Before smartphones and widespread Internet access, radio personalities had a different way to prepare for their shows. When it came time to plan for the next program, on-air talent often skimmed entertainment and pop culture magazines and combed through local and national newspapers to get a sense for what was happening in the world and what might appeal to their listeners. Once they had what they needed, they’d typically collect their materials and arrange them in a way that would make them easily accessible when they sat down at the mic to open a broadcast. Today, those methods seem antiquated and pedestrian.
Nowadays, all of that information is just a click away. An Internet browser and a smartphone allow an on-air talent to be an information curator, with vast quantities of data instantly at the ready. But is it too much information? Or, at least so much that it’s more difficult than ever to determine what’s most relevant to deliver to your listeners? After all, we know how important it is to make the most out of the short moments we have to communicate with listeners.
So, what’s a radio person to do?
Ideally, learn as much as you can about your listeners so you can best match the information on hand with what they care about and will respond to.
And a way to learn about your audience is to create a qualitative data profile to better understand their interests, behavior, and behavior traits. Qualitative data is the fancy name for information that goes deeper than radio listening shares and ratings, and we have a video tutorial to help radio programmers analyze this kind of data in order to build a profile of the audience.
This data looks at consumer behavior, and when connected to radio listening data, it can help paint a picture of listener behavior during their daily lives. What activities do they like? Where do they shop? What are their political leanings? Where do they like to go out to dinner?
Watch the tutorial, and then consider different profiles to share with your talent. Profile the entire station, perhaps listeners to a specific daypart or to a competing station, against ears you’d like to reach.
The more you know about who you’re talking to, the better you can customize content that will resonate with them. If you want to connect, you have to be relevant.