Becoming More Memorable

1. Use all available media to the utmost of your ability, but before deciding which to make use of, choose your message.
2. Promote who you are and what you stand for.
3. Start by using your own airwaves and digital tools.
4. Give away lifestyle prizes as your rewards for listening. 
5. Cash is the easiest lifestyle universal.
6. Create a memorable brand name and catch phrase which encompasses all of the above.
7. Don’t expect it all to work quickly. 
8. Great marketing and branding, let alone product development, take time to be effective.
9. Cume building contests and campaigns still work and must employ outside advertising.
10. Ah, there’s the rub.  Trying to build cume without buying advertising may improve your time spent listening and can generate word of mouth if done very creatively, but that strategy adds to the time it will take.
11. TV morning shows dominate outdoor in most markets today with creative that looks exactly like morning radio used to do.  Small wonder that our pre-8 am audience is gravitating to TV at home.
12. Time spent listening is driven by recycling audience. 
13. Tease with specifics, theater of mind and exact times.
14. Ah, here’s another rub:  everyone else knows that too, so depending on it to drive your growth requires doing all of these things better than all of the other choices listeners now have.
15. Target hot zips, the neighborhoods where your most loyal listeners live and work.
16. Do appearances in “blitzes.”  Create the image that where ever your fans and prospects go, you’re there too. 

It’s impossible to keep this up constantly.  Plan tactically and conserve your researches.  It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

The goal:  make potential listeners feel like you’re constantly visible in their community.

What's In It For You?

When it comes to excuses on "why I don't need to do that," I've heard them all.

1.  "I don't need to do remotes or other personal appearances.  It kills the theater of the mind I create.  I'd prefer to use the magic of radio and have them picture me the way they want to.  If they meet me face to face, that's gone."

Nice try.  My theory on this one is that this person is naturally shy and insecure.  Maybe they got into radio so they could be outgoing and be themself without ever having to face rejection.

As their manager/coach, assure them that everyone is insecure and shy and those of us in the entertainment business can't be as successful as our potential if we don't face and overcome that demon.

Sometimes you simply have to force them out of that comfort zone, placing a set number of remote broadcasts and public appearances in their employment agreement so they have no choice but to do them if they want the job.

Make them get out in front of the broadcast desk close to people, looking each listener they meet directly in the eye and repeat the listener's name as least three times as they interact with them. 

Often, this alone fixes the problem as they begin to realize that people who come wanting to meet them enjoy their personality and they have nothing to fear.

2.  "I don't do social media.  My entire show is social."

No, it's not.  It's a broadcast.  If you get too personal on AM/FM radio by playing every request people ask for, using every phone call you get on air without editing them, your ratings are going to go down because your show will be loved by the folks who call, but boring to the mass audience.

If being on the radio for you is just to have people call you and tell you how wonderful you are because you do your show just for them, you're never going to be as successful if you talk to everyone, but do it with a "one to one" vocabulary.

Your task when the microphone is open is to curate everything that is going on right now.  Choose only the best material and maximum value to the listener who chooses to sample you.

Keep them listening longer by being as entertaining and engaging as possible.

Use all of your social tools to build those personal relationships one person at a time.

Tailor which social platforms you use to the tastes of each individual listener.  Use them all, but don't broadcast one post to all of them.  Consider what makes a user of each platform choose that one and make sure they know you understand what makes them unique and special, not just a number in your database.

Need a good example of how this is done?  I have one word for you:  Ellen.

If her great example along with those intellectual/logical explanations don't work, I go for the jugular and tell the personality that failing to use every medium at their disposal in exactly the way its users expect will cost them competitively in the ratings.

To #1:  if you don't get out into the community and also use social and expect the audience to grow every day, you better be the most consistently entertaining personality available to your target in every minute of every day so that they never get tempted to try anything else.  Cume is always going down unless you work hard to keep it growing.

