by Jon Hull, Audience Growth Consultant
Many businesses have their favorite sayings—the little north stars they focus on to keep everything running smoothly. In retail, it’s usually some version of “the customer is always right.” In real estate, it’s the classic “location, location, location.”
And in radio? Well, we’ve got one too. We believe in it wholeheartedly… even if we don’t always follow it as faithfully as we think we do.
It’s this: “frequency, frequency, frequency.”
If we don’t say it enough—or play it enough—it simply can’t cut through the noise of everyday life. And let’s be honest, there’s a lot of noise out there.
Researchers will tell you most of us need to hear something about seven times before what we’ve heard sticks. I think we understand this with something like a music rotation – but are we paying attention to this rule when we’re thinking about what we’d like our listeners to know about us?
Zig Ziglar liked to say that “Repetition is the mother of learning and the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.” It’s a mouthful… but he’s right.
If that’s true, it raises a good, slightly uncomfortable question for those of us who help to craft the sound of a station: How often are we repeating the things we most want our listeners to remember?
If something really matters — a truth, message or a mission — it deserves more than a few mentions. It deserves rhythm. Echo. Familiarity. The kind of steady presence that helps it stick long after the listener is out of earshot.
I’ve spent close to five decades helping listener-supported Christian radio stations understand that their fundraising efforts will only be as successful as the time they invest in helping their listeners understand and embrace the stations’ mission. But I don’t believe this principle applies only to fundraising.
How well do your listeners really know your station? The honest answer probably depends on what you’ve chosen to spotlight… and how often you’re willing to spotlight it. Because if you’re not consistently pointing out the things that matter most, your listeners will eventually drift toward a voice or platform that is.
May I suggest taking a little time to identify a short list — no more than five — of the things a listener truly needs in order to engage with your mission and choose your station more often each week? Stations that have done this with intention have seen listeners more deeply embrace who they are and what they do.
But even more importantly, they’ve helped people navigate a crowded, noisy media world with a clearer sense of what matters most.
