Name Your Favorites

If I asked you to Name Your Favorites in a number of categories, depending on the category, you could easily rattle off your top two or three, right?

Here’s an example:

Name your favorite food.

I’ll wait a second.

Depending on where in the world you live, and how specific you want to get, you were able to name at least three things you like to eat.

My top three list would include:

1. Seafood (including shrimp, crab and scallops)
2. Chicken
3. Salad

Your list is probably completely different, but that’s okay.  There are thousands of options.  And yet each of us have narrowed our personal choices down to a handful or two.

Radio and Television is like this too. So is the internet but I’ll save the way this works on the web for another day.

I still have cable TV and with that there are over 100 choices.  But personally, I stick to about 5 or 6 channels for most of my viewing.  They are my favorites.  Can you Name Your Favorites?

A dozen years ago, I was talking to a local auto repair shop owner about advertising.  He hemmed and hawed and finally said there are too many radio stations out there for people and that was his reason for not picking mine.

I did a search for Auto Repair in my area and found there were nearly 10 times as many auto repair shops as there were radio stations and he conceded that he was wrong.

But no matter how many choices there are, we have our favorites in nearly any category.

Nielsen, the company that specializes in radio and television listening and viewing habits around the country recently released a study that shows how this works with radio listenership.

Radio listeners are either extremely loyal or extremely selective, depending on one’s perspective. Whichever it is, the data remains the same: listeners devote the majority of their tune-in time to their favorite station, according to a recent Nielsen study.

In fact, AM/FM radio listeners spend fully 58% of their time with their preferred station. All told, their three favorite stations combine for an impressive 86% of all their listening time.

Due to my working in the industry, I have access to specifics for Fort Wayne radio listener habits and here’s what I discovered:

News and Talk Stations have the most loyal audience according to the amount of time spent listening. WOWO radio and WBOI are the two stations considered news/talk.  WOWO is the commercial station I work for and WBOI is the National Public Radio station in town.  WOWO’s audience size (the number of people listening) is huge, more than double the public radio station, and the time spent listening to the shows on WOWO each week is also greater than WBOI according the the Eastlan Fall 2017 rating data.

What’s the difference between being someone’s favorite and their second or third favorite radio station?

• Nearly 60% of a persons radio listening is to their favorite station.
• Less than 20% of the time, a person listens to their second favorite station.
• They only spend about 10% of their radio listening time tuned into their personal 3rd favorite station.

A couple of takeaways for you to remember:

1. Everyone can name their favorites in many life categories
2. Radio stations have a core audience of listeners that are loyal to their favorite stations and you should keep that in mind when deciding where to advertise

And a bonus tip for you:

Some business categories have not been developed with clear leaders or favorites.  There are multiple factors for this but mostly it has to do with creating a memorable brand and marketing it to buyers and influencers.  Advertising can help establish your business as a favorite and if you want to know more, contact me.