- 98.6% of all homes have at least one working radio.
- The average household has 5.5 sets.
- 95% of all cars have radios.
- 9 out of 10 Americans listen to their radios at least once a week.
- 80% of all Americans depend on their radios for weather reports.
- 86% of all men and
- 72% of all women in the 18 to 34 year age range listen to their car radios at least once a week.
What does this mean to a ski area?
Radio is a medium that allows you to buy a saturation of your market—on a total or selective basis—both in terms of geographical coverage and/or demographic coverage (e.g. 18 to 34-year-old males). And, you can do it on a very economical basis, achieving both reach and frequency, which are the keystones of an effective advertising program.
Geographical Coverage
It’s fairly easy for most ski areas to decide exactly where their customers are most likely to come from (local area, nearby cities, major markets nearby, etc.). If you’re not sure, a simple liftline survey of your customers should give you a pretty good indication of the boundaries of your trading area. This does not mean, of course, that you can’t make a decision to broaden your market, to go after potential customers in cities from which you are not drawing now. But most marketing wisdom tends to assume that your best new prospects will be found in those regions from which your present customers come.
Once you have staked out your geographical market, any advertising agency or the Radio Advertising Bureau (555 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022) can name the cities within that market in which you’ll find radio stations and provide names of those stations.
Every station’s market coverage depends on the strength of its signal, so you can get a coverage map from each of the stations within your defined market. These maps show with a shaded area or some other device, the exact geographical reach of the stations you are considering.
Ideally, you should try to get your hands on independent research data on radio coverage in the market or markets you’re interested in. Such data shows whose signals are going into the market and what each station’s share of that market is. Usually, stations can supply such data.
The statistics that seem to get most relied upon are those from American Research Bureau (ARB). These figures will tell you not only how many people listen to each station in a particular market, but also their age and sex. They also tell you how this pattern changes by day-part. The chart below gives you an idea of what the accepted day-parts are:
| Time: | Trade Designation: | Audience |
|---|---|---|
| 6a.m.-10 a.m. | AM Drive | Men, women, teens; Especially working men and women |
| 10 a.m.-3 p.m. | Housewife | Housewives, mostly, but plenty of men available |
| 3 p.m.-7 p.m. | PM Drive | Men, women, teens; Again, working men and women |
| 7 p.m.-Midnight | Evening | Teens, TV dropouts, hobbyists, people in cars or working |
| Midnight-6 a.m. | Nighttime | Night-shift workers, insomniacs, people retiring |
ARB statistics are far more specific than the above generalization.
Demographic Coverage
What dictates the station’s audience is, of course, the station’s programming. In most cities, you’ll find a variety of stations and programming from which to choose. Stations may carry news, conversation, country music, talk, contemporary music, progressive rock, middle-of-the-road mixtures, classical music, ethnic programs, and variety (which feature a mixture of different types of programming).
As you might guess, the cost of a radio spot is dictated by the size of the audience. The larger, more powerful, more popular the station, the more expensive a spot is to buy. Also, the cost of spots depends on the popularity of the station among advertisers. Some stations dominate their market and can command top dollar from their advertisers. Others are in more competitive situations.
Another factor that dictates the cost of spots is the day-part they run in. By and large, the morning drive-time (6 a.m. to 10 a.m.) is most expensive, because it attracts the largest, most diverse audience. The second most expensive buy is from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., which is afternoon drive-time and attracts the second-largest audience. The next most popular period is from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. when you reach mostly housewives. (But even then you reach a considerable number of men.) From 7 p.m. to midnight is evening time; it ranks fourth in audience size, and it is the best time to reach a teen audience. Finally, you can buy midnight to 6 a.m., called “nighttime, “which provides the smallest audience of all. This is the least expensive buy.
Obviously, there are other buys, such as program sponsorships or adjacencies to ski reports (if the station has them). Ski reports, of course, can either be a bona fide service to the listener, or a device to sell time to ski areas. Either way, I view them as a bonus to the ski industry because they help people become ski-conscious and stations that run them deserve support. Certainly if the station meets all your other selection criteria, ski reports would be a real plus.
How you use this information depends on your marketing strategy. Obviously, if you have a special program to attract housewives, daytime would be your most effective buy. That doesn’t mean you can’t drop a few spots in other day-parts, but your goal would be to achieve “saturation” during the daytime hours. On the other hand, if you have something you would like to tell bona fide skiers—such as the fact that you have a bigger mountain, or a better mountain, or shorter liftlines, etc.—then adjacency to a ski report would give you a better crack at clusters of skiers. In short, once you’ve decided on the type of individual you want to appeal to, you are then in a position to pick your stations and time slots.
In the absence of some special marketing program, tend to buy a “run of the station” (ROS) schedule with first emphasis (60% to 70%) on morning and evening drive-time, with some adjacencies to ski reports, if available, and the rest spread between daytime and evening, on the station(s) that delivers maximum coverage against 18 to 34-year-old males. This buy gives you exposure during the peak listening hours on the station that delivers the kind of listener who is most likely to be a skier or potential skier.
Once you decide on the market you want to reach, then make the competing stations demonstrate to you that they reach that market. They can usually provide you with some kind of audience statistics or give you an insight into whom they reach. Or, you may simply listen to the programming and decide for yourself who the average listener is, but don’t rely on your own taste for selecting a radio station.
Incidentally, another direct device for selecting stations that reach your market is to include the question in your liftline survey: “What radio station do you listen to regularly?” You may be surprised, after tabbing up the results, to see how clearly a pattern emerges.
