30 Jan Wednesday, January 30, 2019
This Week in The Lund Letter:
> Increase brand loyalty with consistency
> Does your branding make the grade?
> The best imaging tips
> Facebook to monopolize messaging and the latest media trends
Lund Management Memo: Building Your Brand – Categories & Clocks
Brand loyalty is achieved by securing your listeners’ trust in your product (programming) and growing their “devotion.” Consistency plays an important role in building this trust. Your audience’s expectations of your brand when they tune in consistently must be fulfilled to gain loyalty.
For example, you frequent your favorite restaurant because of a certain menu item. Often you don’t even want to see the menu as you know what you want. You would be let down if this item was no longer on the menu, and you would have to choose another menu item, or not return to the restaurant. It’s the same with your audience. They come to your station to hear their favorite songs and if you don’t deliver you’ll violate their trust and dilute your brand.
Other than playing the rights songs, there are two areas where you can build consistency to your brand in your music scheduling software – Clocks and Categories.
Clocks
To avoid predictability, many programmers use multiple clocks over the course of the day to vary the position of a category in the hour. Occasionally these clocks may represent a different quota of categories, e.g., one more 80’s and one less 2K song, or one more medium current and one less power current. This gives the audience listening in one hour having a different impression of the station than the audience listening in the next hour. One listener could think “this station sounds older than I thought” and another listener the next hour could think “this station sounds a bit unfamiliar.” The rule is you should have the same quota of categories each hour, but you can evolve your clocks per daypart.
Categories
Most radio programmers build their Gold categories by era. This works when the categories are small, but when categories get to the size of 50+, you need to sub-divide them:
A. There is a wide difference in value between a song ranked #70 in your era category compared to one ranked #5. You want to insure your songs ranked in the top 50 play more often than your songs ranked below 50. Top songs are the ones your listeners love and they help pull in your cume. Create a “Power” category of these songs and make sure you schedule powers in every quarter hour.
B. When you have over 150 songs in a category, it may indicate your era definition is too large. Many stations use a decade to define an era, yet because of the music cycle we find some decades more prolific in producing the listener’s favorite songs. In this case you should use a five year era. Above all you don’t want your eras to be too wide and then the appeal could be targeted to two different audiences. For example, the problem with a 20-year era category (like 80s+90s); a 1982 song has appeal to a different demo then a song from 1998.
By building consistency in your clocks and categories, you build listener trust in your brand and loyalty from your audience.
Need Better Ratings?
The spring Nielsen diary and Eastlan ratings sweep begins March 28. Don’t you want to know that your station’s programming including talents, music, and marketing is the best it can be? Is the competition taking revenue from you because they have more listeners? The Lund Strategic Programming Evaluation details your assets and vulnerabilities and provides an action plan for growth. Contact John Lund for info on how this study will benefit your stations.
Lund Deeper Dive: Branding for Success
Business gurus spend their time trying to isolate the reasons why some companies are successful and others languish in mediocrity. Use the following report card to grade your station’s path to greatness:
1. Branding. Everyone knows your station name, and you continually imprint that name in listeners’ and advertisers’ minds.
1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 2. Focus. All programming efforts target your core audience. Specialize in one format and don’t be too broad. Super-serving your P1s wins more battles than any other strategy. First Preference listeners are those who listen most to your station.
3. Relatability. Your listeners feel the station understands them, works in their best interests, and truly reflects their needs. Stations that relate well to their audience typically win.
4. Intelligence. Everyone on the staff knows the target audience and your typical listener, and helps conceive promotions that serve this core audience.
5. Attitude. The station sounds like a winner! We sense an attitude when we enter a station lobby. And so do listeners and customers who use the door or the telephone. First impressions implant perceptions of an attitude. Beyond that, a station attitude leads to expectations. Attitude should be audible and present on the air.
How’s your station brand and how well does it describe the uniqueness of the station? The strength of your branding determines your ratings. Think of a brand as a trip, not the destination – it’s the emotional connection to your programming, not a product feature. How do you build brand loyalty? What are the proven branding basics? How do you brand with teases that extend TSL? Get the Lund Branding and Marketing Guide for the basics of creating a strong brand and mapping a strategic course.
Lund Programming Clinic: Create Compelling Imaging
On most stations, the produced imaging is on the air more often than the talents. Great imaging liners start with writing powerful copy. Grab the listener in the first few seconds, sell emotionally, be relatable and use sound or music to punctuate the verbiage.
Avoid being wordy in your liners. Listeners don’t have time to wade through all the details. Don’t waste their time. Be direct and active. Keep the message focused on one point. Edit out minor details.
Eliminate crutches. Be creative and conversational. Avoid sounding like a liner is being read. Tell a story and convey Stationality.
Use imaging to take ownership of every station feature. Brand every feature with the station name, like the “Top 5 at 5,” “Morning Show name,” “All Request Lunch Hour,” etc.
New imaging liners refresh your on-air sound. Your imaging should be updated often so your station sounds live and local. And we have hundreds of creative liners to spice up your sound… Fun liners for music stations, at-work liners, and imaging liners for News-Talk. These liners help your station to sound fresh and live all day.
Your imaging liners should be creative and fun. Brighten your imaging with hundreds of creatively written imaging liners that can be customized for your station. Order these scripts now… for music stations order here, for at-work listening order here, and for News-Talk order here.
Lund’s Top 3: Radical Management
Management needs to continuously evolve and adapt. Success is built on delighting the customer, according to business consultant Steve Denning. Denning believes in “Radical Management.” Providing value starts with building a relationship with the customer. For radio, delighting customers is more than just getting the listener to tune in; it’s about creating a connection and becoming their station.
