Week 2: Knowing your audience - how can you turn your listenership into money?

Archived English Discussions Generating Revenue
#1

Hello everyone,

I hope you had a nice weekend. We are in the second week of our e-discussion. Welcome to those who have just joined us. If you have not introduced yourself yet nor participated in the icebreaker activity, kindly do so in Week 1.

This week we are focusing on knowing your audience and how you can turn your listenership into money and we want to hear your experience and ideas. We have some questions to guide the discussion:

  1. What are your top suggestions for getting to know your audience?
  2. Is there a relationship between knowing your audience and how many regular or dedicated listeners you have? Please explain.
  3. What information about your audience helps you attract potential advertisers or program sponsors?
  4. Do you have any success stories of getting funding for your farmer programs? Please share the details of your experience.

This is what you are expected to do this week:

  1. Share your experience and ideas on one or more of the questions above, or another topic related to turning listenership into money.
  2. Go through other participants’ contributions and comment or respond to at least two of them.

Those of you that contribute two to three meaningful posts each week will receive a certificate from FRI indicating they were active participants in the e-Discussion.

I would like to draw your attention to the useful resources we have compiled for this discussion. You can access them on this link or visit the useful resources folder. You are also welcome to add resources you think might be beneficial to others.

Enjoy your week!

#2
#3

Kindly refer to my post below …thanks
Denis

#4

Week 2: Knowing your audience - how can you turn your listenership into money?
Hello Busi and the Radio Fraternity here,
My name is Denis Lindo and I am looking forward to sharing with you and learning from your vast experiences in Radio.
It is a great opportunity to work with you on this E-discussion project aimed at purposely improving the revenue generation of Farmer Programs on the various community Radio Stations represented here.
In this maiden deposit, I will attempt at giving a broader/background submission on the topic and subsequently, get more specific on one (1) or two ( 2) questions in the next article deposit.
The question at hand for this Week-2 stems from the broader subject “Knowing your audience - how can you turn your listenership into money?” which is our general focus for this week.
From the general focus view point, we required to address the more focal questions as listed below from the broader subject and namely I quote;
“

  1. What are your top suggestions for getting to know your audience?
  2. Is there a relationship between knowing your audience and how many regular or dedicated listeners you have? Please explain.
  3. What information about your audience helps you attract potential advertisers or program sponsors?
  4. Do you have any success stories of getting funding for your farmer programs? Please share the details of your experience.”
    … ….end of quote……

Talking about money and how one could turn their audience/listenership into money, the old adage goes that, “….money goes/is attracted to where there is value exchange or benefit”. This adage applies to all situations where there is value exchange whether in traditional business or in Media business today as it were.

As part of Media business, Radio Stations can only get money from advertisers if they can ONLY deliver to the Advertisers the “value” within their listenership. Interestingly, the money generation is no-longer limited to the traditional commercial radio stations but now also Ad-money is strongly desired by the community radio stations –the new entrants in the scramble for the ever scarce advertising income!

The traditional principle to earn income from Advertisers is, “deliver the value in an audience and, the advertisers shall be willing to pay to reach that Audience for whatever value they perceive that there is”

However, you cannot deliver what you don’t know or what you don’t have.
In this case, you cannot deliver an audience to an Advertiser when you do not know or have such an audience.

Acquisition of the audience is the 1st step and this means that you must devise means to Attract, Infect/Inspire and Affect… (AIA)…the listeners in order to turn them into a “Valuable Audience”. The valuable audience is what advertisers are ready and willing to cough a dime for!

You could never think of getting a valuable audience unless if the following were right and namely;

  1. The Radio Station objectives
  2. The Radio Programming
  3. The specific Program Objectives
  4. The program specifics such as time slots, target, zone, duration, type…etc.
  5. The Program Presenter fitting the program type and specifics
  6. The language medium for program delivery

In general terms, listeners translated into Audiences will only be attracted if the programs are;

  1. Credible in content…i.e. factual, resourceful, etc
  2. Timely and regular
  3. Both Educative and Entertaining
  4. Presented by the right and talented staff
  5. Are well researched, there exists adequate preparation before ON-AIR, and that originality is evident as the program runs on air.

