From one of our earlier white papers on P-1’s and insight on focusing on the cumers who matter most in both PPM and Diary markets, these considerations:
P-1’s switching: 30% switch P-1 station within 2 weeks, 45% switch sometime during a month, and 58% switch at least once sometime in an 8 week period. This does not mean they don’t return.
How and why? People learn about radio stations effortlessly. How? They wash up on the beach like the tide that ebbs and flows. Nobody can “cause” it to happen and nobody can “prevent” it from happening. It just happens because people don’t turn dials anymore. They use presets so it’s crucial to be on the first or second button.
People are naturally but not maliciously disloyal–it’s just a fact of marketing life and TOMA.
1. Reactivate Lapsed listeners
What we like about DMR or NuVoodoo is they use the segmenting tools of Facebook to identify likely meter holders who could love your station and listen heavily.
They present an offer designed to encourage switching. The easiest targets to move are FORMER listeners – they are likely to have a button set. If they move back, it’s a simultaneous deduction from a competitor and an increase to us. This is how and why our TV can sometimes boost ratings without much impact on cume, assuming the creative is effective. That’s also how a DMR or NuVoodoo campaign can work quickly; it simply reactivates the lapsed listener at the expense of who they listen to now.
It also counteracts old Diary scotoma: people are naturally – but not maliciously – disloyal. It’s just a fact of marketing life that share is driven by TOMA and attending to TOMA is a never ending job – just part of being in business. By the way, that applies for your clients!
2. Convert current Meter holders
Simultaneously, DMR and NuVoodoo also present a listening opportunity to new people who are meter holders – which is where instant cume increases originate. We know from numerous perceptual studies that not every person is a candidate for our format. So the very best we can hope for is the installed meter / diary base to fairly represent the listening patterns of all of a market. Baloney. It doesn’t. It can’t – because the sample size is simply too small.
If the installed meter base is heavy on hard core listeners of country, talk, or hip-hop it’s safe to say that NO OFFER will work to convert them – and if any offer did – it would be purely driven by the incentive, meaning the new converts are likely to be highly disloyal and very light listeners. In this case, we could see cume rise – but with no increase in the ratings we sell. What socially-targeted marketing accomplishes to counter this reality is to highly target to the MOST LIKELY person to love your brand, who is MOST LIKELY to also be a meter / diary holder, and who is also most likely to be a HEAVY LISTENER.
Talk about needle in a haystack, but it’s the best method we’ve seen. Just a couple of these “heavies” can change the ball game dramatically, even in our largest markets.
3. Create Real Cume Growth
The third opportunity with social-direct marketing comes with their highly targeted method that could reach brand new listeners who don’t have meters or keep a diary. Those people might find your station and love it. They might become heavy listeners. But the ratings won’t change until and unless they get a meter. Bad news for today, good news for tomorrow: they could show up in a future panel, providing an expanded cume base we need for long-term stability.
