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Guaranteeing points SMART Situational Analysis Your Station Is Not Among The Top-Ranked Stations In My Demo Most of the time, you're facing a situation where the media buyer is ranking stations by Average Quarter Hour [AQH] (or Average Persons) Audience ratings. She is inclined to buy the top-ranked stations in the target demographic so long as their Cost Per Thousand [CPM] (or Cost Per Rating Point [CPP]) is acceptable. If the buyer plans to buy three stations deep and your station is the fourth, fifth or sixth, you have a problem. Most of the time, you are expected to charge a rate that will yield a lower CPM or CPP than the higher rated stations so that, even though your station is not as highly ranked in AQH ratings, it is more "efficient" than the stations ranked above it. Let's say that your station is not willing to get on the buy simply by charging less. What do you do? You are going to try to change the rules. It's not easy. It helps a great deal if the media buyer likes and respects you enough to allow you to "change the rules." It happens every day. You may or may not be dealing with a media buyer who is concerned with selling as much of the client's product or service as possible. You need to determine this first. If the buyer wants to reach the greatest number of potential CONSUMERS (as opposed to ratings) with an EFFECTIVE campaign, there are a number of things you can do to show her how several other factors are more important than Average Quarter Hour Audience (AQH) Estimates. If, however, the buyer is narrowly focused on AQH and CPM and you cannot change that, there are certain approaches you can take. At this point, go to "Selling Beyond The Ratings" in the A-Z Concepts portion of the RADIO SALES TRAINING, PROCESSES & METHODS section of SMART. You'll find very specific ways in which you can get around the AQH ratings and CPM deficiencies. They are: * Changing the Criteria from AQH to Reach. * Selling Your Loyal Listeners * Quantifying and Selling Qualitative Research * Why the Ratings Might Be Wrong * Selling Exclusive Programs & Promotions * Placing a Value on Value Added * The Station's Audience Promotion and Outside Advertising * Multi-Book Averages * Sell the Size of Your Audience and Results * Adding Your Station Increases Reach & Frequency * Sell Effective Reach & Frequency * Sell Your Unique Selling Propositions * Sell Mood, Mode & Need * Sell Your Bonus Audience * Sell the Geography of Your Listenership * Guaranteeing Points Overall, you have two basic options: 1) supplant one of the stations ranked above yours, of 2) get your station added to the buy, i.e., get the buyer to use four stations instead of just three. In addition to the several topics listed above, you can: 1. Change the criteria of the buy in terms of dayparts. Convincing the buyer that 7-12 Mid or Weekends should be used may allow you to lower your CPM by including less-expensive inventory. Weighting the daypart that your station does relatively well in may move you ahead of the top-ranked stations. 2. Keep the focus on achieving a SELLING FREQUENCY. This is a "crawl before you walk" process, but you may need to educate the buyer on how FREQUENCY is generated. See "Frequency, Frequency, Frequency" and "Buying The Right Schedule For The Budget" in the A-Z Concepts portion of the RADIO SALES TRAINING, PROCESSES & METHODS section of SMART. The point you want to make and have understood is that it is far better to plan a Radio buy that achieves an "actual" frequency of three than it is to achieve a certain "Rating Point Level." Oftentimes, the top-rated stations have such big Cume Audiences that the number of spots the buyer can afford will never generate a three frequency (meaning a 4.7 "theoretical" frequency). Ironically, your station may improve the average frequency level by having a smaller Cume Audience!