For Your Tool Kit

My recent items (5 Last) "Measure It To Manage It", Simple Stats To Track,  Gauging Your Growth and Radio Management Vital Signs attracted a helpful, welcome response from Andrew Curran, COO at DMR:

Love your series of areas to measure. 

Since you mentioned having people start a spreadsheet, I thought I’d share with you one that we developed with a variety of Key Performance Indicators in mind. 

Feel free to pass it along (click to download the xls). 

One tab is a detailed view and one tab is a top line management view.

A new acronym to add to your vocabulary:  "KPI."

(5 Last) "Measure It To Manage It"

16.     Number of local stories on your website with listener comments/reactions

17.     Number of blog posts by every personality ranked by page view and responses.

18.     Open rate of your weekly e-mail (to determine effectiveness of subject lines, etc.)

19.     Text Club subscriber rate and unsubscribes

20.     Website Metrics: 

           a.  Unique Users

           b.  Total Pageviews

           c.  Top 5 Most Viewed Pages

 - a final set of numbers from some smart managers willing this week to share what they watch to be sure their stations pace toward their goals.

No doubt, you can think of many more.

So can I, but if you have 20 priorities, do you have any priorities?

Start with this 20 and focus on the handful of them where you find your farthest from where you want to be that will move you forward fastest to where you need to be.

Once you ingrain the levers on them in your daily execution, pick another five and repeat until all 20 metrics are positive.

Only then, start to look for more metrics to measure and manage.

(More) Simple Stats To Track

Readers have been sharing the numbers they watch like clockwork to be sure their stations pace positively.

A few more:

11.     Number of public appearances per week by each on air personality/estimated number of people who attended each appearance

12.     Number of cold calls per week by salesperson

13.     Number of spec spots presented to new prospects per week

14.     Number of irritating commercials which harm listening levels per week

15.     Number of advertisers per month (and names) on your competition, not you

Thanks to BCAB for inviting me to moderate their research panel which featured Chris Byrnes, Warren Kurtzman and Sean Ross, providing the idea for creating a list of key objective management data.

Gauging Your Growth

I started the list with just five.  Now, thanks to many readers, you're going to want to start a table or a spreadsheet to track these numbers on the same date each month:

6.     Annual survey of email database: how satisfied are you 1-10? (% "very vs % not)

7.     # of Facebook friends + gain/loss + followed by # of people

8.     Twitter followers (gain/loss)

9.     Total number of units available for sale per week/revenue = average unit rate (track for total and also by sales person)

10.     Number of different advertisers per month by business category

Radio Management Vital Signs

Crucial (but no-cost) numbers to track to make sure your station is on course:

1.     Call your station’s business office phone.  How many rings before someone answers?

2.     (if you have ratings) Weekly cume (daily cume if PPM) trend

3.     Target demo TSL (daily sessions if PPM) trend

4.     Track streaming hours tuned monthly.

5.     Contacts in your listener email database (grown/loss)

Write these numbers down on the same date every month.  If they're not consistent or even better, growing, you're dying.

What else do you trend to be sure you are on pace toward your goals?
 

PS: By-The-Way...

Have you ever wondered how many people in your market are represented by one single diary keeper or meter?

To find the "PPDV" (person per diary value), divide the in-tab sample from any geographic, age, or sex in to the total population of that cell. Do the same with "PPMV," but be prepared to have your hair stand on end.

The result is the number of people each diary represents within that cell.

You'll see WHY one diary keeper is so important to your station and one metered family who happens to listen more than two or three times per day to you is even MORE so.

Ratings: UP/DOWN. Do You Know WHY?

Because there are numerous factors that cause ratings to rise and fall, too many to list in this post, it's often difficult to put a finger on exactly what causes fluctuations in your ratings.

Without the aide of analytical tools discovering why your numbers fluctuated can be frustrating.

This is not meant to be a substitute for those efforts, but rather a quick check list of numbers that sometimes get ignored when looking at the "bigger" picture.

Look for these numbers to help uncover the question of "Why?".

Audience Composition/Sample Composition: For most markets ratings break down the demos into multiple demographics: Teens, 12+, and 18+, 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, and 55-64 for both men and women.

Here, you'll find what percentage of your audience falls within each cell.

How Does This Help You?

You certainly have an idea of whom you where targeting during the book. These numbers show how accurate you where in reaching that demo. If your primary target was Women 25-34 and your audience is comprised of only 5% from that demo, you immediately know you have a problem. Now, look at the sample composition to see if the problem was your station's or was due to a poorly distributed sample either demographically or geographically (or both).

You can also see what station did a better job in that demo. Was it reach or TSL? Compare both the Audience Composition in Cume and AQH to help you draw a conclusion.

Daypart Trends: By looking at the Cume Rating/Persons and the AQH Share/Persons trends, you can quickly see where you were most affected.

Be sure to keep a record of what, if any, changes occurred in any daypart during a book that could have affected your outcome (i.e. If you had a new afternoon show this book and AQH went down).

Look at how well each daypart converted the available Cume to AQH. Your marketing may be bringing them in, but is your PM Drive show keeping them?

You may also narrow down the reason for a trend to a show element by looking at the Hour-By-Hour shares. Maybe your "All Request Lunch Hour" is (or isn't) the reason for your mid-day spike. Is your morning show losing or gaining audience from 6:00am - 8:00am? You'll find these answers here. PPM data really shines here, due to its granularity and also demonstrates convincingly that much of what people write down is not what they really do.

Metro Cume Duplication Percent: With which stations do you share the most/least of your audience? Is their audience reciprocating?

This is a great way to monitor your marketing tactics. What can you do to get the attention of your competitor's listeners?

Population Estimates and In-Tab Diaries by County: Make sure you've concentrated your efforts on the hot spots. This is especially important now, since samples will still be based on changes in population estimates that started by in 2000. It will be 18 months before actual 2010 changes start to impact the estimates.

If doing a diary review, be sure to look at your return rate from these counties and compare it to your competitor's.

Look at the zip codes and do the same comparison. Be sure you know where those active radio listeners live. Even better, study the zip codes which contribute more than average time spent listening to you.

Cume Recycling: find out what percentage of your total cume persons listen to any particular daypart. Simply divide the 12+ cume for each daypart by the total metro cume.

How well are you recycling your listeners through other dayparts? Do this for your competitors' stations as well and find the dayparts you can improve upon. You can also break this down by specific demo, as well as AQH persons.

Listening Locations: This is another indicator that is sometimes given little attention. It shows what percentage of your audience listens "At Home", "In car", and "Other". You'll get a feel for your listeners' morning, in-office, and drive time listening habits.

While looking at the big picture and searching for the generic answer in your latest book, don't take for granted these often overlooked calculations.

They can help point out some of the finer, more intricate reasons WHY your station performed the way it did.

Correct the problems you uncover, and next book you and you'll be asking, "why did we do so well this book?" Even better, you'll KNOW.