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Why?

Why the Finney Media Why Listen?™ survey?

We believe the time to reach more hearts more deeply with the gospel is now.  We believe asking listeners why they listen to Christian radio and really listening to and acting on their answers is so much better than guessing!

 

The Finney Media Why Listen?™ 2018 survey is one we’ve done nationwide in 2016.  We surveyed nearly 23,500 respondents—all listeners to Christian radio formats. Listener feedback has been sorted in many different and helpful ways.

The results were profound! Next year in 2018 we’ll ask some new questions, some even deeper questions and some vital repeat questions for benchmark comparisons.

We invite you to join us. It’s low cost—and with additional special pricing for NRB members, CMB members and Advocace clients.

Join us HERE!  Get equipped to better serve your listener in 2018!

Finney Media Why LIsten

 

 

How to begin your successful campaign

 

The majority of our clients are “expecting” this year. And you may be one of them!  Decision makers from radio stations, broadcasting networks and nationally syndicated shows are huddled into conference rooms, alive with the hope that their radio campaign ideas for the year will be successful.

 

Some people bring ideas scrawled across post-it notes, cell phones, pads and napkins. Others have the entire campaign mapped out in bullet points complete with a timeline, budget and projected outcomes. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, you know it’s tough to come up with a campaign that listeners won’t just ignore or tune away from.

 

Foundations for a Top Flight Campaign

 

From helping victims of tsunamis to feeding the hungry to church building funds, Christians are bombarded with well-meaning campaigns designed to tug at our heartstrings and provide opportunities for sacrificial giving. With that as a motivator, here are eight essentials to consider BEFORE you get the campaign ball rolling:

 

  1. Prayer. Of all the ideas vying for attention, nothing good can germinate without love and God’s blessing. Ideas need to be brought together and prayed over. Thought about. Tossed about. Blended and prayed over with persistence.

 

  1.  Love. A great campaign doesn’t necessarily generate the most ideas/money/kudos/paperwork. It generates love. Its message is backed by love. Its response is love. If love can’t be extracted from your idea and brought to the forefront, it probably won’t directly impact your listener.

 

  1. Decency and Order.  Consider how God creates. With time and with love, with uniqueness in mind, decently and in order. Don’t let deadlines, initiatives and other perceived pressures get in the way. A great campaign is a living thing that, when executed in God’s timing, will remain evergreen.

 

  1.  Money. We’ve found that generally it takes a minimum of 18 campaign ads per week to deliver an adequate, memorable repetition that produces measurable results. The number can vary with specific circumstances, or with the type of campaign.

 

  1.  Time. Begin planning a major campaign at least six months before you launch.Don’t be a ministry whose calendar becomes glutted with a number of initiatives to be launched “ASAP”  with no budget set aside, no time to create great messaging, and no permission from management to revise worn copy.  Don’t be stuck in a rut, but pressured to “keep generating new projects.”

 

  1. Great messaging. There is such a thing as constituent resistance. With all the “gimme-gimme” messaging trying to capture our attention, listeners have learned how to say “no” before they’ve even heard the offer! Try offering an educational tidbit, an emotional story or a REAL solution to an immediate need or problem. The interaction between the listener and the call to action needs to contain an immediate benefit or your campaign will be ignored.

 

  1. Keep it simple.  A confused mind does nothing. Create your campaign in small stages rather than trying to cover it all in one ad. Build layers. Develop the relationship. Be creative! We all love a good movie where the plot is revealed cleverly over time. Make it fun–make it a series! Don’t expect your listener to jump into a giving relationship with you at the word go.

 

  1. Patience. How long does it take you to decide to give to a new charity? A year? Allow your listeners the same amount of breathing room. Create urgency, but cultivate patience. Rule of thumb is to wait 52-weeks before calculating the results. Think of how patient God is with you and apply that to your beloved listener. Allow them to transform from passive listener to collaborator.

 

 

MOVING PAST THE RESULTS

We recently posted the reasons listeners aren’t giving to a radio station or network HERE.  The bottom line is–even though they love your station or ministry, they’re primarily not giving because they can’t afford it. We certainly don’t want to squeeze money out of those who can’t afford it, but we do want to ask God how to be good stewards of air time, talent, listener funds and His Word so that your station or ministry can keep sharing uplifting music and inspirational messages that change lives.