Writing Copy for Radio
The significant thing about radio is that you can select a target market and a group of people that a particular station or group of stations reaches, and go after them with repetition, reinforcing over and over again a selling message.
Here are some suggestions that might help you write that selling message most effectively:
- Write conversationally. Radio is one human being talking to another. Some of radio’s best salesmen, men like Arthur Godffrey, have a marvelous human quality which make them super-effective.
- If you can afford one, try to create an audio trademark. It might be a jingle, a sound, or some other key element that ties all your commercials together and adds to the overall impact of your campaign.
- Talk about benefits; tell your listeners why they should come to your ski area; if they are beginners, intermediates, or experts; if they are single or have families; etc. Tell them what your area offers, including all its services. Tell them your “unique selling proposition” (if you have one).
- If you can use an event or some other special appeal to bring people to the area, even if not to ski, it will help to generate response. Once you let them taste of the excitement, you may get them back as skiers.
- If possible, don’t write copy yourself. Hire an advertising agency to write the copy for you; or ask the station to help you write it. They at least are accustomed to putting things together for airing and will probably produce a better commercial than you will. Be sure to review the scripts to be sure that they are factually correct, and don’t be afraid to make suggestions.
- If the station you are using has an outstanding personality—a disc jockey, for instance—by all means, try to build him into your script.
- Try to measure results. (Another question for your liftline survey.)
Producing
Actually, the bare minimum you need to go on the air is a group of scripts timed to fit whatever time units you have elected to buy. Consequently, you can get into radio without any production costs whatever.
Don’t worry about who’s going to read your copy over the air. Every station has an announcer on hand, and the use of his voice is free. If, however, you want to get into something more professional (a jingle, an audio trademark, etc.), this calls for “production values” which cost money, possibly several thousand dollars or more. Again, an advertising agency can help you; or perhaps you can get assistance from a local station.
You can pre-record an entire commercial or just a jingle with the station’s announcer adding the voice-over. If you buy the talent to put together a first rate commercial, or part of one, the expense can be well worth it. Don’t get hooked into thinking the banjo player from your bar can do the job. Maybe he can, but the chances are he can’t. Your best bet is to get really professional help.
A unique advantage of radio, incidentally, is that your commercial — whether it is 60 seconds or 30 seconds—is center-stage when it’s on the air. There are no other ads on the page to compete with it. And, inasmusch as you will probably be using 60 second commercials (70% of all radio commercials are 60’s, which generally cost only 25% more than a 30 second commercial), you have the same size ad as the biggest and bluest-chip advertiser on the station with you.
Consequently, when your commercial goes on the air, you are in a one-to-one selling position with everyone listening to the station at the time. How much you get out of this opportunity depends on how good your commercial is. For that reason, production values that enhance the effectiveness of your commercial are a worthwhile investment, especially because they can be used again and again.
Some Buying Tips
Radio stations, like publications, have a rate card. However, most broadcast buying involves the law of supply and demand. A station is on the air for its full broadcast day, usually seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. Unlike print publications which can match their flow of editorial to their flow of advertising volume, broadcast stations are stuck with their editorial commitment. They can’t shrink or stretch it.
Unfortunately, advertising flows at an unaccommodating pace. In some months when advertising volume peaks, all advertisers want to buy radio schedules, and it is a sellers’ market. At other times, however, when advertising volume is low and it is a buyers’ market, stations are open to negotiation. And, frankly, some stations are open to negotiations all year round.
Again, when it comes to making a buy, an advertising agency is recommended. They know the business of buying time, and know when they can negotiate with a station for lower rates.
As an option to special rate, and possibly even more desirable for a ski area, is working out a promotion with the station. Many stations are eager work with areas who are willing to buy a schedule, then supply lift tickets in return for free extra promotional spots. (My agency recently worked with a station that developed a series of daily quizzes on contemporary sporting news. Listeners would call in the answers and win a free day pass to Catamount ski area.) The limit to such promotions is up to your ingenuity and the station’s willingness to support you.
When it comes to buying radio, it is best to approach the station early and tell them of your intent to become a long-range advertiser. Make up your mind that you’re going to give radio advertising an honest try, and make a sincere effort to measure results. Promise yourself that if the program is successful, you’ll continue it and expand it in the years to come. Let the station know this. If they get a sincere reading, you will get a lot more cooperation than if they read you as here today and gone tomorrow.
When you approach the station, be sure the management understands the ski business: that God pretty much decides when you open your area and when you you close it. Arrange an agreement with the station that you will not run a single commercial until you have snow, and also have an escape clause that permits you to suspend your program or cancel it if you have to close your area for lack of snow. Most stations are understanding about this and will permit you to cancel without penalty. That is, if you have contracted for a certain dollar volume of advertising at a special lower cost-per-spot, but have not been able to achieve the volume goal because of lack of snow, they will not penalize you by charging a higher rate for what you have run.
Finally, it is better to select one station and build frequency and continuity against that one station’s market than it is to have a lot of little programs running on several stations all over the countryside. It is when you have reached that single individual six to 15 times that he or she begins to become aware and, hopefully, motivated to take up your offer. Therefore, my advice to any ski area is to be guided by your pocketbook: pick a target market you can afford and a station you can afford; build a concentrated program with sufficient strength against that market, so that the result is measurable. Then, with the base of new business experience you have added, you will be in a position to add another station next year, and another the next year.
In effect, this is what major packaged goods companies do when they introduce a new product. They do it one market at a time. Eventually they achieve their long-range goal of national distribution.
