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Who Do You Love?
June 9, 2014
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. Let's face it. The people you care most about reaching are ratings' respondents and those who are most likely to become ratings' respondents in the foreseeable future. That's not to say you don't care about each and every listener for your stations, but the ones who determine the ratings are precious. Arbitron's first point of contact with potential respondents used to be the telephone, but that's given way to the mailbox in PPM markets. So, reaching out with direct mail carries an above average probability of touching a potentially-metered household. But, there are costs involved:
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Let’s face it. The people you care most about reaching are ratings’ respondents and those who are most likely to become ratings’ respondents in the foreseeable future. That’s not to say you don’t care about each and every listener for your stations, but the ones who determine the ratings are precious.Â
Arbitron’s first point of contact with potential respondents used to be the telephone, but that’s given way to the mailbox in PPM markets. So, reaching out with direct mail carries an above average probability of touching a potentially-metered household. But, there are costs involved:
- You’ll want to make sure your message is well designed; so you’ll want an artist to design it.Â
- You’ll need to get the piece printed; so you’ll need paper and printing services.Â
- The US Postal Service charges for their delivery service.Â
[Disclaimer: NuVoodoo sells direct mail services and has a lot to offer in terms of targeted variable printing, expertise in targeting the right consumers and minimizing waste.]Â
Direct mail is a great tool for many marketing goals, but the hard costs involved mean that it’s not a very efficient way to conduct research for your stations. For consumer research, stations have long relied on telephone contact – and we were strong proponents of that methodology when it paralleled the selection process used by Arbitron. But, as PPM shifted away from that initial point of contact, we looked at alternatives.Â
It turns out that the alternatives are not only preferable for research, but also preferable to many other methods of contact for marketing as well. We’ve learned through our research that the reason for participating cited by nearly 9 in 10 could-be PPM panelists is getting compensated for their time. So, it makes sense to conduct our research in a channel where it’s easy to pay respondents.Â
In our data, only half the adults 18-54 still have a landline and only a small minority of them predict they’d answer their landline telephone for a research call (and the real-world numbers in practice are far, far lower). As the landline has given up its former ubiquity, that ubiquity has been replaced by online access. Through online panels today we have access to significantly more consumers than we can contact via landline telephone. And, we’re able to compensate them for their time: (1) to ensure they’re better engaged in answering our questions and (2) to ensure we’re capturing people more like the ones likely to say “yes” to PPM. [Disclaimer: We do this, too, and have more experience than any other research company in the radio space.]
And these new points of contact work for marketing as well. The former ubiquity of the landline telephone – that radio exploited with telemarketing – has been replaced by access to a much larger group online in the social space. Whether it’s engaging your stations’ listeners in an organic manner on whatever social platform they use or using paid social advertising to widen or deepen your stations’ social connections, social allows the granular targeting of telemarketing while giving you access to far more consumers. And, our data show that many of those inclined to spend time in the social space also tend to spend more time with radio. [Disclaimer: Yup, NuVoodoo has social media marketing tools and more experience using them.]
If you’re still using the telephone, hang it up. Landlines, specifically, are down to a minority, while online and social connectivity is already well past the tipping point. For research, you have access today online to a wider, better group of respondents who correlate better with the psychographics of ratings’ participants. For marketing, you have access to many more consumers that you could ever touch on a telephone – and tools that allow better targeting and stronger engagement. Even as a contest-entry method, listeners would prefer to enter your contests in multiple ways other than being “caller number ten.”Â
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