To #2:  If you knew exactly who had ratings diaries or was carrying a Personal People Meter right now, wouldn't you want to take extra care to find out what they are doing, what they like and dislike?

Try this experiment:

Go to the mall and randomly ask people if they have ever participated in the radio ratings.  If you ask 100 people, you'll be lucky to find five who say yes.

At your next public appearance or remote broadcast, ask the very same question (do NOT do it on social platforms or you'll probably get delisted!) and you'll find that as many as one in ten (or even more) answer in the affirmative.

The point is not to do stealth marketing, but to prove to your recalcitrant talent:

The people who reach out to you socially and come out to say hello to you are more than twice as likely as the average person to participate in the radio ratings when they receive that call.

Don't you want as real and close a relationship with them as you can possibly have?

Brand Depth

What drives big ratings success?

Major companies like McDonalds and Burger King, Apple and Microsoft, Coke and Pepsi, GM and Mercedes, etc. research various attribution categories to shine major light on pinpointing consumer perceptions in their respective industries and who their customers really are.
Building far above average rating shares that completely dominate a market aren't as simple as figuring out how many different listener perceived needs one radio station can fill, but thanks to two-decade-old data from Todd Wallace's Radio lndex "Winning Positions 2014" report it's certainly very possible to see how "owning" many programming attributes it took for one station to build a four book average #1 11.5 12+ share and a cume rating of 25.

This battle, of course, continues today, though under different owners that operated the two of them back then when the country format held more than an 18 share of total radio listening.

Wallace says "I believe one of the most useful and actionable displays is what we call a Perceptual Mosaic for each station, whereby all of the perceptual questions are collected and presented in rank-order form.

"This provides an interesting look at how the audience perceives how effective each station is in delivering each position.

"Because the questioning process includes the words "if any" ("Which radio station, if any, do you think plays the most music?"), each mosaic sums up the factors which are truly most important to the listener (as the specific attributes apply to each station)."

Hopefully, this report sparks a few new ideas on ways you can use attribution research to zero-in on positions that can make a difference in your battle(s), showing where you're hot and not.

If you'd like a free eight page report documenting Todd Wallace's Radio lndex "Winning Positions 2014" Attribution Research, Email-him and mention A&O&B.

Domination

In 1992. KNIX/Phoenix had a yearly four book average market-leading 11.5 share, driven by a 25 cume rating.  Arbitron estimated at the time that more than one in four people who listened to radio used KNIX, which had a very strong competitor in KMLE, whose cume rating was a more normal 15.8 and average quarter hour 12+ share was a yearly average 7.0!

How did KNIX engineer such powerful market shares in spite of having a really good competitor?

Normally, it's almost impossible to get a totally unbiased, data-driven answer to that question in real time because the owners, managers, programmers, consultants and researchers with the perspective to know the answer are bound by confidentiality since an ally in one situation may be the competition in another.

Phoenix-based researcher-consultant Todd Wallace has done hundreds of perceptual research projects throughout the U.S and Canada but because they are conducted exclusively for just one client in a market, he still cannot share that confidential information with anyone else. 

Back in the 90's, several of the biggest radio stations in Phoenix subscribed to a syndicated version of his "Radio Index" service which provided weekly ratings tracking and a series of Positioning Questions covering all manner of subjects, 44 different viewpoints, including an Annual Report which summarized all of the monthly PQ's sizing-up the entire radio marketplace (with a sample size of over 15,000 completed interviews each year).  Fortunately, two decades later, he is now able to share those results.

Though the numbers and market situations are dated the principal remains useful in helping you gain some perspective on great ways to examine the audience at large and in-target.

At the time, KNIX dominated three non-music positions - not just in the minds of the country audience, but with all radio listeners!

In fact, in this major market with many very aggressive broadcasters, KNIX did what it took to give away huge prizes, cash and contests so that no other station came close.  Their lead with "best DJ's" and "most involved" wasn't as incredible as their ownership of best contesting, but even in those two images they were head and shoulders above not just their direct competition, but all other radio stations with the entire listening audience.