According to research shared by Denning, there are 10 main steps to take in Radical Management. This is the final part of our Radical Management series.
1. Partner with Customers. Team up with listeners to create new experiences. This can be on-air, with social media posts, and at station events.
2. Empower. To fully please listeners, make sure frontline workers have the power to make decisions on the spot, whether it’s in studio or at a remote. Everyone in the organization should be inspired to think every day: what can I do to give more value to the listener?
3. Measure. You can’t manage without a measurement tool, this includes delighting customers. Fred Reichheld created a system – the Net Promoter Score – for just this task; ask your listeners a single question: how likely is it that you would recommend this station to a colleague or friend? The quantitative results demonstrate how effective your efforts are at delighting your audience.
Next week – a new Top 3. Visit www.lundradio.com for more Top 3’s!
Planning Your State Broadcast Convention?
“The Science of Growing your Audience” is the topic of John Lund’s positive, fast-moving presentation. It details everything radio programmers need to do to get more listeners and higher ratings in today’s digital world. 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. Email John@Lundradio.com for availability and info.
Promotion of the Week: Diamond In The Puff
Hide a “diamond” in a marshmallow. The listener who picks the right marshmallow from a kiddie pool that has a certificate for a diamond hidden in a plastic capsule wins the diamond. Hide capsules with “sorry you didn’t win” notes (or gift certificates to the sponsoring jeweler) so more than one marshmallow has a puncture in it. Best if every marshmallow has one to make it harder. If being done for Valentine’s Day, the diamond can be a diamond ring for someone to use to propose.
Need a promotion for Valentine’s Day? We have over 100 proven sales promotions and programming events to make you money and make your listeners happy. (We will kiss and tell!) Utilize our Winter Promotions Guide to make more revenue. It also covers events like the Oscars, the Super Bowl and St. Patrick’s Day all the way through the First Day of Spring. Order your copy here.
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:
Podcast Ads Heard Well
Podcasts are generally considered digital media because they are accessed online. When it comes to ads, however, the ones heard on a podcast have up to a 4.4 times better recall than visual display ads on the websites. In this instance, podcasts are in the same category as radio: they are an audio medium. Nielsen notes an average 10% increase in purchase intent for national brands among those who listened to a podcast ad versus those who saw a visual ad.
CDs Dwindling In-Car
According to OnePoll, more than a third of drivers say listening to audio in the car relaxes them and puts them in a good mood. 80% of drivers listen to something even when only in the car for a short time. CDs are getting less and less of this listening. 10% of drivers listen to CDs in the car; that number was 25% five years ago. We all know radio is still king of the road, but there are more options now than ever before. One in six drivers prefers to listen to a podcast, streaming music or a downloaded playlist.
Almost A Benjamin
For what has been called “the biggest party since New Year’s Eve” by National Retail Federation President and CEO Matthew Shay, the average American adult will spend $81.30 on Super Bowl Sunday. This adds up to a $14.8 billion total of spending. This does not include people going to the Super Bowl, rather those that are watching from home, a party or a sports bar. Planned purchases include food, decorations, team jerseys or a new TV.
A Messaging Monopoly
Facebook currently owns 3 messaging apps: Messenger (which was split off from the Facebook app to become a standalone app in 2014), WhatsApp and Instagram Direct (which is still currently part of the Instagram app). According to a report released by the company, Facebook is planning to merge the three services to better dominate messaging and keep Apple, Google and other companies from getting a bigger share of messaging ad revenue. Facebook plans for the integrated service to have the instant communication capabilities of Messenger and WhatsApp, the encryption of WhatsApp (so Facebook cannot read your private messages), and the more social aspects of Instagram (the ability to message people (celebrities, influencers, etc.) or companies one follows as opposed to just your friends).
Diary Market Conversion
Nielsen is converting diary markets to continuous measurement in phases, starting this year. All 200+ markets will get 12 ratings reports a year, instead of the existing quarterly or semi-annual reports. The market’s current sample will be spread over 12 months.
Reports will be based on a minimum in-tab of 1,000 respondents. Relying on rolling monthly samples and 1,000 in-tab minimums will help improve stability of the ratings.
The 1st phase starts in July 2019 with diary markets currently measured four times a year. Adding these 47 diary markets to the 48 PPM markets means that 70% of radio ad spend will have monthly reporting, starting in mid-2019.
Phase 2 involves mid-sized diary markets that have a sample target of 1,000 respondents. Those markets rated spring and fall will convert to 12 6-month sample currency reports, likely starting in 2020.
Phase 3 will be markets with an in-tab of less than 1,000, which will have a twelve-month survey period released each month. These “condensed” markets currently get two quarterly reports per year, based on two-book averages.
Sales Promotion Questions?
For your sales promotions to be successful and “work” for your client, your listeners and your station, your sales staff needs to ask the right questions. Our 40-point questionnaire covers everything from creation to execution to qualify each sales promotion and ensure the best possible results. This checklist is included with details of the 200 best sales promotion ideas for radio stations. The Lund Sales Promotion Guide is 50% off right now; get your copy here.
Programmer’s Planner:
Feb 2: Groundhog Day
Feb 3: Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta, Georgia
Feb 5: Chinese New Year (Year of the Pig)
Feb 10: Grammy Awards
Feb 14: Valentine’s Day
Feb 18: President’s Day
Feb 24: Academy Awards
Mar 5: Mardi Gras
Mar 10: Daylight Saving Time starts
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, all
talk, 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.
Call 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.