Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Lund Letter

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

This Week in The Lund Letter:  
>   Is your imaging on track?
>   Ratings 2019
>   What’s in it for the listeners? Tell them!
>   
An 800 lb. gorilla named Amazon and the latest media trends

Lund Management Memo: How’s Your Imaging Plan?

diplomaswall.jpgYou have a station voice, you have a positioning statement, you identify your station frequently every hour for recall for rating measurement, but do you have an internal marketing plan?

Most businesses know the value of internal marketing.  You visit the doctor’s office and they display their diplomas and certifications on the wall to build trust in their diagnosis.  Restaurants brand themselves with the attire their food servers wear, their interior ambience, and the walls are decorated with huge pictures of their best sellers.

The goal of developing an internal marketing plan is to develop repeat business and build loyalty from the customer (listeners) to become a P-1 (First Preference listener). Your internal marketing plan needs to include these elements:

1.    Your target audience, demo and gender.

2.    What you’re known for, like your music format – Rock, Country, hits, relaxing music, etc. – and other qualities like funny personalities, contests, or breaking news.

3.    Consider your imaging inventory per hour…

A.    Number of promos
B.    Number of imaging sweepers
C.    Number of rejoins or kick-offs
D.    Number of benchmarks/features

4.    What’s in your imaging arsenal?

A.    Station voice(s)
B.    Jingle package
C.    Soundbites
D.    Listener drops
E.    Artist and celebrity drops
F.    Sound effects and production music
G.    Your own staff from your morning show to other talents and your office staff

5.    Use the power of frequency like you would in rotating your current music i.e. CHR stations power their top songs every ninety minutes.  Schedule a morning show promo at least every other hour, and for high profile shows every hour.

6.    Avoid “audio wallpaper.”  You don’t want to depend on just one element in your imaging arsenal like a station voice.  Use a variety of sources and frequently freshen the imaging.

7.    Build a hierarchy of priorities so you are scheduling the most important benefits of your station on your clock.  A sample hierarchy would be:

A.    Morning show – Funny and entertaining
B.    Music quality – Only the hits, variety, key artists, focus on an era
C.    Music quantity – Ten in a row, nonstop rock, commercial-free block
D.    Contests – Most money, most chances, easiest to win

8.    Develop a system to frequently update your imaging; daily if you’re a news station.

9.    Use the power of humor as it makes your imaging memorable.

By devising an imaging plan you can build on your cume to help them become loyal to your station. You then convert them from casual listeners to First Preference P1s.  Rating success depends on your P1s as they represent 70% of your total listening time.

Spring Programming Tune-Up

pitcrewgif.gifMaximize your spring ratings with a top-to-bottom review and programming analysis.  The Lund Strategic Programming Evaluation finds the strengths and weaknesses in your stations – music, promotions, talents, and strategy.  Make sure you’re playing the best songs for your target demos.  Get the edge back from your competition.  Contact John Lund to discuss a timely Program Evaluation of your stations.

Lund Programming Clinic 2019: Ratings Terms & Facts

magnifiedfacts.jpgThe spring Nielsen diary and Eastlan surveys begin March 28, which is the start date of the Nielsen April PPM.  Here are four facts about rating methodology that affects all programmers.

#1- One must listen for five minutes to get credit

Every fifteen minutes, when the quarter hour changes, the “clock” of tracking panelists or diary keepers to get five minutes of listening goes back to zero.  Thus, five minutes is required to get credit for the quarter hour with Nielsen.

nielsenclock.pngIf someone listens from :55 to :05 and again from :25 to :35, you get credit for an hour of listening.

That’s why, especially in diary markets, station’s sweep the top and bottom of the hour.

Want higher ratings – you need more listeners!  Ratings require two major measurement elements, Cume & TSL.

#2- Cume

It is short for “Cumulative” and is the total unduplicated persons who listen to a station for five minutes or more in one week.  Cume is your total audience.

To gain new cume or tune-in you must be active with external marketing. It’s the way you get people to find your station and turn it on.  Facebook is good.  So are TV ads, email marketing, and other ways to get people to tune in.  The goal is to have a large and growing cume.  But once a person joins your cume, there is one other element needed to produce great ratings:

#3- TSL

Growing your Time Spent Listening is essential.  The longer people listen, the bigger the audience.  TSL is derived from strategic planning and great programming.  And that could be having the best songs if you play music…and the best news and talk shows if you program the spoken word.

aqhformula.pngStrategic programming requires everything be targeted to your core listener.  When people tune-in and like what they hear…they listen longer.

In addition to cume and TSL, experienced programmers know a third element exists…luck.

Good programming requires we are in the business of constantly growing our audience and satisfying it better.

#4- Adjust Programming to Improve Ratings

People don’t listen all day to a station.  People typically listen for a while, then they tune away, and if we’re lucky, they come back and listen on another occasion.

arrivedestination.jpgWhat’s the #1 reason a person stops listening to your station?  It’s not too many commercials, the talent talking too much, or playing a bad song.  The #1 reason someone stops listening to a station is they have reached their destination.  So when they leave the car to go to the office or home, will they turn on your station again?  On one condition…  You have to give them a reason just before they turned the radio off.

