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Targeting the PPM People: How Are They Different? Recap Pt. 1: How They Communicate … And What's In It For Me?
August 20, 2012
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. Arbitron's methodology has the unintended consequence of giving you far more bang for your marketing buck, because the PPM Prospect is also the consumer most likely to see and be interested in your messages!
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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 18th article in our series discussing those differences and how they can help stations win and change the future.
Please always 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 data we present showing the percentage who say they would take a PPM, among those who are already cooperating in a research study, 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
Over the course of this series, we have shared with you a whole slew of dramatic findings about the PPM-friendly population. Findings that smart stations can use to their advantage immediately, and build into their longer-term plans, to maximize ratings results. This week, we will begin tying it all together. We have broken our findings into three general categories: (1) What are their communications habits? (2) What are their attitudes toward radio? And (3) What kinds of people are they, and what motivates them?  So now, let’s start recapping the findings, one general area at a time, discussing their implications for ratings results and how you can use this information as part of an overall strategy to maximize meters.
How they Communicate
Just one piece of good news after another for the marketing-savvy radio station. Arbitron’s methodology has the unintended consequence of giving you far more bang for your marketing buck, because the PPM Prospect is also the consumer most likely to see and be interested in your messages!  So here we are, looking for consumers who are willing to carry a spy-mic on their person for months, to collect personal data for commercial use, in return for a few hundred bucks. And we are doing so smack dab in the age where ubiquitous and completely open digital communication and data-mining are on the advance, but fighting pushback on over-messaging and on compromised privacy.  So the great news is that the PPM Prospect isn’t nearly so concerned about privacy or over-messaging, and he is likely to be quite comfortable with ubiquitous and completely open digital communication and data-mining.Â
- Smartphone Users Are Much More Willing than Others to Take a PPM.
- Heavy Internet Users Are Much More Willing, Light Users Much Less Willing, to Take a PPM.
- PPM Prospects Are Much More Active on Facebook than Non-Prospects
These high correlations all make sense, when you think about it. People who already carry a sophisticated digital device around with them are more comfortable accommodating another one, and less technophobic, than those without a smartphone. The heavy Internet user is likely to be already well-assimilated into, and presumably more accepting of, a culture of constant digital connectivity and easy access to information. And the Facebook power-user is quite comfortable living in a high-exposure info-sharing fishbowl.Â
Now let’s plot those correlations onto your audience reality. What this means to you is that, within your own existing audience, there are people who own smartphones and/or are heavy internet users and/or are frequent facebookers, and then there are people who are none of these. The former group is going to be way overrepresented in meters, and the latter group is going to be way underrepresented. Accordingly, to look at it another way, if you want bang for your marketing buck, you want to spend it on the segments of your audience who will influence the ratings. That means that the smartest thing you can do, today, without the time needed longer-term adjustments (which you should also make) is to add one important question to every marketing decision you make, from a music feature to a promotion to an advertising blitz:  “Are we thinking primarily about our listeners who are living more of a digital-data lifestyle than others?” To maximize your ratings and revenue success, remember to skew your targeting more to today’s digital culture in everything you do. Strongly consider targeting these people, and their lifestyle, in your research, your advertising content, your media selection, your playlist and rotations, your talent content, your contests, events, and other promotions, and in fact your overall stationality.Â
- PPM Prospects Are Much More Reachable By Mass E-mails
- PPM Prospects Are Much More Reachable By Direct Mail
- PPM Prospects Are Much More Amenable than Others to Commercial Texting
- Not All Text-Friendly Folks Want Texts From Radio, but PPM Prospects DO.
Now, not only is this a population that we can attempt to reach via mass-messaging, it is a population that actively consumes mass-messaging. Perfect for modern digital and direct mail advertising tactics, with a lot less waste.  A radio station’s hit rate for digital and direct-mail tactics, among the consumers whom we most need to reach, those who will control our fate, is remarkably higher than it is among those we don’t care about. And the station that texts meaningful content on a high frequency to its base will be reaching a disproportionate number of meter wearers. We might even consider redefining ourselves similarly to some direct-marketing-driven businesses, that see their target as sharing various characteristics, the most important of which is simply the likelihood of receiving and reading direct marketing messages. That wouldn’t be too far off the mark, and would give a station a very clear bulls-eye at which to shoot.Â
Think digitally-friendly, in content, style, messaging, and in all of your marketing. Think high-frequency, targeted direct marketing, both digital and traditional, to hit your PPM-friendly base. Think high-volume, valuable (i.e. mostly not just blowing our own horn) texting and tweeting as a constant communication avenue with the same listeners who will share info back with us.
The game has just gotten so much simpler, and every station that sees this can make much more cost-efficent and successful marketing choices than ever before. This central fact bears repeating, over and over, whenever you are thinking about marketing a radio station in the PPM Era: The meter methodology itself 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.  At the same time, the nature of its methodology tells us what audience characteristics we should emphasize and target in our marketing. What a wonderful gift.
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