Focus Groups

Your listeners are people … real people. Not a set of numbers in parentheses on a graph or a slice from a pie chart. Your listeners are real people who have ideas, expectations, thoughts, reactions, and opinions about your station and your competitors.

Your listeners have made an investment. The audience knows that if your radio station sounds like a loser they are likely to be stuck with an out of touch and obsolete product if they stay around.

A big part of your job is finding out what your listeners think makes a winner and convince them that is you. With your product and marketing, win them over to the idea that there is no substitute for what you do.

"No company has media focus group moderators with more expertise than Paragon Media Strategies; moderators who keep a group under control with an easy hand that encourages an atmosphere like talking to a new friend."

At Paragon Media Strategies we realize that listeners want to make radio better. While they sometimes have difficulty expressing the specific ways in which their listening might be improved, they have an important stake in radio and will try to help you in any way they can. However, it takes a skillful, experienced, and proficient focus group moderator to dig beneath the obvious and mine the meanings behind the words.

A focus group is like painting with a large brush or roller. You are covering the big picture while staying alert to those special moments when listeners surprise you … use their own words, not radio-speak … and, grapple with explaining the good and bad of what they listen to every day.

There are three ideal times in a research year to think about doing groups.

Most often focus research is a tool at the front end of a perceptual study. The groups provide feedback on possible directions your larger study might take. In this use, focus groups troll the listeners for subject areas you’ll want to include in the statistically-projectible work to follow.

Second, focus groups are a great way to test creative ideas and new marketing approaches. They can keep you from making a terrible mistake while they give you real-time listener reactions to your campaigns. No other form of research allows you the freedom of hands-on in-person dialogue with your Listeners while demonstrating actual examples of marketing, on-air product, potential new shows, liners, themes, logos, and brainstorming.

Finally, focus groups are a terrific way to get buy-in from your staff. Who can doubt the potential of an approach after watching listener after listener endorse the idea? Ratings and other research numbers become real people you have heard talk about radio. Good focus groups are unforgettable.

A great set of groups has two parts: the first-hand experience of watching radio listeners talk about their listening and a comprehensive follow-up that puts the findings into perspective in a clearly outlined action plan.

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