Beyond the Instant Qualitative Profile

April 17, 2014

Do you know who your listeners are? And please don’t tell me Adults 25-54. I mean, do you really know who your listeners are? Don’t get me wrong, age is certainly important, but I really want to know who they are. Where do they live and work? What’s their income, education? Where do they shop and what are they buying? How much time do they spend online? What do they drive? Do they own a home or have children? How about pets? What are their hobbies and interests?

All these details not only set you apart from your competition, but should be of upmost importance to your advertisers.

This all brings me to the Instant Qualitative Profile (IQP) report in Scarborough. Perhaps many of you are familiar with this report and use it quite frequently. For those who aren’t, this report is available in Qualitap, and can be found under the Q-Reports tab on the far left. Click on the IQP report and then the gray boxes will allow you to set your parameters, such as geography and demo. The criteria box is where you would choose your radio station (or whatever else you want to know about). Once you’ve made your selections, click OK and out comes a one-sheet report containing sex, employment, occupation, education, age, income, children in household, and home ownership compositions, as well as persons and index. This is a great report and I encourage you to use it, but I worry that we may not be looking beyond what the IQP has to offer. There are other simple ways to find all sorts of information about your audience, the metro, or even your advertisers’ businesses.

That brings me to the profile report, which is also available in Qualitap. Here, the possibilities are endless, but don’t be intimidated. Once you select the Profile report, again you will need to make a few selections for demo, criteria, geography, and categories. So, if you were looking to find out more info about your audience, you would choose your station as the criteria. What you want to know about your audience would go in the categories section. For example, let’s say you would like to find out what makes of vehicles your listeners drive. After selecting the categories box, scroll down to “Automobile Ownership/Leasing” under the classifications sections on the left. Once you click on that, you will see a bunch of sub-categories show up on the right. Scroll down until you find “make of vehicle owned/leased (HHLD),” double-click on that and all the makes of vehicle should show up in the top section under selected categories. When that is complete, click OK. That will take you back to the Market Target Profile Setup screen. If all your parameters are set, click OK at the top right. After that you will be able to see how many of your listeners own or lease the various makes of vehicles. This will be in alpha-sort mode, but let’s say you want to know the top-ten vehicles owned/leased by your listeners. Simply click the Target Persons box once to sort the list in descending order.  You could challenge your sales teams to find out the top ten lists for all kinds of categories, such as quick-service restaurants, department stores, home improvements, domestic places visited, ways they use the Internet … the list goes on and on. A couple I would recommend are “lifestyle characteristics” found under “household/respondent characteristics” and “leisure activities participated in” under the “entertainment and recreation” category.

It’s all a part of telling your story and sharing that with potential advertisers. This knowledge is not only beneficial to your sales team, but your programming and creative teams as well. Knowing who your listeners are, where they go, and what they are passionate about, is all part of making your content the best it can be.

Research Director, Inc. is here to help. Please don’t hesitate to contact your Research Consultant for assistance.

-Karen Blanks, Sales Research Consultant

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