Ponder this as you plan to 2014:  what might you do to dominate key usage-drivers?

If you'd like a free eight page report documenting Todd Wallace's Radio lndex "Winning Positions 2014" Attribution Research, Email-him and mention A&O&B.

Imaging The Drivers

Once you decide what your most-important Value Drivers are, it's important to make selling them a priority on the air.

Does all station self-promotion center around just your ratings contest or money-making remotes/community appearances?

A major portion of your promotional inventory and production creative time should be set aside to remind listeners that you know why they pick your radio station from all the available choices.

If you take them for granted, they may take you for granted too.

Value Drivers

A client PD sent me her station's marketing plan for the fall survey and she related every proposed action as a driver of value to the target listener.

• The station's unique and superior music, lifestyle and attitude position among all our competition.
• Their commercial load limits and placement, designed to increase usage at the expense of other radio stations our listeners may also use.
• The simplicity and fun of our "big" contest, which features very enticing prizes in contrast to other local media marketing.
• Air personality content, controlled using a content grid to assure that it is consistent and present.
• Personalities, unique in their compelling brand stories and always involved with the local community on the streets, meeting perceived listener needs and solving problems.

Running everything they do through the "is it a value driver to our target?" test is a great way to be sure that ratings will reflect an on-target brand, driven by loyal fans who know that the station is built around their needs.

ARB's Twin Waterbeds, Diary And PPM

RBR: "Given the news that the Media Rating Council (MRC) that it has withdrawn accreditation of the monthly AQH radio ratings data produced by the PPM service in Cleveland, Portland OR, Riverside-San Bernardino, Salt Lake City-Ogden-Provo, and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, we revisited an interview with MRC Executive Director and CEO George Ivie as to issues surrounding accreditation in PPM markets. First of all, it’s a complex thing to accredit a new service and Arbitron has adjusted the service to meet the compliance needs of the MRC. That takes time and is always under review."

“It’s a complex problem. It’s like a waterbed, you push down on one side and other sides move. You have to push down on the whole bed to hold it all down. If you let go of something, certain things may get worse, other things may get better. You have to really be vigilant.” -- Ivie in Inside Radio

Since the news broke, clients in both PPM and diary markets have been asking if "panic" is the order of the day, as Arbitron Director of Programming Services Jon Miller coincidentally titled his new blog post on ARB's training site and my advice given that, yes, credibility of media measurement is absolutely crucial, but since we've all seen this coming for a very long time is: DON'T (panic).

Keep the pressure on researchers to be as open as possible as they work on the complex sample quality issues that every market is witnessing. Secrecy won't improve anyone's confidence level.

A quick recap of past history as chronicled on this blog alone:

• Wednesday, May 24, 2006: Pew: 8% Have Only A Cell Phone, Challenging Radio And All Other Phone-Based Research. Last year, only five years later, The New York Times reported that Arkansas had the highest concentration of people in cell-only households, at 35.2 percent, next was Mississippi at 35.1 percent, Texas at 32.5 percent, North Dakota at 32.3 percent, Idaho at 31.7 percent and Kentucky at 31.5 percent.
• Tuesday, March 04, 2008: Why An Index Of 80 Or 90 Isn't Good Enough
• Wednesday, May 07, 2008: ARB's Patchen Hits A Foul Ball; Randy Kabrich Hits A Home Run
• Wednesday, April 01, 2009: The Right Way To Sample
• Monday, April 13, 2009: Arbitron's Dr. Ed Responds
• Saturday, July 09, 2011: "Research IQ"
• Tuesday, October 04, 2011: Take Aspirin Before Reading
• Sunday, November 13, 2011: Smiling While Scratching My Head

Let's get up to speed about it all at CRS. (click the banner below for a free invitation if you're not in a competitive situation with an A&O client)

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Can You Program Listeners As Well As Your Radio Station?

