RSP Episode 01 – Knowing your Podcast audience

Series One – Episode 1 of Radio Skills for Podcasters: Knowing Your Audience. Kevin talks all things about knowing your audience.  He lifts the lid on how radio stations get to know their listeners using social science techniques to create an Avatar or Marquee of their ideal listener and how you can do this too with your ... Read more

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Series One – Episode 1 of Radio Skills for Podcasters: Knowing Your Audience.
Kevin talks all things about knowing your audience.  He lifts the lid on how radio stations get to know their listeners using social science techniques to create an Avatar or Marquee of their ideal listener and how you can do this too with your Podcast.   The process includes Demographics, life stages, tribes and The Brand of You as they all contribute to help you create a composite idea of your ideal listener.
Each episode includes a Top Tip – this time Kevin provides one of his audience research tasks to get you going.  It is called ‘ten things you know to be true’ and it will help you understand more about your listener, you and your Podcast.

RSP Episode 01 Knowing Your Podcast Audience

How do you know the person that listens to your podcast is the ideal listener – the target?

As you set out on your podcast journey you had a key person in mind… you knew your market… and you knew your value proposition… that is you knew what you wanted to offer the listener and idea of who they were.

Did you hit that target?

In this episode of Radio Skills for Podcasters Kevin Field talks about targeting your listener.  He talks tribes, The Brand of You, listener demographics.  Creating marquees and avatars of your audience to help you create content that is aimed right at the ideal target listener.

The episodes Top Tip is a task that will help you understand your current listener… It’s usually a task Kevin carries out  in his brand of you workshops…

Next time on Radio Skills for Podcasters… RSP Episode 02 we look at the format of your podcasters.

Get in touch – We’d love to hear from you.  If you’d like advice on your Podcast or have a question about the content of the show.  Say hi via @radio_skills on Twitter or email [email protected].

Key Moments

Learn how to understand who your listener is

Demographics and key stages – abc1demographic.co.uk

Life stages, Tribes and the Brand of You

How wants and needs should be applied to your podcast

See the full transcript of the podcast

Read Full Transcript

Kevin Field: Hello, I'm Kevin Field and this is Episode 1 of Radio Skills for Podcasters, Knowing Your Audience.

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Male: Learn the secrets of the radio industry.

Female: Create powerful podcasts.

Male: Powerful yet --

Female: -- to keep --

Male: -- and grow your audience.

Female: And increase your profits.

Male: This is --

Female: Radio.

Male: Radio Skills for Podcasters.

Female: Radio Skills for Podcasters.

Male: With Kevin Field.

Female: With Kevin Field.

Male: Enjoy the podcast.

Kevin Field: Hello and welcome. This is Radio Skills for Podcasters and I am Kevin Field. Each week with this podcast we look at the skills of the radio industry and how you can employ them in your podcast to take it to the next level.

My aim is to help you get, keep and grow your audience by creating powerful podcast.

Male: This is Radio Skills for Podcasters.

Kevin Field: Radio Skills for Podcasters, its aim is to improve your game. Actually I've stolen that. There's no new ideas, is there? American golf, that's what they say, American golf, we exist to improve your game. And I think it's so apt to what they do. It's a great strapline. So, really Radio Skills for Podcasters, we exist to improve your podcast.

American golf has a PGA pro in every store, they are for club fitting, they are for inspiration and advice to golfers. They love golf and they want to inspire other golfers. At Radio Skills for Podcasters, I'm your radio pro. My club fitting is the presenter or producer toolbox that I'm going to talk about throughout this podcast. And I love radio and I love podcast.

Each episode of Radio Skills for Podcasters offers advice and guidance on a particular subject matter or some shared subject and each is around just 10 minutes. In this episode, we're looking at knowing your listeners or knowing your audience and we'll delve into that in a few moments. We also have the top tips in each episode, this time connected to your new audience. It's a simple task you can carry out that will help your audience know you better. And I'd love your feedback @radio_skills on Twitter, Radio Skills for Podcasters on Facebook and email, [email protected], and of course that's the website too.

Get in touch if you've got something that you'd like me to cover on Radio Skills for Podcasters, what is your podcast pain? Get in touch. Let's get into this week's mean feature.

Male: Radio skills.

Kevin Field: How do you know the person that listens to your podcast is the ideal listener, the target listener? In radio, we used to call them P1. Some people still do. P1 stands for "position one" on the dial. Every radio station wants someone to be position one on the dial as soon as they get in the car. How do we make your listener, P1, for you?

Most businesses know their audience by what they're trying to sell whether it's a brand of entertainment, comedy, music, a product of some sort or information. There're several ways to get to know your audience and we only have around 10 minutes to talk about this. We'll just touch on the surface here. I promise you though that there'll be further detail and further episodes and some details on the Radio Skills for Podcasters website in the future that will delve a bit further into this because it's a complex area. But with an overview now, hopefully we'll get some of that to you to help you out.