The more our targeted listeners get Attracted, Infected/Inspired and Affected by our programs, the more deep the requirement to know the listeners should be.

We should like to know the following about our Audience;

  1. Listening habits and behavior
  2. Program preferences from the listenership
  3. Demographic aspects about the listener
  4. Spending power , patterns and buyer behavior of the listeners
  5. The infotainment/edutainment needs of the listeners
  6. etc, etc

When the above aspects about our listeners are captured, analyzed and interpreted to make a valuable proposition to the advertiser(s), a choice shall be made by the advertiser in question to feature their ad-messages in our particular program clock at a particular time slot and in a given measure of some frequency repetitions for a particular message. In other words, we shall SELL Ad-space, slots for a fee because we shall have created a value for exchange with a potential advertiser.

In conclusion, the primary role for each station is to determine both the Station and the Program objectives well in advance. Thereafter, to exert and apply such objectives so that they flow in each program. In turn this should attract the potential Audience and it’s the valuable aspects of this listenership that the advertiser shall be willing to pay for.

Than You!
Denis Lindo

Resource Person
Farm Radio
Generating Revenue
E-Discussion-2018

5 Likes
#5

I am martin Mwape of Breeze FM. Let me quickly put up a my ideas to the weeks discussion. I will come back later with additions. At the morment, I will give short answers to the questions.

  1. What are your top suggestions for getting to know your audience?

Know when they listen to radio, what information the y want to listen, what products do they use or need.

  1. Is there a relationship between knowing your audience and how many regular or dedicated listeners you have? Please explain.

I think there is a difference. In my view, knowing how many dedicated or regular listeners is just in numbers while knowing audience is understanding the behavior of the listeners (dedicated and non dedicated). Knowing audience is concerned with when are they free to listen, what doo they want to hear, etc. If you know your audience, you can plan to give them the best and in that, you will keep the existing listeners, and attract new one.
3. What information about your audience helps you attract potential advertisers or program sponsors?
I my experience, I have noted that most advertisers or sponsors like to know the number of listeners and time they listen.
4. Do you have any success stories of getting funding for your farmer programs? Please share the details of your experience.

We have a programme called Ulimi Ndi Malonda (Farming is a Business). At one time we had it sponsored. In order for us to have it sponsored, we had to contact several organization and one of them was an NGO called Total Land Care. The organization wanted to know if the programme has listeners and we gave them numbers. Then on their own, they did a short reaseacrh on the programmes of our station and they discovered that lots of farmers were listening to Farming is a Business. Then they sponsored the programme for three months.

3 Likes
#6

Good details given in here Denis. I would suggest you add more simplicity for us to get to know more practical actions we can pick. Personally I see lots of information in your post.

#7

I am back. I thought of adding this to my earlier post.

I strongly believe that listeners have full control of their devices such that they can tune in or off at their discretion. With this I believe that it is the timely content that will make listeners start to listener and also to remain listening. In order to create good content that gets, keeps and grows listenership, one must know the target audience. One needs to know what kind of information is important to the audience and when is best to give them such information.
Trust me, radio programmes must make sense to the audience for the audience to listen. Once you have programmes that make sense to your audience, then you will have a big listenership and this is what advertisers want. They will pay believing so many people will listen. My strong belief is that advertisers/sponsors want their products/services to be heard. I think they want everyone to hear about their products and services.
So when you have advertisers advertise in your farmer programme because it has high listenership, you have turned your listenership into money

2 Likes
#8

Hello Busi, I am Odongo Wendo Boniface from 106.5 Shine FM Oyam in Northern Uganda, presenter and a Station Manager,
Week2:
1- Top suggestions for getting to know your audience, First of all to me is by doing a baseline surveys where you are expected to get down the the community asking them about the programming, coverage by filling a designed forms for the surveys.