How long does it take you to decide to give to a new charity? A year? Allow your listeners the same amount of breathing room. Create urgency, but cultivate patience. Rule of thumb is to wait 52-weeks before calculating the results.

Think of how patient God is with you and apply that to your beloved listener. Allow them to transform from passive listener to collaborator.

 

 

Your words create change

Jan here.

While I was reading Tim Keller’s book Prayer, this comment arrested my attention: “Speech act theory makes a convincing case that our words not only convey information, they get things done. However, God’s words have a power infinitely beyond our own.” Keller goes on to point out examples of God’s word being the “effect.” Let there be light = light. “…what God’s voice does, God does.”

We don’t have that enormous power with our words. However, speech act theory says that we do have great power to get things done. Numerous sayings reflect this truth. Sayings such as, “A simple sentence spoken at the right time could change someone’s life forever.” Or, “One kind word can change someone’s entire day.”

James in the New Testament reflects on this when he writes, “So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things.  Behold, how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire!” (James 3:5)

All this gives us reason to pause when we think of the number of words that flow from our radio station talent, our ministry programs and our own mouths.

James, again: “From the same mouth come both blessing and cursing.  My brethren, these things ought not to be.” Wow, that’s blunt!

We know that people come to us for encouragement, for spiritual growth and to be calmed. Personal systems and daily habits, done in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, can move us toward “tongue containment,” using our tongues to bless, heal and encourage and helping us create a warm on-air environment.

Here’s a few possibilities:

  1. Read through the Psalms, a set number of verses or a set amount of time per day. Even five minutes in the morning speeds our spiritual growth and develops a blessing attitude. Doing this with an audio Bible has the same effect. There’s a little book, now out of print but still available on Amazon, called 31 Days of Wisdom and Praise that breaks out the Psalms and Proverbs into 31 readings. I highly recommend it.
  2. Write down one thing you are grateful for after reading Psalms. Just one. And write it on a slip of paper or sticky note to look at during the day.
  3. Create one of your passwords to include a blessing phrase—you’ll need to add some other characters to keep it strong—but the core of the password will smile at you whenever you type it. For example, Jesusyoubringjoy!@#Today!*&^7102
  4. Listen to your station or program at a different time each day, scheduled on your calendar.

When you are encouraged, your words will flow from habit and the heart to change someone’s day—or life. That’s word power! Together, let’s start today.

 

How God Worked

Chuck here.

I could not see it at the time, but God was preparing me for the work He made me for, helping Christian broadcasters reach more people, more deeply.  As is said in Ephesians in the Bible, chapter 1, “he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan.”  It’s a profound truth, one that causes me to shake my head in wonder.

God had His plans…

. . . when He had my dad work in radio so I was around it at a young age . . . with a studio in our basement.

. . . when He led me to the 10 watt mono FM college radio station.

. . . when my first part time radio job was working for one of the smartest radio guys in the business.

. . . when my next part time job was working for one of the pioneers of music research in radio.

. . . when He let me to see, endure and learn from the politics and crazy cultures at radio stations.

. . . when He allowed me to learn, by making just about every mistake someone can make working in a radio station.

. . . when He surrounded me with believers in secular radio (crazy, right?), to nudge me back to him so that I would commit my life and work to Him…so I would lean on Christ and learn to abide in Him.  (John 15:5)

. . . when He put the right people in the right places to lead me into Christian radio.

. . . when He taught me that true submission to authority is doing it when it’s hard, not when it’s easy.

. . . when He led me to working with NCRS, Christian Music Broadcasters, National Religious Broadcasters . . . and amazing friendships the gifted people who make those organizations fly.

. . . when He opened the doors to working with our amazing team at Finney Media. Each of them a gem of skills, life experience and focus on magnifying His name.

I couldn’t see it then. And isn’t that the point? So that we can be thankful for what looked at the time like coincidences, but in fact were God’s hand and plan . . . so that I can do the work He made me for.

