How Think Tank Tuesday Helped WKDZ-FM Set $500K Goal

When every department in your station communicates, you can achieve meaningful revenue goals

It is impossible for one person alone to create a successful engagement program. Whether it’s a simple quiz, or a large-scale citywide ballot, having the support and cooperation from end-to-end of your facility is vital to achieve results that matter to your company.

At WKDZ-FM in Cadiz, Kentucky, our engagement strategy involves the unique skills of every team in the building, and as a result, we couldn’t be more proud of the work we do.

“For us, the difference isn’t in the size of the tower or the transmitter or the number of contests – the difference is in our overall desire to be better.”

Goals Big Enough to Matter

In order to get buy-in and support for our engagement team across all WKDZ departments, it was important for us to set goals big enough to matter for the entire company.

On the car ride home from my first Second Street Summit, I took time to think about what would be a lofty, but achievable goal for us. I set a goal of $250,000 in digital.

I knew our team alone wouldn’t be able to achieve our goal – we needed the entire station’s support. By aiming high with our goal, we were able to get the attention of management and other departments. Our next step, was putting together a team incorporating every station department. And Think Tank Tuesday was born.

Assembling the Team

When assembling our think tank, there were several people we needed to have in the room to get the right perspectives. For us, this included our sales manager, programming team, digital product managers, and our webmaster.

Each team member had a critical reason to be included:

Position	Role
Sales Manager	Ensured topics are sales driven
Programming Team	Advocated to get air-time for specific campaigns
Digital Product Managers	Understood and explained our product capabilities
Webmaster	Recommended what digital elements will need to be implemented on our site

Think Tank Meetings

These key team members meet once a week in our Think Tank Tuesday meetings to review results, plan campaigns, and brainstorm new ideas. This is the perfect time to get our entire company excited about ongoing campaigns and figure out how to make future campaigns even more successful.

While an agenda for these meetings is important, I work hard not to be too structured as to stifle the creativity. It’s in the team’s jokes and offhand comments where some of our best ideas are born.

WKDZ-Think-Tank-2

Opportunities for Collaboration

Our think tank opened the door for the business teams and programming teams to work together – an opportunity they really didn’t have before. Once everyone at WKDZ were on the same page, our advertisers were the happiest and our company was the most successful.

For instance, our “Promise to Propose” sweepstakes originally could have been a simple contest, but was given a huge boost from on-air programming. During the sweepstakes, listeners called in to our broadcasts and told stories of how they proposed to their loved ones. By promoting the contest on-air, listeners provided memorable content and drove over 100 entries for the contest (generating tons of qualified leads for the jeweler.)

The Results

When our team has a shared vision in terms of goals and what it takes to achieve them, it’s easier to work together and create a plan for success. Success isn’t an accident – you have to plan it out, and the results will follow.

Through teamwork, planning, and communication, we exceeded our first goal of $250,000 in digital revenue and have continued to achieve more aggressive goals every year since. We’re now looking to double that original goal and drive $500,000 with our digital products.