Secondly, Giving back to the community. In this case you deal directly with them when they are reached through farmers market outreaches buying their products/goods at a good price but as a radio station you connect them for better market.

2- Relationship between knowing your audience and how many regular or dedicated listeners.
Yes the relationship is that through research / survey is what touches both. Also their participation in the station programming.

3- What information about your audience helps you attract potential advertisers or program sponsors?

  • Coverage. Through audience research and surveys, we happen to get the good number of audience that attracts advertisers and program sponsorship.
  • Participation. Through call ins during the show determines and attract potential advertisers or program sponsors to come in very fast as now we have MUIIS_RoyalWay Media sponsoring Farmers Forum every Monday’s and Wednesday’s.

4- Do you have any success stories of getting funding for your farmer programs? Please share the details of your experience.

Yes. Shine FM began to run the farmers forum in 2015 to date with demands from farmers wanting to know how to prepare their gardens, pest and diseases control etc: We gave a slot for agricultural office at the district to come and teach farmers; later MUIIS wrote to management for a sponsorship. We allow them to go ahead until we succeeded. That’s all about I can say as I wait for a certificate.

Greetings from Oyam District and the entire lango community.
Thanks

Odongo Wendo Boniface

#9

Catherine once again from Mama FM-Women’s Radio
Thank you @DenisLindo for the wonderful insights of knowing our audiences and turning listener ship into money. Getting from your words “The more our targeted listeners get Attracted, Infected/Inspired and Affected by our programs, the more deep the requirement to know the listeners should be” Please help me understand this better since we are here to learn and share experiences from individual radio stations. I would like to relate this to community radio stations where we keep our listeners attracted, they are inspired and there is a change in their lives/activities BUT the numbers are few and when partners or advertisers are approached the first question is how big are your listeners? So it is gets back to how big your coverage is versus change/quality information you are giving to the loyal listeners.
Thanks.

2 Likes
#10

Week 2: Knowing your audience and how you can turn your listener-ship into money. I am Archibold Kasawu of Farm Radio International Ghana.

it is a great occasion to participate on this E-discussion project purposely emphasizing on how to broadcast farmers radio program, also about how small scale farmers can successfully embark on their farming activities.

I strongly believe that knowing your audience content is speaking to them – listen to them. Radio is not a passive medium – millions of people use radio station to share their thoughts about the content they’re airing. In fact, l think it very essential for broadcasters to understand what their audience is actually saying around programming and where positive action is.

Ask your audience to share content with you – thoughts, vox pops, interviews, feedback section, etc, and use that content as part of your programming output. It will give people a reason to listen to the radio program to check if their voice has been featured. Enabling simple polls that that give real-time results can keep the attention span of multi-tasking audiences. Turning those polls into real-time draw competition mechanics gives the audience another incentive to participate.

I also think you can turn your listener-ship into money by advertising product for company, entrepreneurs even an individuals.

Thank you!
Archibold Kasawu

Intern
Farm Radio Ghana

#11

Great work Martin! It is good to know that you used the information you have about your listenership to attract sponsorship. :ok_hand:

#12

Hello @Archibold

Welcome to Barza! We are happy to have you on board. We are looking forward to sharing of experiences and knowledge.

Can you elaborate a bit more on this?

#13

Hello @Odongo_Wendo_Bonifac

Welcome to Barza!

They say it is better to be late than not come at all. We are looking forward to sharing of experiences. You have already started.

This was a great move and it yielded results.

You surely will get a certificate if you follow instructions. I know you already introduced yourself here but it will be better if you go and post under introductions on Week 1 and participate in the icebreaker activity as well. If not, …not so sure if you will qualify

#14

There is one thing I have realised across the broadcast media landscape here in Ghana (Frankly, I don’t know what happens elsewhere). When listeners call into a program, they are asked their names and where they are calling from (location). From their voice, you can then know their gender, which in some cases could be wrong.