 What’s your story?  How has God intersected events in your life with His profound grace and plan?

Truth in a Window

 

 Chartres Cathedral is about 75 miles southwest of Paris, in a little town called Chartres. The cathedral dominates the town.  I visited there awhile back, and frankly, I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  Why? The long-gone folks who built this incredible building knew how to communicate with story—I got the messages even hundreds of years later. And it made me wonder about what we do on-air every day.

Our guide to the cathedral explained that it was built to be not just be a place of worship for the people who lived in the area, but it was also a story, a place that families could go to teach their children about God. Back during the building of it about 800 years ago, most folks couldn’t read, and if they could it was Latin, not for the common person. What a barrier to understanding!  Just close your eyes and imagine it.

So what the craftsmen did was build stories into architecture—the doorways, the sculptures and especially the stain glass windows. This particular cathedral has more stained glass than any cathedral in the world. In fact, it’s so valuable that during WW2 people who cared took it down and stored it away knowing there was a good chance it might wind up broken.

What might one of the stories be in one of these magnificent windows?  One I saw had the bottom half as the story of the Good Samaritan, while the top half was Adam and Eve. A sermon might connect these two stories. For example, they might tie in the Inn as a place of refuge in the Good Samaritan.

There are hundreds of these at Chartres. Yes, literally hundreds of pictures that attempt to make the profound story of God’s love clear to people who couldn’t read but needed to understand as much as any of us or any of our listeners.

Didn’t the Apostle Paul provide an example of this when he spoke at Mars Hill, and referenced various objects and inscriptions found in the Areopagus?  He spoke about things his audience was familiar with and understood. See Acts chapter 17 in whatever Bible version you prefer.

What is important today as we communicate the message of faith is the very same principle. Make the truth understandable. It is our responsibility to do so—not the audience responsibility to parse what we are saying to try to excavate the truth. Ask yourself if what you are doing is “flying over people’s heads”.  Or is the message clear enough to create heart change?

The craftsmen of Chartres, the apostle Paul…now it’s our turn.

 

 

 

Four Tips for Finding and Storing Heart-Connective Words, Phrases and Ideas

Jan here.

We often remind you of your listener’s perspective: your listener comes to you to be encouraged, uplifted, and calmed.  Yet it remains as true as ever:  Taking action on knowledge is still the most difficult part of the process.

We’re here today with some practical tips on how to regularly locate (and then relocate) heart-connective material. John Maxwell, well-known leadership author, suggests that creating personal systems is the way this will fit into our busy lives (see his newest book, The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth).

We agree with Maxwell, so here are four systems we suggest putting into place so that you can consistently give your listener what she wants.

Four Ways to Find and Keep Idea-Generating Heart-Connective Material

  1. Schedule a visit to a local bookstore at least one time a month. Put it on your calendar! This is a fun activity whether you are a big reader or not. Local bookstores today are centers for coffee, magazines, games and yes, even books.

Walk around the store and find the Christian Living section. Often devotional collections or daily reader books will be separated out so you can look at the front cover. See some that look like they have promising short, impactful content? Look them over. Commit to buy just one…just one…and then whip out your phone and take photos of any others that look promising for a future review. With a photo now stored, you won’t forget what struck you the first time you saw the book. And you’ll be able to locate the author and title. Follow through tip: when you find a good quote in a book, write the page number and topic inside the front cover (as long as you’ve already purchased it). That way it’s  quickly available to you when you want it.

And yes, we all use Amazon. It’s good for locating material if you have an idea of what you want, to see what others are saying and for a quick check on content. But there’s nothing like a physical bookstore to inspire ideas.

  1. Schedule 15 minutes every week on your calendar—just 15—the same day each week, to search the web for powerful audio comments by speakers you may have heard of or who currently air on your station. Find something great? Download or order it immediately and save that location however you like to organize—Evernote, Favorites. Whatever you use. It’s now available for you to listen to as you walk or run or ride your bike—whatever repetitive activity you engage in. Ironing, anyone?
  1. While at the bookstore (see point #1) buy discounted daily calendars in season. Look them over—there are a number that offer pithy, powerful, Scriptural, moving quotes. This is an easy way to daily consume potential material—you just pull off a calendar page every day and have another option presented to you. The tear sheets for the material worth saving can go in a file folder you start right now. Label it Quotes/Ideas.
  1. Keep a list in your Quotes/Ideas file—both physically and digitally—of web locations you’ve discovered or books you’ve heard of. Keep a sheet at the front of the paper folder to keep this consistently handy, or a designated digital sheet or note area where you keep digital locations.

