Radio InSights

Digital Marketing Done Right.

Marketing has always played a critical role in the success of a radio station. This is no less true today in a PPM world than the diary world.

While it is true that PPM measures exposure, not listening, we still need to get listeners to try out the station. Every station churns listeners. Listeners drift away and need to be replaced.

Marketing raises the station’s top-of-mind status, increases curiosity, and brings new listeners to the station.

We now have potentially more persuasive new-media marketing options in addition to the traditional “brute force” methods of the past. Today with the help of digital options, we can more effectively market to listeners at a personal level by communicating with them directly.

New media marketing options offer new opportunities to strengthen the bond between station and listener. The key is to focus your energy on doing a few things very well rather than dabbling in the enture range of possibilities, particularly with the reality of today’s skeleton staffs and limited budgets.

So how do you decide how to market the station? What are the most effective new-media tools, and how can you use them in the most efficient way? Read on.

Email. Email should be the foundation of every radio station’s marketing strategy. Email has the potential to be the most powerful marketing tool at our disposal because of its ability to reach nearly every listener, its low cost, and its flexibility.

Making email an effective marketing tool requires continual attention, however. Your database of addresses has to be represent a significant proportion of your audience. It has to be regularly updated and old addresses purged.

Emails should be useful, relevant, and informative. And don’t over-use email.

Social Media. Some believe that social networking has supplanted email as the primary way people stay in touch with friends. It is a little more complicated than that. For our purposes, the two media are complimentary.

Email is the best way to touch an individual, social media is the best way to touch an entire audience.

Email should be for personally targeted messages. Listeners should feel that they are personally hearing from the station regarding something that might individually interest them.

Social media should be for general audience information. It is a broadcast, an extension of what the station does on air.

If your email efforts are up and running, then the next step is adding social media, primarily Facebook.

The challenge is creating a steady stream of station posts.

The task needs to be under the control of the program director and assigned to someone who understands the station’s listeners and what listeners will find interesting. Dull pointless posts turn listeners off and raise questions about the station’s relevancy.

Twitter has more buzz than Facebook, but it is much more difficult to overcome Twitter noise. With limited resources, investing in email and Facebook should be a station’s top priority.

YouTube has created multi-media marketing opportunities for stations, but at some risk. Viral videos are generally entertainingly quirky. Few radio stations can pull-off creating a genuinely entertaining video. Too often radio station YouTube efforts end up as desperate attempts to appear cool.

Website. Radio's first foray into digital marketing was creating a website. A station’s website is the visual symbol of the station. It should look like the radio station sounds.

Unfortunately, most radio station web sites look pretty similar, and pretty bad. They are painful to look at, too busy, visually shouting at the viewer.

The problem is that too much of the screen has been given over to the sales department. As a result, too many websites are really anti-marketing tools, undoing a great deal of the work put into creating a positive station image.

Cluttered flash-festooned riots of color and movement hawking and pitching everything from the morning show to who knows what drive listeners away. As a result, few listeners visit radio station web sites more than once, and when they do, they spend very little time on them.

Product people need to get more involved with website design and make sure the site leaves listeners with a positive impression of the station and encourages them to turn on the radio station.

 Mobile. The next frontier in digital marketing is mobile.

The telephone is becoming the Swiss-army knife of communication, but at this point, three out of four mobile users are using a plain simple phone. That means it remains primarily a tool for individuals to communicate to other individuals by voice or text.

Don’t get sucked into the hype about smartphones. With only one in four cell phone users having a smartphone, like an iPhone or Android, mobile marketing is still in its infancy.

Don’t design a marketing campaign where participants need a smartphone to participate. Your marketing needs to reach all your listeners, not just mobile early adopters.

At this point, mobile marketing should focus on voice or texting.

Texting has replaced voice as the primary means of mobile communications for younger listeners. On average, teens send an average of 3,339 texts per month.