Want listeners to think of your call letters each time their phone rings?

All you need to do is play the sound of a phone ringing and immediately say your call letters after it time and time again.

Wouldn't it be nice if subliminal advertising was that easy?

The "Ignore This Message" website puts it all in this slightly tongue-in-cheek context:

Subliminal advertising doesn't exist. But if it does, it doesn't work. But if it does, it's not a problem. But if it is, it doesn't matter. But if it does, ignore it.

Snopes.com debunks the long-standing rumor that secret cues inside a Coke commercial got movie-goers to buy more popcorn.

Here in Seattle, UW Prof Tony Greenwald has been skeptically studying "Subliminal Influence" for almost five decades: "I think unconscious cognition is a pretty dumb but fast processor that scans sensory input and directs our attention."

Thus, he is at odds with followers of Freud, who contend the unconscious is a very smart and powerful entity that protects a person from psychic threats, such as knowledge of a fatal illness or personal incompetence, that are too anxiety-provoking for the more fragile conscious mind.

So, associate your brand with a ringing phone if it makes you feel diabolically clever, but don't count on this tactic to increase your ratings in any consistent and measurable way.

The Very Best Medium For Marketing Your Radio Station

The top two quintiles of radio users (heaviest users) are all reached by radio (100%) in an average week, more than TV (94%), cable & TV networks (74%), daily newspapers (75%), weekly newspapers (46%), Sunday newspapers (76%), shopper newspapers (37%), magazines (75%) and outdoor (68%).

The best way to tell your heaviest-users about your product - both in terms of strategic benefits and recycling existing audience - is ON THE RADIO. 6 am to 6 am, heavy radio users spend 68% of their media time with radio. 6 am to midnight, the figure is 56%, compared to 34% for television.

29% of heavy radio users say they do not have a radio at work. 71% do. The heavy radio users, not surprisingly, also spend more time commuting than the average person - 59 minutes per day and 94% of them listen to a radio while commuting.

In car is the CUME sampling location for radio and AT WORK is the AQH-BUILDER location, the data on radio's heavy users clearly indicate.

Like someone said on Facebook the other day: "the good news is the bad news changes every day."

I think you're going to want to understand these trends, looking at them locally, and start thinking about their implications for your future.

Morning television is advertising on radio trying to get our morning audience to listen to TV at home as they start their day. There's a message to US there.

Tell your usage story compellingly, on your own radio station.

A Firm Grasp On The Obvious

FACTOID #1: 15% of radio diaries have been filled out in advance by the time the diary week is supposed to begin. This certainly underscores the importance of being top of mind in unaided recall.

FACTOID #2: 0% of PPM listening is reported even a second before it's been DONE.

In either case, it pays to become so ingrained in your regular user's habit patterns that they know in advance that they plan to use you several times tomorrow.

Are you prepping daily ways to achieve that?

Dueling Stats

Last month’s Arbitron-Research Director revelation that 22.2% of PPM cume is “P-1” and delivers 52.4% of the average station’s total average quarter hours (Ratio: 2.36:1) spotlighted how radically the numbers programmers have learned to use to track performance have changed.

Diary averages remain 35.7% of the average station’s cume is “P-1,” delivering 70.4% of average quarter hours. (Ratio: 1.97:1)

Does the difference in the ratios mean that having one of your heaviest users in the PPM sample is 20% more important than it has been to achieve consistent performance in diary samples?

Other new metrics which also require further investigation:

Diary turnover ratio, your total cume divided by average quarter hour persons audience, equals the number of times a song or announcement must be played before about half your cume will hear it two times in a week.

With a diary review or making use of software like Maximiser or PD Advantage you can calculate how many days per week your average diarykeeper writes down in their diary.

4.1 days per week is the best I've seen. 3.6 days per week is a little on the low side. That additional half day of average "regularity" can make a MAJOR difference in your diary-based ratings.