It is rare to know the occupation, values, attitudes, lifestyles and social class of your listeners just by the submissions they make in particular programs. It takes more than that.

I suggest we do more outside broadcasting. The location for this could be gotten from a compilation of the location of contributors (calls, text messages, social media) on a particular program. Then three (3) or more locations (high concentration of contributors) could be picked up and then the program run from there.

By doing this you get to kill two birds with a stone - You get closer to your listeners and establish that belonging relationship. In turn, you (media) also win the trust of the listeners.

Knowing your audience is having knowledge about the makeup of your listeners but knowing how many regular or dedicated listeners you have is putting numbers to your listeners. In the latter, you are able to confidently come up with an estimation as to the number of listeners of your program at a particular time.

There are two things an Advertiser or Sponsor looks at before coming on board a program:

  1. The number of listeners at a particular time
  2. The demographics (age, gender, location, etc) of the listeners

So if as a producer or manager you are able to come up with this backed by facts (research), then you are good to go.

I was the producer of a farmer program on radio and what we actually used to persuade an Agrochemical Company in sponsoring was a compilation of recorded phone-ins by listeners. This according to the Sponsor gave them an insight as to the composition of our listeners. :grinning:

Let me be quick to add that one thing that is frustrating potential advertisers or program sponsors of farmer programs is the frequency of the program. Most of these programs are weekly (once a week) and normally on a weekend so most advertisers or sponsors complain of being given no or less mileage during the weekdays as per the advertising package given them. Is there something we can do?

3 Likes
#15

This is an in-depth lecture. No wonder you are a resource person for Farm Radio.

:clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap:

#16

Very good question. I would love to read an answer to this.

#17

Dear colleagues!

Dear Busi and Denis- our other facilitator,

Denis, thank you for joining us in this eDiscussion and for sharing the resource about knowing your audience and how to turn the listenership into money.

Now let me embark on Week 2: Knowing your audience - how can you turn your listenership into money?

My experience and ideas:

  1. What are your top suggestions for getting to know your audience?
    Below are my suggestions for getting to know my audience.

a) Doing audience research:-
 In doing audience research, I suggest the people in-charge of programming or in charge of some programme like a Farmer programme at the Radio station like Producer, Presenter and or Manager of the station can work out a proposal and they themselves as a team can get down to their audience.

 A selected sample of the target audience/listeners within the area of coverage of the radio station can be targeted and be asked about the station. Or if the radio station has finances, it can hire experts that are good at doing such audience research to do it on behalf of the station.

This can better be done by asking general questions like;

• How do you receive information?

• What channels do you listen to for information?

• Have you heard of this Radio station? Asking about your own station…

• What programmes have you heard on this station?

• What programmes do you like most? Why?

• Have you heard about this Farmer programme?.. in case they do not mention this particular farmer programme and when you are interested in knowing about your particular farmer programme.

 Know the reach within which the radio station broadcasts and the type of audience/s that listen to it. For example; if the radio station is city based, one has to know who the majority listeners are in the city. Are they farmers, business people, political minded, youth or a mixture of all these categories. But of course in the city, you do not expect many farmers, although farming is embraced by many people including urban dwellers.

 Then the programmes or farmer prgramme has to be suited in the best way it can be liked to attract business for instance. But also, if the station is national, a public broadcaster or community based? Then one has to know what the people are- bearing in mind that most of the people in rural areas are mainly dependent on farming or agriculture for their livelihood. So they can suggest what they feel they want to hear in this type of programme.

b) The language or languages that the target audience/s do speak. For instance, if a radio station is a national or public broadcaster, this type of radio has to have a diversity of languages to serve! Even the smallest native language or dialect has to be catered for. So here, the audience becomes for all or for majority of the population. And therefore, the audience here is known for all.