If your station targets listeners under the age of 30, it has to have a texting strategy.In-bound texting should be part of a station’s polling, requests, and feedback.

Outbound texting offers additional marketing opportunities, but should be used carefully. Research suggests that 9 out of 10 people resent unsolicited messages.

On the other hand, texting is the most immediate means to reach young listeners. Since listeners who text generally have their phones with them and on, it can be a very effective call-to-action tool.

The key is to first make sure listeners want you to text them. If a listener has given you her mobile number, she has granted the station a privilege that you should not abuse. Use texting sparingly and only for important things.

Save outbound texting to very high value opportunities.

Regardless of the means you ultimately focus on, remember these important rules:

• Regularly communicate with listeners.
• Make sure listeners understand how important they are to the station.
• Be sure your messages are relevant, useful, and entertaining.
• Integrate social networking to make your communications a two-way street.

 

Is Arbitron's Secrecy Hurting Radio?

Broadcast radio faces many challenges including a widespread impression that people have stopped listening. Radio is in a public relations funk, and the NAB’s attempted back-door deal for a cell FM chip hasn’t helped.

William Kerr, President and CEO of Arbitron, recently declared his interest in helping radio. He wants Arbitron to become an advocate for radio and increase the medium’s profile.

A good start would be to lessen Arbitron’s obsession about limiting public discussion of radio ratings.

Want to know how popular the Country Music Awards show was? Go on TV by the Numbers and you’ll find that the awards show beat its nearest competitor by 5.8 million viewers. In 18-49 adults it beat competing shows by 74%, yet still fell 11% from last year’s ratings.

Want to know how Keith Olbermann did on his return show after the suspension? His 25-54 viewership was up 50% to 426,000 viewers.

Want to know which show did better, NBC’s Today show or ABC’s Good Morning America? Go to TV Newser and you’ll discover that the Today show had 1.1 million more viewers last week. You’ll also find the 25-54 numbers, as well.

If you wanted to find out any of these things, you could quite easily. With a quick Google search you can find Nielsen ratings, rankers, demo breakouts, and trends for about any show you want.

Nielsen television ratings are openly shared and discussed in the media. Arbitron ratings? Not a chance.

Try to find out how many listeners Don Imus has. You can’t.

You can learn that according to Nielsen his TV simulcast draws 148,000 viewers and is threatening CNBC. But don’t bother looking for his Arbitron radio numbers. You won’t find them.

Try to find out how many people in New York City listen to the radio. You can’t.

Try to find out how long 18-49 year old New Yorkers listen to the radio. You can’t.

Unlike Nielsen television ratings where a wide range of statistics are freely available, Arbitron ratings are secret. You can find station 12+ (6+ for PPM) full week shares on the Arbitron site, but nothing more.

Anyone who publishes rating estimates beyond total person full week shares is violating Arbitron’s fair use agreement:

Arbitron is willing to grant to newspapers and other publications that write about radio a nonexclusive license to publish a limited, newsworthy amount of copyrighted data.

In general, when writing about the standings of the radio stations in a market, only estimates for Persons 6+ in PPM-measured markets or Persons 12+ in Diary-measured markets may be published, regardless of the source of the information.

All other demographic information (Persons 25-54, Men 18-34, etc.) may only be used in a form that does not publish the actual estimate. Ranking or characterizing the data is acceptable, i.e. Station WAAA is #2 in Men 25-54.

Even an Arbitron client who pays for the ratings can’t provide a newspaper with useful ratings information beyond full week total person shares. And a reporter that uses anything other than total person full week shares is violating Arbitron’s fair use terms.

Television hosts talk about television sweeps all the time. People are very aware of Nielsen television ratings because television talks about them. You can even find articles on sweeps in general market publications.

This public discussion helps keep television in the news. It is also one reason that everybody knows about Nielsen.

Contrast television’s freedom to discuss Nielsen ratings to radio’s lack of freedom discussing Arbitron ratings. Talk about Arbitron on the radio and you are likely to be punished, with the dreaded below-the-line listing.

