Looking to expedite your ratings growth?
Focus on heavy listeners.
Across markets, formats and ownership groups, here are a few examples of the oversized role that heavy listeners play in your success.
25% of station streamers deliver 92% of the streamed listening.
20% of national contest players drive 78% of the entries.
10-15% of station panelists are defined as heavy listeners by Nielsen in monthly CPR Reports.
That means that 75% of your streamers, 80% of your group contest players and 85-90% of your panelists have little to no ratings impact.
Despite you and your top competitor collectively having between 500-1,500 panelists tuning-in each month (depending on market and format), most panelists simply don’t matter.
The reason is rooted in consumer behavior, not because panelists are somehow different than the rest of the market. In fact, in the critical P35-54 demo, 70-75% of PPM panelists are full-time employed according to the latest PPM Panel Additional Characteristics Report.
With the ratings compression in your market, there are no magic bullets or shortcuts to success. It’s truly a game of inches that requires excellence in execution in all phases of your game, starting with your on-air product.
From a marketing perspective, identifying, engaging and building relationships with those who matter most is a relentless pursuit that becomes more important to radio each year as the attention span of the audience grows shorter and listening options proliferate.
With that in mind, an essential component of your ratings success is ensuring that your station has the necessary top of mind awareness to secure the next Moment of Truth and keep winning more listening occasions.
With your employed heavy listeners, the front lines used to be the clock radio. Now the battle has shifted. It’s when they get in the car each morning and turn on their radio as they pull out of their driveway and start their commute.
It’s about winning more listening occasions as they transition throughout their workday. From home to the car in the morning, from the car to the workplace, back in the car at lunch, returning to work in the afternoon along with the commute home.
We know that heavy listeners tune in to radio an average of 31 times per week compared to just 7 times for light listeners. It’s another reason why the heavy listeners are so important – they have the most listening to give.
Do you know your best listeners by name? First-party data is synonymous with database marketing and allows you to efficiently invest more of your marketing budget on the heavy listeners who matter the most, ensuring your brand is top of mind with the best listeners in the right Hot ZIPs and you win more of their occasions.
It’s not just about “needing to grow cume.” It’s about generating the right listening. Specifically, more daily cume, which is the lifeblood of your ratings and comes from full-time employed heavy listeners.
We remain focused on helping clients maintain and grow their competitive advantage, especially in the critical First Mile of the commute.
No matter how good self-driving technology gets on the highway, getting out of the neighborhood each morning still requires two hands on the wheel. That reality helps keep the wolves at bay as drivers continue to listen rather than watch.
Andrew Curran
President & CEO, DMR/Interactive
DMR/Interactive is the leading strategic marketing partner for the broadcast industry. DMR/Interactive provides radio stations with integrated marketing strategies that include precision-targeted, multi-contact personalized campaigns across mobile, digital, social, telephony, direct mail, e-mail, word-of-mouth and database marketing services. DMR/Interactive also provides data analytics and business intelligence services to clients. For more information, visit www.dmrinteractive.com