(By Marc Greenspan) Crafting your station’s elevator pitch is a daunting task for most people. Where do you start? What is important to include? We have a few ideas to share based on our years of expertise in using data to craft station stories.
Step 1: Basic Composition – percent of your listeners who meet a criteria.
- Include for gender, age, ethnicity, education, etc. These are your socioeconomic characteristics of your listeners.
- Example: Our typical listener is 25-54 years old, college educated, and has an above-average household income.
Step 2: Lifestyles – what do your listeners enjoy doing?
- Scarborough data allows you to profile your listeners based on activities participated in, travel, plus entertainment such as concerts, theater, museums, zoos, etc.
- You might also consider researching if your listeners have an interest in eco-friendly activities.
- If your listeners have kids in the household, you might want to highlight activities for families.
Step 3: Station Events
- Is your station involved in any annual events?
- Any regular fundraising or local community activities, such as sponsoring school teams, or hosting concerts, events etc.?
Step 4: Music Philosophy – might need to get this from your PD
- List a few prominent artists on your station – this helps a retailer get a sense of your music content.
- If you are a talk station – what is the direction or focus for your talk programs?
Step 5: Putting it all Together
You have all the pieces of your elevator pitch gathered, so now sit down and write your pitch. This should be three to five sentences that describe your listeners as well as provide a sense of the station. You do not need to have estimates/numbers in this pitch. Keep it simple. Once written, practice it … again and again. Can you deliver your pitch within 30-60 seconds? Keep practicing it until you can!
This column is part of a series titled “Growing the Radio Pie.” To view past articles, visit The Ratings Experts at Research Director, Inc. online here.
Marc Greenspan is the CEO and founding partner of Research Director, Inc. He can be reached at 410-295-6619 x11 or by email at [email protected]. Research Director, Inc. offers consulting services to media companies to help them grow their audience, ratings, and revenue. Read Marc’s Radio Ink archives here.