The impact of Arbitron’s secrecy is to lower radio’s profile. It contributes to radio’s invisibility.

Broadcasters needs to get consumers talking about radio in a positive way again. One thing that could help is for Arbitron to allow ratings to be openly discussed.

There are all sorts of radio rating factoids that could spur more discussion about radio.

Interest in radio ratings may not be as great as the interest in national TV ratings, but every market has a local angle to play. Morning show competitions, format battles, market to market comparisons and on and on.

People underestimate the size of radio's audience. People just assume that radio is on the ropes. Arbitron could help radio better fight back if it gave its clients more tools to counter the misconceptions.

If Arbitron wasn’t so secretive about the numbers, and wasn’t so heavy-handed towards transgressors, radio would have more powerful tools to push back on the radio is dead meme.

Radio needs to start rebuilding broadcast’s image. Freeing the public to talk about Arbitron ratings like they do Nielsen ratings would be a good place to start.

 

Thanks Pandora, We'll Take it From Here.

Pandora is the face of Internet radio. By every measure it has achieved far more than any other Internet audio service. The company has over 65 million registered users, generates one-quarter billion listening sessions every week, and even generates a modest profit.

For most consumers, Pandora defines the entire category of Internet radio. There’s Pandora and the rest. You can listen to Pandora on your computer, your iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Tivo, and soon probably most Internet connected toasters.

Tim Westergren is an icon in Internet media circles. As the creator and face of Pandora he has scored interviews in mainstream media including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

And none of this will ultimately matter.

Pandora may have a tremendous lead over its competition, but it remains to be seen whether the service can sustain its lead. As countless Internet companies have discovered, there is no “first-mover” advantage when it comes to new-media.

Nothing that Pandora does is proprietary. Every aspect of Pandora can be replicated, and ultimately improved upon.

We are in the first inning of Internet radio. This is why Harker Research suggested that it was better for broadcasters to watch and wait for Internet radio to mature. Better to continue to invest in the broadcast product while Internet radio evolves.

Now that an Internet radio leader has emerged, broadcasters can develop a competitive strategy to defend against Pandora, and the services that might overtake it.

Broadcasters owe Pandora their thanks. Pandora’s success is a textbook example of doing a lot of things a little better than the competition, something broadcast once knew, but seems to have forgotten.

The company's success also proves that caring about listeners still matters. A fact broadcast has also forgotten.

Fortunately, even with Pandora’s tremendous on-line lead broadcasters can close the gap by adapting key elements of the company’s success.

Lesson 1: Marketing is key.

Pandora has out-marketed everybody, broadcast and on-line competitors alike.

The company has a cool laid-back persona from its logo and website to the folksy emails it sends out. It solicits user input, and takes every opportunity to thank their users for listening.

The company’s Music Genome Project has given Pandora a unique position. It is little more than a marketing gimmick, but it has effectively created the appearance of a listener benefit not found elsewhere.

Arbitron's PPM focus on exposure rather than listening has deflected broadcast’s priorities away from marketing and positioning. The importance of differentiating a radio station will play an increasingly important role as broadcasts transits to digital.

Lesson 2: Make radio personal (again).

Tim Westergren, founder and chief strategy officer, has been a tireless booster of Pandora. Like a general personally leading his troops into battle, Westergren has traveled the country meeting with users and promoting his product.

At every stop, in every interview he takes the opportunity to position Pandora as the future of radio, taking every shot at broadcast he can.

What is the face of broadcast? Too many listeners see broadcast as a business full of large corporations run by greedy suits who see listeners as a commodity.

Broadcast radio needs to understand that it has an image problem, one that the NAB and RAB efforts have only worsened (think Radio 2020).

Broadcast needs to rethink its image as a product catagory. Broadcast needs a positive face and image.

Lesson 3: Listeners want a sense of control.

