Black_Shire said:...... and market such a station?
Different industries use the term "market" and "Marketing" in various ways. I'm not sure how you are using it here.
For the purposes of a licensed non-com radio station, I would break it down into sub-group definitions:
1. Marketing to grow audience and retain audience. From the discussion on these boards I get the idea that going out and doing remotes, giving away tee-shirts, sponsoring concerts, and providing beer-can coozies, bumper stickers and coffee mugs with logos are a big part of this kind of marketing. For an LPFM, it would depend on the nature of you community: a neighbor hood of young people within a metro area would call for one approach to marketing, while a tourist village/retirement village up against a lake in the mountains would probably call for a different method of audience growth and retention.
2. Marketing for staff and volunteer recruiting. How do you discover, recruit and retain people who want to be volunteers and staff. That will be different than attracting listeners. See the last paragraph in this posting.
3. Reaching contributors and donors. In some cases these will be people who ARE NOT regular listeners. They may be busy people who are not listeners but they recognize the value of the station being of service to the community. We could be talking about the wife of a lawyer. We could be talking about an airline pilot. We could be talking about a native of the community who currently lives elsewhere because of their career but they want their hometown to have the benefits of a community radio station. This group may or may not be reached by on-the-air content and announcements requesting their support and contributions. It may take legwork to find them.
4. Marketing to sponsors and endorsement providers. These people are different than those in item three. Those in the previous paragraph may not NEED or WANT their name on the air. Sponsors and Endorsement folks DO WANT their name on the air and as much info as we can legally include under the FCC rules. These people are not so much making a contribution as they are making a PURCHASE of service from the radio station.
5. Marketing to reach people who can provide content. These include national groups who produce little short programs that can be dropped into your broadcast day. Some may have long-form program content that would be valuable. This group will also include your local law enforcement people who can include you when it is time to inform the listeners about roads being blocked, floods on the way, etc. PTA, civic clubs, schools, churches. LPFM cannot afford staff to be aggressive journalists. LPFM needs to have "promotions" that cause all this stuff to end up in your hands to truly result in COMMUNITY radio.
Some people will be volunteers if you will give them some time to fill with programming. Some people will be volunteers who are not that gregarious. Give them ONE of these marketing tasks and they will become a part of your team.