In PPM, since meters are in motion, on average, almost two thirds of the hours in a 24 hour day and most of them are in use seven days a week, the need to extrapolate such things using math goes away. Using meters it’s possible to see exactly how many days per week, times per day and average minutes per occasion the average panelist listens to radio overall and also to your station specifically. For example, DMR has stated that 94% of PPM panelists consistently use the same amount of radio week after week, with the heaviest users turning on the radio 31 times per week for an average of 15 hours. Sixteen of those occasions are spent with their favorite station.

Diary studies for years have shown that you get most of your quarter hours from "at work" listening and most of the average station's cume comes from "in car." A typical station that had 60 25-54 10:00 am to 7:00 pm weekday diaries that reported "in car" listening to a station, 14 "at home" and 15 "at work." Those 15 "at work" diaries reported 346 quarter hours of total listening, while the 60 "car" books contributed 378 quarter hours. Typically, it can take four times the cume (diaries) from "in car" to equal the same number of quarter hours from typical "at work" listeners. People think that cume builds average quarter hour. In fact, IN CAR listening builds cume and AT WORK builds average quarter hour - and it is equally important to have BOTH. A healthy station could have at least 70% of its cume "in car" and a similar percentage of its quarter hour "at work."

PPM replicates that, making it clear that in car is where most people switch stations a lot and at work they tend to dial around a lot less.

What does that say about traditional turnover/reach and frequency (OES)-based music rotations?

PPM also appears to find more males who listen at work which diaries have failed to register, but diaries report more female at work listening than PPM does.

What's real?

It’s going to be interesting to learn more about the study by Alan Burns and Associates released today which reportedly shows one-quarter of all women who listen to adult contemporary and CHR formats believe there’s no station in their market that understands them. “And that leads to erosion in radio usage,” Burns says.

Interviews with more than 2,000 female radio listeners found that two-thirds of women who think no station “gets” them are listening to radio less as a result.

“Either their interests and values have changed, and radio hasn’t kept up, or radio has changed in ways they don’t appreciate,” Burns adds.

So which is it? PPM accurately measuring real drops in women’s usage of radio? Or, a bias built into diary vs PPM methodology?

If getting more men who listen at work into our targets is a key to doing better in PPM ratings, will radio move further away from the (long term) tastes of females in pursuit of (short term) higher shares?

What They Know You Should Too

The hot new thing, PPM, gets the press ink these days, but "mailed ballots" still are the survey method in both the U.S. and Canada in the vast majority of radio marketplaces.

As a result, ARB, Nielsen and BBM constantly assess and update their diary packaging and appearance in an effort to improve response rates.

Social networking and emails are indeed virtually free - except for the time it takes to maintain them, which is not inconsequential - so a lot of radio's marketing is moving to these media, but as long as thousands of diaries are being mailed to listeners week after week, direct mail remains a powerful marketing force to drive recall that results in reported listening.

Direct marketing consultants have been suggesting ways to be sure that the diary wasn't tossed away as so much more junk mail for many years.

The diary as direct mail is nothing new, and that is a reason why direct marketing can still be so effective for marketing radio stations.

The ratings firms employ sophisticated techniques to get more diaries back.

As you plan direct mail for your next book, it's wise to learn what the survey companies know from their long experience in direct mail. Why is it that one direct mail package will move large numbers of people to act, while an apparently similar package for the same station is ignored?

IT STARTS WITH THE ENVELOPE

Make sure your envelope or the outside of your flier communicates a sense of urgency and importance:

1. Promise a benefit - a problem solved, a meaningful savings, something free.
2. Create curiosity about the contents.
3. Establish recognition of the sender's name: 'why does WWWW want to talk to me?'
4. Involve the recipient with a short quiz or several questions.

