Tuesday, April 25, 2006

How We Rate, Part Deaux

“How many of your audience listen to The BizRadioNetwork,” I am often asked.
“All of them,” I usually respond.

It’s a fair question, until you look into the methodologies used to measure audience listening…and realize that we’re not into mass numbers as much as we are levels of quality in the audience we draw.

Over the past year as we’ve grown our Network, we’ve taken names and notes: Names of customers drawn to the businesses who advertise on the stations. I’m not going to share their personal information, but I can share the qualitative evidence gleaned from these listeners to show a composite of the audience we cultivate here.

The BizRadioNetwork listener has an average household income exceeding $190,000…with an average net worth of $1.5-million. One third are millionaires…one in six are Multi-millionaires. They live in houses that are triple the value of the Houston and Dallas MSA.

Our listeners are fairly even distributed between the ages of 25 and 54—a third are 25-34, another third are 35-44, and the largest third are 45-54, according to sampling rendered by Arbitron earlier this year, using their new “Personal People Meter” (PPM) technology. Our Audience prefers to watch Lifetime, ESPN and Nickelodeon instead of MTV, The Food Network, or VH-1.

Arbitron is moving away from the archaic diary-sampling methodology, towards the PPM that actively records listening habits by picking up an encoded, sub-audible signal emitted by radio stations so that their listeners can be identified and tallied. About the only way you can screw with this is to wear your PPM into the audio department at Best Buy. The new methodology is more precise, and eliminates the guess work by providing hard data on who, what, when and where people listen to Radio.

The bottom line is this: stations that live by “the numbers” also die by the numbers. Sure, a station can promise you hundreds of thousands of listeners in its audience—but how many of them are qualified prospects for your business? Lots of stations like to trumpet that they’re “number one.”
So what?
Everyone is Number One at something.
And so are we.

Number One in a solid, pre-qualified audience able to act upon calls to action for purchases, investments, and political clout.

Number One in listeners with discerning taste, a sense of value, and a canniness for making money.

In short, we’re Number One in creating an audience base that most other stations would covet.

In terms of mass, we’re never going to compete.
Don’t need to.
Who listens to us?
All the one’s who count.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have never liked survey's and give about as much credit to one as I would on polls taken for the President's popularity. I am rarely asked my opinion and if I do get a request to fill out a form or do a phone poll. I am quick to hang up or toss it in the trash. We can thank all the other time wasters in life for my opinion towards this form of obtaining data on what I like or dislike. That being said add another number to the positive side for "How I Rate BizRadio. Best Program on the Air ways period. When you guys went off the air a while back talk about a major loss and a feeling of anger towards Howard Stick'n Sterns. I was ecstatic when I heard BizRadio was resurrected and stronger than ever. One thing I can say with confidence is that I am certain I will not have to worry about another Howard Sterns wannabe taking away my great radio station. Now if I could only get an antenna for my truck that would allow me to keep your signal when I am going under overpass's on my commute. Any chance we can get you guys to move to FM some day =). Thanks Brent for your blog, passion and dedication. You guys ROCK!

Sincerely,
Don