This page began its life as the Appendix to Participative Marketing for Local Radio, but is expanding into a list of books and web pages connected to local radio marketing. Some of the books are out of print, but you may find them in a large library. Others of these publications are available only on the Internet.
| On this page... |
| 1 Marketing in general |
| 2 Community radio in general |
| 3 Major websites for community radio |
| 4 Audience research |
| 5 Advertising |
| 6 Fundraising |
| 7 Internet marketing |
Shel Horowitz: Grassroots Marketing. AWM Books, USA, 2000. An excellent book on low-cost local marketing, mainly for print media. See also his website www.frugalfun.com
Nedra Klein Weinreich: Hands-On Social Marketing. Sage, California, 1999. A useful book with a lot of examples, designed mainly for welfare-oriented organizations, but also of interest to community radio. It has worksheets that could be very helpful in creating a marketing plan. (See also our page on social marketing.)
There are practically no books or articles on the view of marketing as communication, or on "participative marketing" in the sense used in this book. However, the Rockefeller Foundation has published several reports on the similar concept of Communication for Social Change. From their website at www.rockfound.org you can download these reports, including Making Waves: an interesting book by Alfonsio Dagron, with 50 examples, many related to radio.
If my approach to marketing has interested you, the book that comes closest is Total Relationship Marketing by Evert Gummesson (Butterworth Heinemann, UK, 1999). Though it hardly mentions radio, and doesn't actually tell you how to do marketing, this is one of the most thought provoking books I've read on marketing. It's the sort of book where you read a page, then have to put it down to think through the ideas.
Community radio manual. A South African manual, on the Web at www.osf.org.za/ Publications/Default.asp. This is a detailed "how to do it" book. Five of its 16 chapters are relevant to marketing: those on audience research, marketing, community building, fundraising, and producing commercials. The chapter on marketing covers similar ground to chapter 6 in this book.
Steve Ahern (ed): Making Radio. Allen and Unwin, Australia, 2000. A book aimed at community and local radio in Australia. It includes chapters on copywriting, programming, sales, and promotions.
Eryl Price-Davies and Jo Tacchi: Community radio in a global context. Community Media Association (UK), 2004. An interesting comparison of how community radio is funded, in the six countries they studied.
The African Radio Managers Handbook: a Guide to Sustainable Radio. Radio For Development, South Africa, c.2000. Looks good, based on the description and contents on the web, but I haven't been able to see a copy of the book itself.
Unesco Community Radio Handbook. A useful booklet for people wanting to set up community radio stations - hard to find online. It's on Unesco's community radio website at www.unesco.org/webworld/ publications/community_radio_handbook.pdf
S.T. Kwame Boafo (ed): Promoting Community media in Africa. Unesco, Paris, 2000. An interesting book on the development of community media, mainly radio - but it's mainly a historical review, it's not only about Africa, and its concept of promoting community media is a very abstract one! It's available on the Web (as a PDF Acrobat file) at
www.unesco.org/webworld/publications/community_media/index.html
Peter M Lewis and Jerry Booth: The Invisible Medium: Public, Commercial, and Community Radio. Macmillan, London, 1989. A descriptive book, not specifically about marketing, but it has some interesting ideas that could be used in marketing strategy. I liked the description of the Canadian station that broadcast its daily breakfast program from a cafe: anybody could wander in and make suggestions or comments.
Near FM, in Ireland, has an excellent manual online: the Community Media Participatory Learning Manual. Its chapter on administration has useful basic information on social audits, and related areas that are useful when creating a marketing plan.
Community Radio Support Centre/NEFEJ in Nepal, supported by Free Voice, The Netherlands, produces a range of topical books and manuals to support the effective governance, planning, organisational development, functioning and performance management of community radio. The resources are based on the Nepal context but would be of value to community radio journalists, managers and leadership worldwide. You can browse and download copies (free, most are in English) from the website here: http://www.nefej.org/en/crsc/crsc-publications
AMARC - the world federation of community broadcasters:
www.amarc.org
Community Broadcasting Association of Australia:
www.cbaa.org.au
Community Media Association (Britain):
www.commedia.org.uk
National Federation of Community Broadcasters (US):
www.nfcb.org
Communications Initiative (Canada):
www.comminit.com
Community Media (Canada):
www.community-media.com
Creative Radio is an email discussion list for community radio around the world, averaging several messages a day. To subscribe, send a blank email message (without signatures or attachments) to creative-radio-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Dennis List: Know Your Audience: a Practical Guide to Media Research. Original Books, New Zealand 2001. This is my detailed book on audience research, designed particularly for use in developing countries. Most of it's on the Web, at www.audiencedialogue.org/kya.html
There's also an Indonesian edition, published by Unesco in Jakarta. I'm working on a summary version - about 50 pages - which will be available on the Audience Dialogue web site.
If you live in North America, and my book is too detailed for you, try the Listener Survey Toolkit, online at www.wksu.org/toolkit
Walrus Research - a US research company specializing in community radio work. It has some interesting reports on its website at www.walrusresearch.com
There's an excellent index of radio ratings terms at www.slcc.edu/comm/telelab/radio_ratings.htm
The most widely available book on radio advertising seems to be Radio Advertising: The Authoritative Handbook, by Pete Schulberg. I haven't yet seen a copy, but judging from reviews, It's mostly about commercial radio stations in the USA.
Susan Tyler Eastman et. al: Promotion and Marketing for Broadcasting and Cable. Focal Press, USA, 1999. Has one chapter on Promotion in Public Television and Radio. Despite the promising title, this book seems to be rather academic and theoretical. I keep requesting this book from the library, but it never turns up - I'm beginning to doubt that it actually exists.
Gene F Seehafer and Jack W Laemarr: Successful Radio and Television Advertising. McGraw Hill, New York, 1959. It's only about advertising (not about the rest of marketing), it's only about America, it's 40 years out of date, it doesn't mention community radio, and a lot of it's about TV. Even so, it's still the most comprehensive book that I've seen on this subject.
J Scott Armstrong has a new book (probably to be published in 2007), Persuasive Advertising: Evidence-based Principles for Advertising. It has several hundred recommendations about how to advertise - all based on evidence from scholarly studies. I've read a draft version, and was greatly impressed. This book is more credible than all the rest put together. In the meantime, you can find a lot of the content at www.advertisingprinciples.com.
The Pledgewell Institute in the USA has an online handbook for fundraising, based on the results of extensive research into minority audiences and public broadcasting. URL www.pledgewell.org/tac/intro/intro.html
For more on Program Theory (mentioned at the end of chapter 8), the University of Idaho Extension department has a 5-page PDF explanation by Paul F. McCawley. For a slightly different approach (in a lot more detail) the US-based Kellogg Foundation has a clearly written report on how to set up a Program Logic Model. This would be more useful for a specific campaign (e.g in public health) than for a radio station as a whole.
Web Marketing Today - www.wilsonweb.com - a US website with a lot of practical information on internet marketing, and a newsletter you can get by email. Nothing specifically on radio, but if your station has a website this could be very useful.