Successful businesses sponsor public media stations to reach their most valued and influential customers. Audiences are just as passionate about supporting public media sponsors as they are about supporting the station itself. 71% of NPR listeners have a more positive opinion of a company that supports public radio, and 66% prefer to purchase products from sponsors (Kantar, NPR State of Sponsorship Survey, April 2020).
With so many reputable public media stations on air, how do you pick the right one to sponsor? Here are four qualities your ideal public media partner should have.
Multiplatform Content
To reach as much of your target audience as possible, your marketing campaigns should air across multiple platforms. Local public media stations offer sponsorship opportunities beyond broadcast – delivering trusted local and national content on digital, mobile, streaming, podcasts and more.
No matter the medium, public media audiences are affluent and intelligent individuals that want to support local communities.
Custom Campaigns and Messaging
A good public media partner can help you improve your current marketing strategies. You'll receive assistance customizing your campaigns with messages guaranteed to resonate with influential audiences. Messages on public media tend to perform better than ones on other stations because of public media's clutter-free ecosystem.
Public media programs dedicate relatively little time to sponsored messages, typically only 2-5 minutes of the program. However, this makes public media listeners more inclined to absorb your brand's message and remember it. They will recognize your company as a trusted colleague of their favorite informative public media station.
Campaign Attribution
Marketers are constantly feeling the pressure to prove the ROI of their campaigns to higher-ups. However, branding campaigns are notoriously difficult to track. When your message is delivered across multiple media partners, it can be hard to know which channel generated the lead.
Most analytics companies rely on "last touch attribution" to determine the success of a marketing channel. This means that the cause of conversion is attributed to the most recent message heard by the customer. However, you also have to consider what led to the customer hearing it.
For example, say your brand's podcast message results in a sale. However, the customer only listened to the podcast on a friend's recommendation, who learned of the podcast through a television message. In that case, it's hard to determine which message actually resulted in a new customer.
Fortunately, Enginuity Audience Analytics can provide concrete figures about a public radio campaign's ROI. When your sponsor message airs on public radio, the incremental traffic on your brand's website is tracked for eight minutes afterward. This data allows sponsors to use A/B message testing if needed and find the top-performing dayparts of a station that drove the most site traffic
Enginuity Audience Analytics, available to brands who sponsor public media stations represented by Market Enginuity, helps public radio sponsors prove ROI for campaigns, much like commercial media counterparts.
Consumer Trust
Audiences regard public media as a trusted source of information, not just background noise. They listen to their local station to inform their personal and professional decisions and choices, and share what they learn with friends and family.
The trust they have in the station is extended to the sponsors who support the content they love. In turn, they pay more attention to sponsored messages – 60% of NPR listeners pay attention to ads on NPR (Lightspeed Research, NPR State of Sponsorship Survey, March 2019).
Sponsor Public Media and Elevate Your Brand
A message aired on public media has a more powerful impact on your brand's target audience. It has the benefit of a trusted media environment, and the opportunity to run across multiple platforms. As a result, public media sponsorships are proven to generate ROI for brands and businesses.
To learn more about the success of public media sponsorships, subscribe to the Market Enginuity blog.
