Time for Your Sales Staff to Bring Cume to the Marketplace

The PPM environment requires a new way of thinking for programmers and everyone inside your station. We tell our clients that it’s imperative to bring your sales staff into your discussion about PPM changes.

Now that we have established the supremacy of cume in the PPM world, it’s time for the sales staff to start talking to advertisers about those numbers and what they mean.

It’s now time to start selling the “big tent” your station covers the market with and how many people get inside that tent, in total. Chances are, before PPM, your sales staff got used to selling your station’s piece of the tent and how it helps advertisers. Now, you need to let them know that you are offering the best of both worlds – a large audience (as close to “mass media as exists anymore) but with qualities that match their objectives because of your format.

Many of the European markets where we work use “daily reach” as the ratings currency for advertisers. They are able to show how much of the marketplace they impact on a daily basis and that creates value. Because of some of the cume numbers we see under PPM, the same approach can be taken in the U.S.

For example, In one top-10 market, five stations boast cume of more than 1 million. That includes an oldies hits station, two CHRs, a hot AC and a traditional AC. A sports station and a country outlet report cumes of more than 900,000. Those are powerful numbers that should be sold.

It’s important to remember that in this day and age, your sales staff is not just selling your station or even your cluster. Often the product is radio itself versus other media. Often those media try to paint radio as a dying medium. Cume is your secret weapon against those attacks.

Radio still attracts large audiences and provides great value to advertisers. Those of us “in the business” know that. Many outside fall victim to perceptions that radio has faded away. One strong upside to PPM is the crowning of cume – the statistic that could, if communicated properly to advertisers, become among your greatest assets in the marketplace.