from your sales department. How many times does an out-of-market advertiser or agency say, “fax or email me your media kit?” Or after an AE has an initial consultation with a local advertiser, how often is a media kit left as a leave-behind? So, when you look at your media kit now, imagine what you would think if you were receiving it for the first time. Ask yourself…

1. Does it create a positive first impression?
2. Does it represent who we are as an organization?
3. Is it written in “programming” or “marketing” language? In other words, does the media kit sound like a promo for your listeners or is it loaded with features and benefits for the advertisers?
4. Is it simple to navigate and is the information it contains easy to read and understand?
5. Does it look like it was made by a professional marketing organization (which is what we all should want) or by a high-school student?

Now that you have made an overall assessment of your current media kit, let’s discuss six things that all media kits should have, as well as four things they should never included.

So, what should you include in your media kit?

1. An overview page with all the basic station information.
2. A coverage map page
3. An “on-the-air” page with your programming lineup and a short list of well-known artists (if you’re format is music).
4. An “About Our Listeners” page. This page gives you the opportunity to tell prospects about your listeners (demographics) and how they can positively affect their business.
5. A “Why Advertise?” page (this is a great page to win over new businesses that are just formulating their advertising strategies).
6. A “Why Radio?” page (which is a great way to show the benefits of radio advertising to potential advertisers who are considering a variety of advertising media).

And here are a few things you should not include in your media kit:

• Biographies and photos of your talent. Unless they are incredibly high profile, business owners just don’t care.
• Technical descriptions of your coverage area. The map is enough.
• Negative information about other radio stations (the strategy of bashing your competitors will often backfire on you.)

Now that we know what should and should not be included in your media kit, here are four tips to remember when you’re putting it all together:

1. Don’t write in paragraphs; instead keep all the information in bullet points, which are much less daunting to busy potential prospects as well as easier to read.
2. Filter the number of pages you hand over to clients (the last thing you want to do is overwhelm them with information because then they may decide it’s not worth the time commitment and simply not look at any of your materials)
3. If you email your media kits, send them as PDF documents, and not as Word or PowerPoint documents (if you don’t send them as a PDF document, your client’s computer may not see the media kit in the same layout as you see it on your computer).
4. Do not fall into the trap of having a media kit that is full of “The 7 Sins of PowerPoint Presentations” (sins can include center spacing, Word Art, cheesy clip art, and fancy, colored text). Get the complete list of “7 Sins” by signing up for etips at www.SalesImaging.com today.

It is hard enough to close large, multi-station, multi-month deals as it is. If the first piece of sales literature your prospects see is unorganized, amateurish-looking, and hard-to-grasp, you’re putting yourself even farther behind the eight ball early in the sales process.

Take pride in your media kits. Pay to have them professionally designed and kept up to date. We make our money with an intangible product. It’s imperative if we’re to be seen as professional marketers that the one tangible item that we often distribute is top-quality.

Receive Sales Imaging’s free etips and “The Seven Sins of PowerPoint Presentations” at www.salesimaging.com. Gregg Murray is a CRMC Diamond, PowerPoint Certified Specialist, and top-rated RAB Speaker.