Spanish Radio Ballot Drives 17,000+ Votes in First Year

The Execution

We decided on a Best Of ballot, ‘Lo Mejor de Tampa Bay.’ We asked our audience to nominate and vote for their local favorites like hair salons, bakeries, family beaches, and specialty foods. Our station was immediately excited about the campaign since we already have a very involved and engaged audience.

We brought the idea to the programming department leadership and got immediate buy-in. Our main talking points were the huge local tie-in –and all the ways it would help continue to grow our brand. We made it so our station owned this program, and the station program director and talent were part of the decision-making process.

The biggest challenge we faced with this campaign was trying to sell something to a client when they hadn’t seen it in action. We knew this first year of our ballot was our chance to lay a groundwork for success and introducing the brand to our market.

We chose to structure our ballot to include both a nomination and voting phase. This way we drove maximum engagement as users nominated their favorites, came back to vote for them in the following round, and visited the site to see the winners at the end of the campaign. This structure also encouraged businesses to campaign for nominations and votes from the community which drove more engagement.

While we built this as an editorial ballot to engage this niche audience, we knew it also had the potential to drive revenue from local advertisers. We created four levels of ballot sponsorship: Presenting Sponsorship, Category Sponsor, Nominate Me Package/Vote For Me Package, and an Enhanced Listing Package.

As this is a targeted promotion created for a niche market, we knew we needed to find unique ways to reach and engage them. For promotion, we utilized our core media (24/7 airwaves) to talk about the ballot as much as we could. We sent an email to our database. Our talent was encouraged to talk about their favorites on-air and share the ballot on their social media accounts to gain social media traction with their already huge followings.

The Results

Our first year was a great beginning to this new annual campaign. The ballot was a hit with the community and collected 5,745 nominations and over 17,300 votes! We also grew our email database with over 2,500 opt-ins, which will help our overall station strategy throughout the year.

Despite creating the ballot with the primary goal of creating brand awareness, we were still able to bring in $8,500 in unexpected new revenue! We’re excited to see what we’re able to create for this audience moving forward. And what we can accomplish next year with a dedicated effort towards ballot sponsorship opportunities.