Choosing your radio stations - looking past the rankers

Ok, so you've got your Rankers in hand and have a pretty good idea which stations fit your demographic profile.  So how do you choose those stations that you think deserve an initial meeting?

This is not so easy and is a little time consuming, but I will do my best to make it as simple as possible since it is such an important step.  Screw this up and you could be wasting a lot of time in meetings with account executives who will show you how their station fits your demographic when they don't.

A lot of the next steps relate to the nature of YOUR business and the two exercises you did before calling the radio station for the Rankers.  However, this exercise is easier if I use an example, so I will make up a scenario to help us along.

Let's say you are representing a client that owns multiple hair salon and nail spas throughout the city you are in.  In this case, I would infer the following using the exercises I suggested in the post about deciding on your target market.

1. The perfect customer is a 32 year-old woman.  This woman works in a white-collar professional industry, possibly in high-end marketing.  She has money to spend, she has little time for herself, and may or may not be married.  Either way, she is juggling a million things a day.  She is highly educated, most likely a Bachelor's degree or Master's.  She is smart, knows what she likes, and wants to look professional, be treated like a real person with unique qualities (as opposed to just another customer), and have her services not take too long.  She probably works out and eats right in order to look her best and may invest in beauty products more often than the average consumer.  She may eat out a lot due to client meetings and/or time constraints, but probably owns a better-than-average home for her age.

2. The perfect target profile in this case is a woman 28-38.  Radio Rankers of women 25-34, adults 25-34, women 35-44, adults 35-44, women 25-44, and adults 25-44 should be perfect for these purposes.

At this point, with Rankers in hand, the next few steps are critical:

1. Take the top 20 stations from every Ranker and look for patterns.  Which stations show up in every ranker?  Which stations show up in the Rankers that are most closely associated with your target demographic but not in the outlying Rankers (and vice-versa)?

Stations that are in the top 10 in your core demographics (in this case, women 25-44), but not in the outlying demographics (let's say, women 35-44 or adults 25-44) may actually be the best stations, depending on what shakes out in the next exercises.

Eliminate stations that don't fall in your core demographics.  Keep note of those stations that fall into all the Rankers that sit in front of you (but know, these might not be your final stations).

2. Take a look at the formats of all the stations in your city.  Wikipedia is actually a great place to get this info, since the radio landscape can change rapidly and it is updated constantly, but you can use any site you deem reliable.

The key here is format.  In Arizona, one of the easiest ways to eliminate stations is to decide whether or not you want ot advertise on Spanish radio or not.  There may be some high-ranking Spanish stations on your Rankers, but if you are only advertising to English-Speaking audiences, you can eliminate those stations right out (and of couse, the reverse is true).

3. Look for patterns in the formats that are highly-ranked in your core demographic.  In this case, you will see a lot of Hot and Rhythmic Adult Comtemporary stations.  You also might see some Country or Modern Rock.  Simply take note of these different formats.

Now, make some reasonable, common sensical assumptions.  Does rock-based music make you think of affluent proffestionals?  No.  Please know that I am not saying that affluent professionals don't ever listen to rock, but you are looking for the perfect fit for your money and stereotypical assumptions is the best form of process of elimination you have.  Use it.  Are people who listen to news talk radio usually well-educated?  Yes.  Are moms with kids constantly listening to rap and hip-hop?  No.  Use these assumptions to start eliminating stations psychographically.

4. Lastly, Listen to the top 20 or so stations for 10-15 minutes each.  Yes, I realize this is time consuming (if you haven't already done the math, 20 times 10 is 200 minutes of listening, which is over 3 hours).  Don't do this in one sitting.  But do it.  I assure you that your comfortability with this entire process will increase by taking the time to get this done.

Anymore, it's fairly simple to do over a few days, especially if you are at a computer for an hour every day (which most of us are).  Almost every station around the country streams live online, so just go to the website of the station you want to listen to and listen while you're answering those 235 e-mails.

Once you've finished this last step, you should have a pretty good idea which stations your target customer is tuning into on a regular basis.