How much of a “game changer” is PPM? How should the passiveness of the PPM monitoring affect your on-air branding? Even with the new PPM era, marketing and branding your radio station is still very important. Richard Harker looks at the ways that marketing and branding have evolved in the age of new media and PPM ratings.
Richard Harker
By Richard Harker
As PPM rolls out to more and more markets, there’s growing talk that PPM is a “game changer.” The argument is that because Arbitron is measuring “exposure” rather than listening, that many of the marketing things we used to do are no longer necessary.
Is PPM a game changer? What should you do differently if PPM is coming to your market?
On a broader scale, the growth of the Internet has also raised questions about branding. One pundit recently declared branding, “irrelevant, ineffective, irritating, and impotent.” Has the Internet somehow rendered radio branding obsolete? Is the Internet changing marketing in ways that radio stations need to understand?
The biggest difference between PPM and diaries is that PPM is a passive measurement. A person just lingering a few minutes around a radio at a restaurant or store can generate quarter-hours, whereas people rarely write down inadvertent listening in a diary. Because of this, it has been suggested that things like saying the call-letters no longer matter.
Those that emphasize the passivity of PPM overlook one important fact: Inadvertent listening might help a station’s cume, but it doesn’t contribute many quarter-hours. The quarter-hours that a station needs to perform well in share come from the listeners that intentionally tune in and do it day after day.
Most listeners find a new station by accident. While outside advertising plays an important role that we’ll get to in a moment, the truth is, most people do not find a new station through outside advertising. They find it while scanning or searching for some other station.
Because PPM is passive it picks up all this accidental tuning. That’s why cume is bigger in PPM than with diaries. However, even if she likes what she hears, there’s no guarantee she’ll return. The challenge is getting this accidental listener to come back later. To return, she has to figure out what she’s listening to, and how to get back there.
That’s where outside advertising along with on-air promotion plays an important role. On-air and off-air marketing is to help a listener figure out what she’s listening to and how to find it again. After you’ve won over a listener and she can find the station on her own, marketing plays a less important role.
If a radio station had all the listeners it needed, and knew that no listeners would leave, then marketing would be unnecessary. You could drop the call letters, drop the positioning, and drop all outside marketing. Unfortunately, every radio station has audience churn. Listeners might grow tired of a station or they might outgrow it. A person might change jobs and stop commuting. They might lose their job and watch TV all day. They might move from the area. For many reasons unrelated to the quality of the product, a once loyal listener might stop listening. Just to hold your own, you need to replace each listener that leaves. And to grow, you need to add more listeners than leave.
That’s why even with PPM, marketing plays a crucial role. Marketing is not for the satisfied regular listener. Marketing is for the person that might stumble upon the station.
Admittedly, restaurants, stores, even search engines also need to replace lost customers. Churn is not unique to radio. The difference is that radio is free and readily available. Radios have scan buttons. People accidentally find new radio stations all the time. People don’t stumble upon restaurants. They don’t even stumble on search engines.
Augustine Fou, writing on ClickkZ claims, “branding can no longer stand in an environment where consumers can talk to each other and their conversations are spread far and wide….How consumers actually perceive the brand and how they describe it to others has far greater weight in the minds of future consumers.”
The most important marketing tool radio has is word of mouth. A recommendation from a friend has always been more powerful than any other form of advertising. The Internet hasn’t changed that, it has only expanded the opportunities. Only now “word of mouth” extends to social networking, discussion boards, web sites, and texting in addition to the traditional forms.
So when people say branding is dead, it is really just hyperbole. Branding isn’t dead, it is just evolving to capitalize on new marketing opportunities.
PPM hasn’t made branding obsolete. New media hasn’t made branding obsolete. Branding is just as important today as it has always been. On top of that, the traditional methods still work. We just need to exploit some of the new opportunities while continuing with the old.
First, we must continue to market on our own air. We can produce promos giving a new listener a sample of what she is going to find on the station. This kind of promo is just as important today, as it was decades ago, perhaps even more important.
We can also reward repeated listening. Whether through a contest, a popular continuing element, or some other reward, we want people to come back over and over, and rewarding repeated listening is an important way to generate additional quarter-hours. Rewards work for both diaries and PPM.
The goal is to bond with listeners. Listeners who feel a special connection with a radio station spend more time with it, and tune in more regularly. The transition to PPM hasn’t changed this.
Traditionally, the bond would be created through the morning show. It might have been through a unique music mix. For some formats, the bond might be strengthened through request lines and requests, or special programming. Even remote broadcasts could make a contribution.
Increased competition from new media might make it more difficult to create a bond, but it is no less important. In addition, new media has opened up new marketing opportunities for radio stations. Now we have social networking, email, texting, and web sites through which we can connect. Successful stations need to use all these means to communicate.
Where radio has failed is in the way it has chosen to use these new marketing tools. Today’s listener has options. She doesn’t have to listen to a local radio station to be entertained. She can use an iPod, a streaming service, or listen to an Internet station outside the market. Today, we compete with the world. The bar has been raised.
So the need to market and brand is actually more important today than in the past. For radio, PPM and a wireless digital world hasn’t made marketing obsolete, it has made it essential.
Richard Harker is President of Harker Research, a company providing a wide range of research services to radio stations in North America and Europe. Twenty-years of research experience combined with Richard’s 15 years as a programmer and general manager helps Harker Research provide practical actionable solutions to ratings problems. Visit www.harkerresearch or contact Richard at (919) 954-8300.
