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Targeting the PPM People: How Are They Different? (Part 8: A Textbook Case For Text-Marketing)
June 4, 2012
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. As our study has shown, over and over, PPM Prospects are not “typical.†They are the most comfortable in the constantly-connected see-you-see-me cyberworld, and are also the most receptive to ad pitches in general. Being receptive to business texts is a not-surprising corollary.
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By Joel Lind
To succeed today, stations must maximize their appeal to those who control that success: those who wear a PPM. And, no matter what Arbitron says, the PPM-friendly population, pure and simple, is nowhere close to a representative sample of the population in general. NuVoodoo’s national study of 1000 adults 18-49 shows that there are several key differences between radio users who will agree to take the PPM and those who will not. This is the eighth article in our series discussing those differences and how they can help stations win and change the future.
First, please bear in mind that 100% of our sample are already research-receptive people: people who at least agreed to answer a few questions. Experience tells us that only about 30% of the population will participate in any research. Therefore, any information we share about “Arbitron-friendlies” should be considered in this context. We also know respondents are always quicker to agree to a theoretical question than to commit to the actual behavior. So the percentages who say they will do something are always greater than the percentages who will in fact do so.Â
In the past few weeks, we have shown that PPM Prospects are much heavier users of digital devices, that they are much more active on Facebook and much more likely to read traditional and electronic mass mailings, and that they are much more influenced by big-prize contesting. This week, we look at the effectiveness of using text-messaging to get information, both promotional and user-focused, to our audience. Remember, unlike other businesses, radio stations really need to reach and influence only a small subset of our consumers: the consumers who will agree to wear The Diabolical Digital Device of Life and Death.Â
PPM Prospects Are Much More Amenable than Others to Commercial Texting
First, a consumer must be willing to receive commercial texts, period. In fact, most consumers today are not. But we care only about those consumers who consent to being researched, and specifically about the subset who don’t mind being electronically monitored 24/7. So let’s look at the striking finding above. Among listeners who meet the research-friendly threshold, but would not jump through that second hoop of accepting a PPM, the no:yes ratio on commercial texting is an overwhelming 3 to 1. Meanwhile, among those who would indeed jump through that second hoop, and are therefore our target listeners, the no’s may still outnumber the yes’s, but by the much slimmer margin of 1 ½ to 1. And why not? As our study has shown, over and over, PPM Prospects are not “typical.” They are the most comfortable in the constantly-connected see-you-see-me cyberworld, and are also the most receptive to ad pitches in general. Being receptive business texts is a not-surprising corollary.
Not All Text-Friendly Folks Want Texts From Radio, but PPM Prospects DO.
This next finding is even more striking than the first. Among PPM NON-prospects who are receptive to commercial texts in general, the top set of bars, a plurality of them say “Well yes, I might be interested in getting some business texts, but not that kinda text!”But now, let’s look at the bottom bars: those listeners who accept commercial texts and who ARE willing, either for the love of money or for the love of radio, to carry that PPM weight a long time. By more than a two-to-one ratio, they say “Hell, yeah, bring it on! I want my station to text me about contests!” WOW. What more can we ask for?
The Bottom Line:Â Station Texting Efficiently Targets The PPM Prospects!
Put these two factors together and look what we get: Radio station texts are dramatically more effective among the universe of PPM Prospects than among the universe of research-friendly people who won’t wear a PPM. (We did not measure, and could not care less about, the majority of the population who just say no to research, period.) Regardless of the content of the text message, it reaches a much larger percentage of those who will wear a meter and can count toward our success than it does of those who won’t and cannot. Sometimes more than one in four PPM Prospects. That’s quite a bang for your texting buck.
What this means to you
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: The meter methodology itself (although certainly not Arbitron’s sample sizes, which are a whole separate issue) is the smart radio station’s new best friend. It zeroes in on, and measures the listening of, the listeners whom a station can most easily reach and can most easily influence. Arbitron’s own methodology, and the people it works on, provide you the simple keys to prospering from that methodology. Change your future…by texting away, early and often, and be sure to text lots of useful information as well as promotional content. And instead of worrying that your message may work on only a small percentage of your audience, you can rejoice. Because it probably is working, at that very moment, on one fourth of the listeners who, at that very moment, are digitally-umbilically connected to Arbitron Election Central.
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