 

You’re probably getting the idea by now. Ideas await everywhere. We just need to have a planned awareness system to locate them—one we schedule—and a method to retrieve the material again.

Note that we usually share media recommendations in our monthly newsletter. If you haven’t signed up yet, take 60 seconds and do that right now, on the upper right hand side of this page. Then pull out your calendar and put feet to these systems!

 

 

Net Promoter Score:  a Help, a Hindrance, a Happy Place?

Chuck and Jan here.

By now you’ve likely seen the overall Christian Radio Net Promoter Score (NPS): A 76 out of 100.  Higher than some incredibly popular companies such as Apple, Amazon and even Southwest Airlines. In case you missed it, here how the NPS is calculated. First survey respondents answer the following question in the Finney Media Why Listen? Survey:

How likely is it that you would recommend the station/program that sent you this survey to a friend or colleague?

Looking at the chart above, you will notice the formula: the percentage of folks answering 0 through 6 is subtracted from the percentage of those answering 9 and 10. It’s a tough formula! And Christian Radio comes in looking really good.

An important question has come up. It’s this: As a station or network, what should we do with this score? How shall I act with this knowledge? Let’s roll through a series of possibilities and then consider the next step.

  1. Look at the great score and use it as a reason to “coast.” We’re good!
  2. Use it in advertising. Hey everybody, we’re good!
  3. Keep it from the team, so they don’t slack off. Psst…we’re really, really good!

OK, some of the list is indeed tongue in cheek, but it’s clear that we don’t want to use our scores either as a point of pride, or as a reason to coast. No matter how high the score, it’s only one measure of our engagement with the audience—and we know too well what the Scripture says: Beware. Pride comes before a fall.

We suggest that a humble spirit of gratefulness for the opportunity to be a witness and faithful presence in our community is a good approach. We are one of God’s servants, His presence to help and encourage.

We might use the number as a baseline to measure changes when the Finney Media Why Listen? Survey is repeated in 2018. We might share this as a praise and encouragement to our teams: God is good! And we suggest keeping it handy for days when things don’t go as planned and we’re wondering why we ever got into this business anyway!

Bottom line: This single number does say a lot. It offers us a pat on the back to continue the sometimes hard, always challenging, and mission fulfilling work that pulls us out of bed each day. Let’s praise God and use it to spur each other on to fight the good fight.

 

 “You change my day, Christian Radio.”

 

Chuck and Jan here.

 

With a Net Promoter Score in the seventies—ahead of many popular organizations—we can confidently say your listener thinks highly of you.  What’s behind the number—the heart reason?

 

We gathered some first-person evidence to answer that question. We asked about 125 music radio listeners, mostly gals, “how does your station make you feel when you listen?”

 

The response wasn’t just positive. It was a resounding chorus: You make me happy.

 

Kathy sums up the feeling for this overwhelming—unaided—word choice: “strong and happy, bold and courageous.

 

Monica gets more detailed. “It [radio station] makes my day better.  There have been many mornings that I left for work having a bad morning.  And it never fails, the right song comes on and makes the day better.”  Roseanne adds, “One song can totally change [the] outcome of the day.”

 

Other words listeners used after “happy”, in order of use were: 1. Uplifting 2. Joyful 3. Calm/peaceful 4. Hopeful

 

Take that to your next prayer and planning session.

 

Pray for God’s continued work in opening hearts.  For wisdom as you work to change a day, an outcome, and yes, a life.

 

You have favor. Today is your day of opportunity.

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Encouragement: A Feeling

Chuck and Jan here.

You may recall that 98% of the Finney Media Why Listen? National survey listeners indicated that “to be encouraged” was a main reason for listening to you. So surely what that means is important to your success in fulfilling your mission in 2017.