Pandora claims the Music Genome Project (MGP) creates the perfect personalized radio experience. Type in an artist, and Pandora will start streaming songs by that artist along with similar artists.

Harker Research found that MGP had little to do with Pandora’s appeal. Listeners just want the ability to listen to an artist when they want to.

The message for broadcasters is that listeners want some control and the ability to listen to specific artists. This can easily be added to a broadcast group’s streaming package.

Lesson 4: Radio needs to be everywhere.

Pandora has been aggressive in making its service available on many devices. Users can stream the service on every mobile platform as well as Google TV, Tivo, and several Blu-ray players. NPR has pursued a similar strategy quickly developing apps for every device.

Broadcast streams must be available everywhere and on every device people use to listen to audio.

Lesson 5: Make it easy to listen.

People want easy access to their stations, not tens of thousands of stations they will never listen to.

The Pandora player is elegantly simple. Users can quickly find their custom streams with a minimum of distractions and clutter.

Broadcast has gone the other way, aggregating dozens and even hundreds of station on websites and applications that make it difficult to find particular stations.

Compare the simplicity of Pandora’s iPhone app to Clear Channel’s iheartradio. Pandora users hear music the moment the app launches. One has to go three pages deep in search of a radio station to listen on iheartradio.

Lesson 6: Radio is still a local medium.

Broadcast’s most powerful strength is its localism. Pandora understands this and is trying to develop a local sales strategy.

As broadcast migrates to the Internet, radio needs to remain a local medium. Services like iheartradio and AOL Music downplay broadcast’s most powerful tool, localism.

As the migration proceeds, large groups may have a more difficult time than small local groups making the transition. Small groups will feel no need to aggregate hundreds of stations into a single Internet service.

A small radio group with a single smartphone app will offer listeners a simple gateway to hear their local radio stations.

If broadcasters take to heart the lessons learned from Pandora’s success and apply them, broadcasting will prevail in the digital frontier. Thanks Pandora. We’ll take it from here.

Arbitron to Radio: Screw Engagement

Radio Affinity: a relevant, timely, accessible metric that captures audience involvement and has a lasting balanced impact on radio planning and buying.

Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? Measure that special relationship between a listener and radio station.

Apparently Arbitron thought it was a good idea a year ago when it hired Sequent Partners and put together a task force of eighteen radio and agency people to secretly develop the metric.

The announcement was on September 17, 2009. Since then we haven’t heard much about the project. Now we know why.

Inside Radio now reports that the project is on hold because “the metric didn’t garner broad support from radio groups.”  That’s about the extent of what broadcasters outside Arbitron’s inner circle know.

Maybe Arbitron shopped the idea to the larger groups and found out they couldn’t make any money measuring affinity. Maybe the project became awkward for reasons we outlined in our post What is Affinity? How Do You Measure It?

We observed that Arbitron’s new found interest in measuring affinity was ironic because the company had essentially stopped measuring affinity when it switched to PPM.

To measure affinity, we have to measure listenership. But PPM doesn’t measure listening. It measures exposure.

With PPM a person may not even be aware that a radio is playing and the meter will report that she has been exposed to radio.

So Arbitron cannot “repurpose” PPM ratings and create a measure of engagement. The committee may have concluded that to measure affinity Arbitron had to use something like the diary.

The diary does a good job measuring engagement because the listener herself writes down the stations she listens to, and how often. If she really likes a station, she is going to write it down a lot.

This is the essence of strong affinity.

Arbitron convinced broadcasters that the diary method was flawed because listeners could write down the stations they liked rather than the stations they actually listened to. But this is what engagement is all about.

Which is more meaningful, measuring exposure with no regard to whether a person is actually listening to the station, or allowing a listener to give extra weight to the stations she particularly likes?

If engagement is a valuable metric, then putting a diary in the hands of a listener does a much better job of measuring it.

This would be an awkward admission for a company that bad-mouthed the diary for the last decade. Is it any wonder that Arbitron deep-sixed the whole project?