Do you have a New Year resolution? If not, think about your listeners. Many do, and even if they don’t hold to their promises, radio is still empowered to profit from them.
How? Here’s some food for thought from the RBR+TVBR archives that could still help a few years later … unless, of course, dieting and exercise are your New Year resolution.
A study conducted Nov. 9-18, 2018 among 377 respondents by Maru/Vision Critical suggests radio listeners have a lot to say about their New Year resolution.
And, as Westwood One elaborated, much of it plays out by age, format and gender.
In particular, “radio listeners are hot to get healthy and not hot to make resolutions after a certain age.”
The most popular resolutions for 2019 were:
exercise more/improve fitness (42%)
save more money (41%)
eat healthier (38%)
Nearly all of the New Year’s resolutions skew toward Millennials, Adults aged 18-34. “Maybe as consumers get older the mystique behind making New Year’s resolutions starts to fade,” Westwood One opines.
Men are two times less likely to choose a New Year’s resolution for 2019 versus women. Still, the top resolution for both demographics is to exercise more/improve fitness.
Improving fitness and health, along with saving money, also rose to the top among most frequent format listeners.
As such, are your GSMs, AEs and digital sales and marketing pros engaged in live reads, air talent endorsements, live remotes, on-air and on-streaming advertising and in social media promotion for a fitness center in your market?
What about WW — formerly known as Weight Watchers?
That, of course, is low-hanging fruit, even in the age of Ozempic.
Are their local mom-and-pop shops offering yoga classes, healthy meal prep and dining-in choices, or athletic wear one will need if getting fit is it in 2024?
Your radio station’s digital and social realm is a perfect home for these businesses — not local digital, which has limited success and isn’t as local as your station.
The study also showed that listeners of R&B, Hip Hop, and Soft Rock were more likely to make resolutions over listeners of Alternative Rock, Classic Rock, Rock, Country, News/Talk, Sports, and Top 40.
This suggests ethnic audiences were eager to make changes, positive ones, in 2019. Two years on, with a pandemic, could these desires be even more pronounced?
Radio can help them reach their goals — not a personality-free stream of music on Spotify or Pandora.
The clock is ticking … are your sales pros dialing and making personal visits to your future clients today?
Note: This is an update to a Media Information Bureau column that originally appeared December 28, 2018 at RBR.com.