We call that … Promoting ahead.  The average time one listens to a station on one occasion is just ten minutes.  That is the national average and true for most formats and demos.  If you get your listeners to stay for just another 90 seconds on each occasion, you raise the ratings by 15%.

Coming up next week – #5 increasing the number of listening occasions and #6 the magical ratings power of P1 listeners, as well as insight into how Eastlan ratings are conducted.

Planning Your State Broadcast Convention?

fullconf.jpgJohn Lund’s positive, fast-moving presentation, “The Science of Growing Your Audience,” includes training and coaching guidelines on the basics of attaining higher ratings and more listeners.  Topics include the “basics” of radio programming, America’s top formats: who listens and why, tactics to get more listeners, talent coaching, and how to make voice tracking sound live and local.  This presentation will be customized and expanded to meet your members’ needs.  EmailJohn Lund for availability and info.

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Lund’s Top 3:  Improve Your Spring Ratings
 
Top3B.jpgThere’s no such thing as being too prepared for the spring ratings sweep. It begins 5 weeks from tomorrow (3/28).  Consider these basics:

1.   Build TSL. Make promote-aheads more effective and give the listener a reason to stay tuned.

2.   Tie the format to listener usage at least once per hourTeach listeners how to “use” the station with live liners, and lead them to situational benefits.  Example: listen at work.

3.   Sell benefits along with feature names. Begin all liners with the benefit (what’s in it for me!).

Next week – a new Top 3.  Visit www.lundradio.com for more Top 3’s!

Lund Radio Guides at Half-Off

50percentoff.jpgBrains for Sale – Everything Must Go!  Lund Media has written the most extensive guides and stylebooks for radio stations.  Check out the Lund Consulting e-Commerce site, our Broadcasters Resource Center.  Many guides are discounted 50% this President’s Day week…

Including the Marketing and Promotion Stylebook, our Copywriting Guide, New Media Strategies and Digital Sales Initiatives, the Radio News Stylebook and Talk Radio Stylebook, our Radio Personality Guide, Remote Stylebook, and many more.   The Smart Speaker Stylebook is free with the New Media Strategies guide.  Check out our stylebooks and guides in the Resource Center today!

For your sales promotions to be successful, your sales staff needs to ask the right questions.  This guide covers everything from creation to execution to qualify each sales promotion to ensure the best possible results. We have 200 great sales promotion ideas for your station.  The Lund Sales Promotion Guide is also 50% off right now.


Promotion of the Week: Show Me Your Green

greentractor.jpgThe morning show asks to see the biggest/oddest/etc. Green Things listeners will bring to the station parking lot or a remote to win St. Patrick’s Day prizes.  Expect someone to drive a John Deere!  While large items are great for visuals for your website and social media, the winning item could be something small and unusual as well.

Are you marketing to General Managers or Program Directors and want to reach the 10,500 readers of the Lund Letter? Email John Lund.

Lund Trend Watch:

More Daily Users on Snapchat

Twiiter-vs-Snapchat.jpg
…but that may not be the whole story.  Twitter has said their daily users number 126 million, which is 29% of their monthly users.  This is significantly smaller than Snapchat’s 186 million daily users.  Twitter only counts daily users who are active enough to be exposed to ads whereas Snapchat counts anyone that signs on to the app each day, regardless of whether they just look at their messages and then sign back off.  Another thing to consider… Twitter’s user base is still growing where Snapchat’s was stagnant in 2018.

Apple News

applelogo19.jpg
Although unconfirmed by Apple, it is believed that the company will hold one of its March events on the 25th of that month.  Typically, March is the time when Apple releases information on new launches from their iPad line, but that’s not expected this year.  Instead, industry insiders think Apple will release info about its upcoming news service.  The service will be a monthly subscription ($10) that allows people to read news content that is paywalled by publications so they can have a single subscription that allows them to get news from multiple sources.  The service may be in jeopardy.  Apple demands 50% of the revenue, which the Wall Street Journal says is not popular.

Amazon Tops E-Commerce

amazonlogo.jpgNo surprise, and the numbers back it up.  According to eMarketer, the following are the top US companies in e-commerce, ranked by their share of US retail online sales.

+   Amazon 47%
+   eBay 6.1%
+   WalMart 4.6%
+   Apple 3.8%

And each of these six rounding out the top ten has less than 2%: Home Depot, Costco, Wayfair, Qurate Retail Group (includes QVC, HSN and Zulily), Best Buy, and Macy’s.


Programmer’s Planner:

calendargif.gif
Feb 24: Academy Awards
Mar 5: Mardi Gras
Mar 10: Daylight Saving Time starts

Mar 17: St. Patrick’s Day
Mar 28:  Spring Nielsen diary and Eastlan sweeps begin
Apr 1: April Fool’s Day
Apr 21: Easter


Thanks for reading
The Lund Letter
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!

About the Lund Media Group:

For over 20 years, the Lund Media Group has provided programming, music consulting, operational guidance, and research to commercial and public broadcaststations throughout North America and overseas. Whether you program all sports, alljclforLL.pngtalk, or all music, the Lund Goal is to help stations get more listeners and keep them listening longer. The Lund Consultants are a multi-format custom programming and management consultancy. 

C
all John Lund for more information about how the Lund Media Group can help your stations achieve more listeners, higher ratings, and more revenue.
Phone: 650-692-7777.
Email john@lundradio.com