The dictionary* says it well.  Encouragement is “something that makes someone more determined, hopeful, or confident.” In other words, it’s a feeling. And while feelings can’t be photocopied, they can be seen—in body language, daily enthusiasm for living and overall spiritual attitudes.

Does your listener feel a surge of confidence, hope and spiritual well-being during and after listening to you? Does she turn on the radio for just that reason?

This is so important that people will try many things to feel this way.  For example, a current rage sweeping women’s magazines and reading is something the Danish call hygge—an idea that explains why the Danish rate so high in happiness. Hygge is a feeling of warmth, softness and coziness. A warm fire. A hot drink. Softer lighting. A walk in the park. A comfy reading corner. Woolen socks.  Friends. We suggest listeners would want to add to this list: listening to my favorite Christian radio station.

While “to be encouraged” is not the only reason people listen, it’s a big one.

So the logical question is this:  What gets us there?

We couldn’t help but think of The 5 Love Languages book by Gary Chapman. He defines the challenge well in his opening chapter. “Most of us grew up learning the language of our parents and siblings, which becomes our primary or native tongue. Later, we may learn additional languages—but usually with more effort. These become our secondary love languages. We speak and understand best our native love language. . . . If we speak only our primary language and encounter someone else who speaks only his or her primary language, which is different from ours, our communication will be limited. . . . If we are to communicate effectively across cultural lines, we must learn the language of those with whom we wish to communicate.”

Chapman goes on to talk about the languages of love—and we’d like to add the languages of encouragement. Knowing your listener well will help you communicate in a tone that is encouraging, with words that connect about things that reach into her very personal world.

When you’ve come close, she says things like these actual listeners**: “It puts us all in a good place spiritually and mentally.”  And “It makes me feel encouraged and lets me know that I’m not alone in this life.”  Finally, “It lifts me up when I feel down about struggles. I feel connected, whole and filled with the Holy Spirit.”

  1. It’s our time to reach out, touch someone and change countless individual worlds.

Finney Media Note: We’ll be presenting specific ways to accomplish effective communication at our Finney Media Why Listen? Focus Group & Workday April 5 and 6. Read about that opportunity for you HERE.

*Merriam-Webster      **From recent Finney Media Christian radio listener research.

The Away Team:  Us!  2017 Vision

Chuck here.

David Butts wrote an eye-opening, perspective changing book* that just might shake up my 2017. What’s that all about, you say?

Think about your last visit to a sports arena. If you are the away team crowd, there’s less cheering (fewer fans), maybe not even a band playing, plus you have to endure the reaction of the home team crowd to the referee calls. Ugh!

Does that sound like the Church or—closer to home—your ministry in 2017?  It’s true that once upon a time, Christianity, the Church and parachurch organizations had the upper hand of a home team crowd.  We dominated the culture. But even with election swings, the dominant media culture is not Christian-friendly, or even Christian-values friendly.

We are the “away team.” Quoting now: the away team is “a powerful call to minister out of a position, not of cultural dominance, but of the humility that demonstrates that we really are aliens in this world (1 Peter 1). “

How does that help me, you ask?

It makes a big difference in our expectations, our reactions and our prayers and plans. We are, plainly speaking, the missionary. A missionary does some things differently.

  1. She looks at the culture and the people around her and works to understand them.
  2. She isn’t busy condemning them for their culture, but working to bring Christ’s love with her words and actions.
  3. She’s learning the language, not expecting them to learn hers.
  4. She’s praying and asking for prayer for her ministry.
  5. And she’s looking for ways God might be providing little openings.

The New Testament writers had the concept down; they were living it out daily. Here’s Peter, in I Peter 1:17: “Live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear.”

“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…”  (I Peter 3:15)

Might this attitude make a difference in our work in in 2017? Might we become centered on bringing hope to people? Using words they understand? Praying for our listeners with expectancy?

That’s my vision for 2017.

Perhaps you’ll consider it, too.

Together, let’s move forward.

 

*With One Cry, by David Butts. Harvest Prayer Ministries (April 22, 2016)

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