As a marketing manager of a radio station in the past, I used to work closely with the program director. We'd look at demographics, life stages, tribes, mods and the brand of you. We use this to help create a mark key or an avatar of who our listener was. We then know how to sell this to our honor team, so our honor team can target our ideal listener.

Demographics are a statistical study of populations. In the UK, it's a basic science, but it's helped us understand the age ranges and in potential -- and groups of people who lived in our broadcast area. Each demographic is given a letter, number reference, for example, ABC1s or C2, D, Es. There's a cool website called abc1demographic.co.uk. Check it out. It explains a little more detail on demographics, that's abc1demographic.co.uk.

Life stages, this helps us understand the different stages people share in their lives even if they earn different money or are in different background or different demographic. A man in his 30s may well be into the same music as a man in his 40s. They may well like the same clothing brands, cologne. They may go home to their mom at the weekends, get a lovely dinner, but one's in his 30s and one is in his 40s, but they live several life stages.

Tribes, this is different people who are into specific brands of loves specific programs or have common interests that they're really hot on and they share. They could come from any demographic or life stage. They maybe into a particular brand that they absolutely love, for example, Apple lovers and they all love Apple and they'll always tell each other that. You can put this people in a room together and they'll get along just fine within moments because of their tribe.

The brand of you is a marketing strategy that I came up with many years ago for radio stations and I use when providing coaching sessions. It is essentially the brand of you that matches to the brands you choose. If you can align your business, radio station or podcast with the brands your target chooses, you could be onto a winner.

To understand who your listener is, you need to take the demographic, their life stage, tribes and brand of you and you can form a mark key or avatar of your listener so you can write down the essential things about that person--their brand, what holiday they go on, where they eat, what do they drink, why do they do what they do and why do they want your service?

The next step in understanding your audience is what you say, why do they want your service? Does it have legs? Are you solving their pain? Are you offering what they want and need? Now many of the radio stations I've worked for over the years look at this very closely, the want and the need of their listener.

So the want is along the lines of having a desirable possession, a desire to do something, a wish for, a hope for, an inclination for, a care for, like, something to set one's heart on. I want entertaining speech. I want to laugh. I want to learn about something. I want to hear some good music. Need is when we require something because it's essential. It's very important rather than just desirable like a want. You need to learn how to upload a podcast. You need travel news to keep moving. You need to know the weather for later today.

Interestingly there's a crossover with wants and needs. You've got your social armory people and you've got your mods, people in mamod, .mod, friend mod, this all links into understanding your P1 ideal listener. That listener, that's position one on the dial, they choose you every time. So you need to cater for their wants and needs.

There's so much more, there really is, more detail in this area and understanding your listener. We just skinned the surface. I'll go into more in future podcast and at radioskillsforpodcasters.com.

Next though, it's our tip of the week.

Female: Learn the secrets of the radio industry.

Male: Radio Skills for Podcasters.

Kevin Field. Top tip for this week, this week's top tip is, well, it will help you understand your current listener. Now, I do this with radio presenters. I do this with talent, on-air talent. It's usually a task I carry out in the brand of you workshops as well.

So what I want you to do is take a piece of people and write down 10 things you know to be true about you. It can be more if you want, but it can't be less. It has to be 10. Then what I want you to do is get another piece of paper and write down 10 things you know to be true about your podcast and it can be more, but the amount has to match.

Now, we need you to get in touch with three listeners and ask them to do the same thing, 10 things they know to be true about them as a person and then 10 things they know to be true about your podcast. What you're looking for in the analysis is matches. If they are your ideal listener, they will more or less match your 10 things. Try it out and see what you'll get.

Female: This is --

Male: This is Radio Skills for Podcasters.

Female: Radio Skills for Podcasters.

Male: With Kevin Field.

Kevin Field: Well this has been the first Radio Skill for Podcasters podcast. I hope you've enjoyed it. Get in touch. Tell me what you'd like me to do maybe to solve the pain you are having with your podcast. The idea of this podcast is it takes you to the next step. I'm not telling you how to start podcasting. I'm not really telling you about equipment. We may go into detail about microphones and how to use them and things like that in the future or how to edit properly, all of that, that's fine. But I'm not telling you how to set up your podcast.

This podcast is about arming you with the skills from the radio presenter or producer's toolbox. Hopefully you've enjoyed it on this episode. Don't forget you can get in touch it's very easy,@radio_skills on Twitter, Radio Skills for Podcasters, the page on Facebook. Come and like us, [email protected] via the email and of course radioskillsforpodcasters.com is the website.

Male: Next time.

Female: Next time with Radio Skills for Podcasters.

Kevin Field: Next time on Radio Skills for Podcasters we look at the format of your podcast and how keeping it the same, but different every week can pay dividends. See you next time.

Female: Find us on Facebook Radio Skills for Podcasters.

Male: @radio_skills on Twitter.

Female: Thanks for listening.

Male: www.radioskillsforpodcasters.com.

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