International radio management consultant at Simo Radio, John Simons also offers music research interpretation in order to create focused music image and help stations choose the best possible songs and also offers talent and management coaching.

In this session he revisits the core principles of identifying the target listener to help radio stations grow audiences and benchmark their brand.

The following according to Simons are the key questions broadcasters need to respond to in order to discover who your target listener is.

  1. Are there women at home?
  2. Are there men at home?

Take each aspect of the target market to work out exactly who your target market is and also find out who your presenters and producers who they think they are?

Simons says in order to find out who your target listeners are, you would need the demographics of your listener and find answer the following:

  1. Who are they?
  2. What are their names?
  3. What kind of music do they like listening to?
  4. Where do they live?
  5. Where do they spend their free time?
  6. What their favorite apps are?
  7. What are they most likely to spend their money on?
  8. Do they use their mobile phone as an alarm clock?
  9. How do they access radio, on their phone, AM/FM or digitally?
  10. Lastly and most importantly, a broadcaster needs to know what turns their listener off from tuning?

In addition to this, he says the importance of knowing who your target listener is influences the kind of presenter that should be selected to be on air as this will inturn inspire presenter links.

Lebogang Bridget Lepere

(Edited by Simbarashe Honde)