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Targeting the PPM People: How Are They Different? Recap Pt. 2: Their Attachment to Radio ... And What's In It For Me?
August 27, 2012
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. The more human-being-centered a given consumer’s morning radio benefit is, the more likely she is to influence the ratings.
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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 nineteenth 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 great many striking 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. Last week, we began tying it all together. We have broken our findings into three general categories:Â
- What are their communications habits? (link to last week)Â
- What are their attitudes toward radio? Â
- What kinds of people are they, and what motivates them?
This week, we’ll recap our findings on the second of those, PPM Prospects’ attitudes toward and usage of radio. We’ll consider their implications for ratings results and how you can use this information as part of an overall strategy to maximize meters.
Savvy broadcasters understand that in order to maximize market share in a fragmenting-media world, we must identify, target, serve, and differentiate our brand among, and build strong relationships with, the consumers who will want to use radio the most. By definition, these will be of only two kinds. (A) The low-cost-driven “settler” consumers, who will default to radio because they pay the lowest cost, compared to the alternatives, in money/time/inconvenience/irritants, in return for adequate benefits. (B) The high-benefit-driven “seeker” consumers, who choose radio because they receive unique and superior benefits, compared to the alternatives, from the radio experience, at an acceptable cost of money/time/inconvenience/irritants. There are lots of good reasons to pursue the B’s and avoid pursuing the A’s, but here’s a critical one: Those “B” listeners, who make an affirmative, benefit-driven choice to listen to Radio, or to a particular station, for benefits not readily available elsewhere, are significantly more likely than others to accept a PPM, thus are over-represented in the pool and accordingly will have a disproportionate impact on your ratings.
The Social Animals:Â Human Seeks Other Humans for Companionship, Info
- In AMD, People Who Need People …The Likeliest People to Take a PPM
- In AMD, People Who Want The Most Music are the Least Likely to Do So
- People Valuing Radio for Talent-Provided Music Info are also More Likely
Radio’s most powerful unique selling proposition is the “human companion” element. It works, and not just in differentiating stations and building audiences. It works in terms of maximizing ratings.Â
Using mornings as a touchstone, here’s why: The more human-being-centered a given consumer’s morning radio benefit is, the more likely she is to influence the ratings.Â
Those who do not typically listen before 8:00, as well as those who say they are listening “to get energized” or “to relax,” are only slightly more likely to say “yes” than to say “no” to our theoretical PPM question. Meanwhile, those who say they listen “to be informed” have a much stronger yes/no ratio, more than 5:3. And those who say they listen “to have a companion” boast the best yes/no ratio of all, close to 7:3.  We also found that consumers who say that they have no favorite morning show (a majority of the sample), or whose favorite show is “mostly music” are about evenly divided between yes and no, while those whose favorite show is “mostly talking” or “balanced” are much more likely to say yes. And, moving beyond mornings to all-day music listening, we also found that consumers who value DJ-provided music info are more likely to say yes than consumers who do not.Â
The Trusters: Â Having Confidence in The Radio Industry
- People Who Feel Well-Served by Radio are More Likely to Accept a PPM
- People Who Trust Radio As An Information Source Are More Likely
- People Who Call Stations Self-Centered / Self-Obsessed Are Less Likely
Consumers who believe in our industry and what it does for them are much more likely to participate in our industry’s ratings. We corroborated this finding with the results of three different questions. Those who feel that stations do a good job of providing them and their peers with high quality programming say yes at a 2:1 ratio, while those who disagree are evenly divided. Those who place high trust in the station they turn to for news and information say yes at a similar 2:1 ratio, while those with low trust are evenly divided. Those who say that radio stations do care about the listener also say yes at a 2:1 ratio, while those who say that we are self-centered and self-obsessed say yes at only a 5:4 ratio. So…earning trust for our reliable information, stressing a genuine commitment to the listener, overcoming cynicism, and nurturing good feelings about the radio listening experience in general will deliver our station more meters. Conversely, regardless of how much they are actually listening to us, we are going to underperform in meters if our consumers perceive us as non-reliable for information, not serving consumer needs, or just singing songs and carrying signs that mostly say “Hooray for our side!”
The Bonders:Â Having A Close Attachment to a Station
- Music Station Fans Are Much More Likely to Accept a PPM, and the Most Passionate Are The Most Likely
- Morning Show Fans Are Much More Likely to Accept a PPM, and the Longer They Listen to that Show, the More Likely
Relationships do matter. It sure looks like one of the motivators to accept a meter may be a desire of the Truly Passionate Station Fan to send a message about it to The Ubiquitous Them of The Media. Thus, the game is more complicated than “the guy with the most listeners will win.” It’s a lot closer to being “among the players who have large audiences, the guy whose audience has the most passion will win.” It’s this simple: plenty of people do not have a favorite music station, but they are less likely to accept a PPM than those who do. And those who do have a favorite music station, but aren’t really crazy about it, are a lot less likely to accept a PPM than those who really love the station. Similarly, while a majority of consumers do not really have a morning show they embrace as “favorite,” they are less likely to accept a PPM than those who do have a favorite morning show. And folks who not only have such a favorite show, but give it long daily TSL, are more likely than those who have a favorite but listen to it for a shorter daily interval.Â
Emerging from these data are several good rules of thumb for making sure your audience will want their quarter hours to count with Arbitron:
- Think human contact and desirable human content.Â
- Think trust, good-heartedness, genuine listener commitment, so much more about them and so much less about us.Â
- Think long-term affiliation and bonding.Â
- Think fans.Â
- Think of being the kind of radio station that attracts passionate fans.Â
No, these guidelines are not a one-keystroke-to-dominance quick fix, and it is a lot harder to measure their success than the success of the digital/social marketing campaigns we talked about last week. But they are another important ingredient in the recipe, if the result we seek is maximizing our meter penetration for the long haul. Yes, we also need to think short-term and maximize this week, this month, this quarter (e.g. that social media campaign.) But we can also take steps every day to build the kind of audience that will both stick with us for the long haul and want to say yes to the PPM.
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