YOUR LETTER/FLIER IS THE CENTERPIECE

1. Speak directly to the prospect. The more you know about their needs, the better.
2. Intrigue. Excite.
3. Concentrate on the word "you." That is key to achieving engagement.
4. In the salutation, target the prospect as specifically as possible.
5. Put a headline above the salutation to pull prospects into the letter.
6. Try placing your letterhead or logo at the bottom instead of the top of the first page.
7. Use a typewriter typeface for letters, or handwriting. It looks more personal.
8. Indent paragraphs. It makes letters easier to read.
9. Underline important words or phrases. But, do not overdo it or it loses effectiveness.
10. Use subheads and bullets to break up large copy blocks.
11. Keep margins wide. Don't run copy to the edge of the paper, it's intimidating.
12. Use a blue or black signature to make the letter appear individually signed.
13. Ask for help. "We need your ideas and suggestions...your opinion counts..."
14. Handwritten margins notes get high readership. Don't use too many. Be sure the handwriting is the same as the signature.
15. A second color makes the letter more appealing.
16. Use a P.S. People often read a P.S. first. Reinforce your offer or benefit in the P.S.

DRAW THEM A PICTURE

Use graphics. Demonstrate your music variety by showing a picture of hot CD covers by great-testing artists. Be sure the songs and artists represent you correctly, perfectly. Show them that you know who the 'right' artists are by using artist photos.

Show a radio dial, with your frequency highlighted. Don't take for granted that they know that you are a radio station.

Enclose a music calendar or something else that respondents may see as helpful or valuable: a brochure highlighting your strategic benefits, a radio dial with 'helpful' (fun) comments on each station that places your station in an especially good light, a key chain, a refrigerator magnet, a station decal, etc.

CLOSE THE SALE

Build a database by including a bounce-back.

Ask their name, home address, work address, zip + block code, phone and work phones, at work fax, birth date, dayparts - "( ) early morning, ( ) midday, ( ) late afternoon, ( ) evening, ( ) night" where and when they listen to your station, other radio stations listened to in an average week.

Since THE motivation for diarykeepers is the fun of giving their opinions because their input COUNTS, ask for their ideas and suggestions for improvement.

Computerize this information and develop future direct marketing campaigns based on it.

Restate your "offer," "contest," "prize" or "creative" on the bounce back coupon.

Create involvement by including anything you can afford in your promotion - coupon savings from local retailers, a DVD or CD containing a message from the morning team and samples of the station's programming, a second smaller letter that re-stresses your points, add a buckslip - a piece of paper about the size of a dollar that restates one important selling point or benefit.

THE GOLDEN RULE

If your direct mail is full of hyperbole, potential listeners will feel skeptical. When something seems too good to be true, prospects refuse to respond. Always keep in mind your reputation and your credibility. If you don't want listeners to feel your station is cluttered, don't send a cluttered mail piece. Nothing you do should ever jeopardize your good name.

The golden rule of direct marketing: every word you write and every picture you show must be scrupulously honest. Don't say FREE unless it IS. Never make a promise in your copy unless you know you can deliver on it. But, DO use a guarantee that is strong and lets people know that you stand behind what you say.

COGENERATE

Integrate your direct marketing efforts with your overall advertising and marketing plan. If there are other media involved, involve them from the outset. If you are on TV or outdoor, mention your mail piece or use similar graphics/creative. If you are doing telemarketing, be sure that lead generation is a team effort. Direct mail gets the lead, telemarketing handles the close. Or, telemarketing generates the list and direct mail generates involvement and loyalty. Keep every subcontractor, supplier and department involved in the promotion informed.

And, finally: follow-up leads immediately. Follow-up materials should be mailed or faxed immediately. Every day you wait to follow-up a hot lead, the colder it becomes.

Ask your ARB, BBM or Nielsen rep to show you their mailing packages. You'll see all of these strategies in action, which is why very few direct mail campaigns get the response rates the ratings firms do.

When you contemplate using direct mail, there's a lot to learn from studying their tactics.