Deciding on your target market and choosing the radio stations that fit

I am currently based in the 15th largest Market in the country: Phoenix, AZ.  In a Market of this size, there can be close to 100 stations battling for your advertising dollars, which can be daunting if you are trying to figure out which five or six best fit your target demographic.

Before you start the research into which stations you should be talking to, Marketing 101 tells you to first make sure you know your main demographic target intimately.  I just want to make a few suggestions here that might help in this:

• First, create your perfect customer.  How old is he/she?  Is it a he or a she?  What does he/she do for a job?  Where does he/she shop?  Does he/she have kids?  Does he/she workout/play guitar/read a lot?  Be VERY specific.  You can't spend all of your advertising dollars going after this one person, but it gives you a great place to start.
• Second, create an age and sex demographic range.  Make this a 10 year age range, NOT the usual 30 year age range I see every day.  If anyone tells me that their target demographic is adults 25-54, I know for a fact that they don't really know who their customers are (or they are just being lazy).  Women 35-44.  Men 20-30.  These are realistic and specific.

The above two exercises will help tremendously when looking at which stations to bring into a first meeting.

Once you know who you are trying to target, it is actually fairly easy to pick the stations you'd like to talk to.  You don't even have to do the research.  Hey, your time is valuable.  Find a station that you think is at least close to your target demographic (this should be easy...men=sports, women=adult comtemporary, news talk=older, etc.) and give them a call.

Ask for an account executive and tell them you are interested in getting some information about the Radio Market in your city.  The receptionist who is taking your call may not know exactly who to send you to, but eventually, you'll get someone on the phone with access to Arbitron ratings (this is like Nielson for TV).  Most likely, it will be a rookie radio representative since the Senior executives don't usually handle new inbound phone calls, but that's okay.  You're basically looking for a monkey at a keyboard.

Kindly introduce yourself, tell him/her you are beginning your research into radio, and that you would like to see some research.  Then, give this person a few specific demographics.  What you are initially looking for are Rankers, a basic media tool used to rank stations in certain demographics based on Arbitron surveying.

Here's my general outline for doing this:

Let's say your specific target demographic is women between the age of 25 and 34.  In this case, you want a separate Ranker for Women 25-34, Adults 25-34, Women 25-44, Adults 25-44, Women 18-34, and Adults 18-34.  Basically, you are taking the 10 year section you are sure is your customer and then widening it 10 years on either side (inlcuding full adult Rankers in ever demo).  This should give you a pretty good idea which stations are best at serving your specific demographic.

Okay, so once you have these basic Rankers, then what?  I am going to say this twice, because it is very important: do NOT just take the top 5 stations on the Ranker sheets.

Do NOT just take the top 5 stations on the Ranker sheets.

There is more to a radio station than a few numbers on a surveying Ranker.  However, at this point, you are in a pretty good starting place with those Rankers in hand, so we'll go over some of the specific ways to choose (and omit) stations in a later blog.

On a separate note: if the account representative is a good one, he or she will try to get a sit-down meeting with you to go over your goals, obejectives, etc.  That's exactly what you want, but you are not yet prepared for such a meeting.  Just tell the rep that exact thing.  Be polite and professional, but let them know that you are not yet ready to meet and that you will contact them in a week or two when you do decide to sit down with stations (and don't be afraid to let them know that you are meeting with multiple stations).  Finish by asking them to e-mail you the Rankers and to be sure to include all of their contact info so you can get ahold of them later.