But if the station is rural based or for a specific community, the audience is for the specific location mainly. So the main language or languages in this particular community is identified and known as the listeners or audience. So the programmes are designed in such a way that majority of the population is catered for.

c) Know what the listeners or the audience like to hear during certain peak of the day, duration in the day or during some seasons. For example; listeners have their listening habits.
In my village for example; they listen to some educative programmes like farming between 11:00 hours and 14:00hrs. After this, they are either back to their fields if it is planting season, weeding or harvesting. Or they engage in other activities like selling kiosks, going to trading centres or going to drink for some men and women who drink alcohol.

Even when they go to the gardens or fields with their radio receivers like the case today…they listen to such farmers progarmme in that range of time. After which, they wish to relax their mind by tuning to listen to music on other stations and entertainment programmes.

  1. Is there a relationship between knowing your audience and how many regular or dedicated listeners you have? Please explain.

Yes, there is a relationship in that my audience is composed of all those that listen to my programmes and i know them or the programmes that go on air. And these are either regular, rare or ardent listeners/regular listeners to the radio programmes or station I work with.

The relationship is that I have for years known the ardent/dedicated/regular listeners who even call in other programmes presented by other presenters especially in the languages that they understand. So i know their listening habits as an audience and as regular listeners.

Okay, I have like 30 dedicated callers who call in the programme/programmes that I present on radio. But once in a while, I get feedback that more than this number listen to me regularly but cannot call-in every time and can even not call at all but enjoy my programmes and listen in whenever i am on air. Also, this depends on how long a programme takes.

For instance if it is an entertainment or musical programme that takes two hours and above, I get more regular listeners in that particular programme.

  1. What information about your audience helps you attract potential advertisers or program sponsors?
    It is when they call-in the programmes or tell us when we go to them that they want to get an organization or groups that can help them or connect them to better markets or sell to them affordable and genuine farm inputs for the case of the farmer programme.

Also, water being a key element in agricultural production, they always tell me that they want water to be able to produce throughout the year. So they say government or other organizations with affordable equipment should help them. And i see potential here to attract sponsors to my programme.
So I feel this information can help me to look for some companies that deal in inputs that are genuine, research companies, agro-input dealers and Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) that can support farmers. With this, I can attract them to sponsor the programme. And this can promote their activities in return.

  1. Do you have any success stories of getting funding for your farmer programs? Please share the details of your experience.

Yes, some years back, I got some sponsors of the farm programme that I used to present like 10 years ago. It was about market information in which farmers, traders were like informed of the best prices, in specific locations, the farm products fetching a higher price and on market at a particular time. We used to get payment monthly for one year. At the same time, we the presenters were also paid each month separately.

The only challenge was: We did not involve the farmers as the centre in this to suggest what would work for them and what they required. The organization that sponsored the programmes could just drop scripts that we used to present in the various languages. We did not do audience researach to know the impact of the programme it created on the audience.

1 Like
#18

Dear Colleagues and facilitators,
My response to week 2:
1.
We have data base where people who contribute to the show are recorded. Having this record help us in getting to know our audience better.
Secondly, we always send cops to the Community who move randomly with questionaires for mini survey.
2.
Absolutely, because when fully analysed , our known audience are dedicated listeners that we have always. We did the survey.
3.
Key informations are Demographic, location, population size, strength of the audience, major economic activities, land use, level of production, etc
4.
We got MUIS since we had the number;population and productive people, good relationship with technical staffs, more so we valued farmers, especially local and commercial farmers, the issues discussed on air is demand driven, this inspired the Sponsor.

1 Like
#19

I agree with you Martin, except the media programmers need to know that, advertisers are like politicians, They move with the big followings and yet they can make you loose your listeners if you gave more time to advertisers compromising your content. We need to pay attention to the in house policy if at all it exist that protects the station content and adhere to that.

Also we need to know that, the moment you have appealing programs, you will have the money.

#20

Dear Trainers,

I am seeking guidance here, were is the discussion supposed to take place from? here or the whatsapp group? i am getting lost on where to engage from.

1 Like