Getting into the Mind of Your Listeners

If you get to know your listener, and you gear your program or station or podcast more toward your listener, you’ll have more listeners. 

Said a different way, those of us who think about our program or station or podcast all day are not good at judging what our listeners want, unless we better understand who’s listening, where they’re listening, and what’s on their mind and heart when they’re listening. This means we have to take our personal opinion out and listen to them. 

How do we know this? We’ve asked. In research. And we’ve observed what results in more listeners. After  organizing and advising programs, stations and podcasts for over 40 years, and observing what the highest performing entities do, I’m  convinced more than ever that listening to your listeners and acting on that information really is the secret sauce. 

The following “Four A’s” are how we recommend you think about this: 

1. Attitude. Listening to your listener is an attitude . . . of putting your personal opinion aside and pursuing what your listener thinks, what preferences she has, how and where she listens, and what will cause her to stay or come back more often. 
2. Ask. The Right Questions of The Right People. True story. I once was the Program Director of an NFL team’s radio flagship station. There was a change in the team’s front office leadership and along with new people, they brought in a new song to play at home games to celebrate the team scoring. Problem – fans loved the old song they had played for years when the team scored! And were very vocal about it. After the team scored in their first home game they played the new song, fans booed! The team decided quickly to go back to the original celebration song. When we asked team leadership how this could have happened, they said they’d done research and the new song was more popular. We then asked where they had done the research. They said they’d researched people in a town . . . 500 miles away, where likely no one knew the song or cared about the team. In fact, there’s a rival NFL team in that city! That’s a story of researching the wrong people.   
3. Acknowledge. You will be surprised. Often, what we discovered from listeners is different from what we expected. We’ve been surprised by Christian radio listeners’ appetite for worship music (it’s huge) and their interest in humor (it’s big) as part of a Christian station or program. And surprised by that same audience’s rejection of chatter about pop culture being a part of a Christian station’s programming recipe. Chances are when you listen to your listeners, you too will be surprised!  
4. Act. On the information. It doesn’t count if it’s not coming out of the earbuds. Listen to your listeners, then focus on how you’re going to make the sound they want happen.