Radio Team - Executive Summary

Greater Atlanta

Unitarian

Universalist

Congregations

Exec.Summary

Home / Exec.Summary /

Executive Summary

Many Unitarian Universalists listen to PBS (Public Broadcast Service) radio stations that broadcast National Public Radio (NPR) programs. There is a very strong similarity between PBS/NPR listeners and Unitarian Universalist (UU) demographics. Knowing this, it is easy to understand why advertising during NPR programming is attractive to UU congregations – since most of us listen to it, we think like-minded people would be open to UUism and our congregations. Data showing the cost effectiveness of this advertising medium are not available for congregations. According to the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA)'s Office of Information¹, the UUA underwrote PBS/NPR programs in 1995, 1996, and 1997. The first and second years' responses were deemed "pretty good" and "very good" but 1997 was "disappointing.” The only data collected (thereby evaluating success or failure of the effort) were the number of phone calls made to a toll-free telephone number.

The Mid-South District's Communications Committee created a subcommittee, known as the Radio Team, which pursued a grant from the Fund for Unitarian Universalism to track the effectiveness of advertising Unitarian Universalism on public broadcast radio stations. The grant, "Spread the Word," was awarded in July 2002. The advertising program began September 2 and finished its 12-week run on November 30, 2002.

We gathered data to quantify the effectiveness of advertising UUism on PBS/NPR. In this report we will describe our process, the data and results, and our conclusions.

Conclusions

At the end of each section, we will present our "conclusions" or the highlights of what we have learned through this campaign. We hope these conclusions will help congregations evaluate the efficacy of using this medium with respect to their advertising goals and budgets.

The overall conclusions for the Executive Summary are as follows:

There was a significant difference between congregations regarding the number of visitors who identified the PBS/NPR ads as the reason for visiting the congregation. We believe the difference is a result of greeter interaction (or lack thereof) and the strength of the website foreshadowing the radio ads' impact, rather than the size of the congregation, as we had anticipated ("Welcoming Visitors").
Do not spend one precious second of ad time giving a phone number ("Phone Number"); it is much more effective to give a website address ("Website").
This project's website (www.gauu.org) was an extremely successful and the most effective tracking tool. We attribute its short, relevant name as the strongest factor in its success. Listeners heard our ad, remembered the website name, and then logged onto it long after the ad had aired. Website addresses should be short, easily-remembered, and relevant to the congregation's name ("Website", page 18).
Websites are critical means of communicating with the public. Photographs and map/directions are critical to a visitor's search and interest – content is key! Each congregation's website should give the visitors enough information to research the congregation and UUism, as well as links to more information ("Website").
Bigger is not automatically better. As we explored the options for PBS/NPR stations, we were drawn to a corporate-sized station (cutting edge demographic studies, large broadcast area), expecting more sophisticated systems and support when compared to an owner-operated station ("Radio Station Selection"). We now believe that working with a smaller station might enable better working relationships and clearer policies.
The more expensive "big reach" times (when the most listeners are tuned in, such as "morning drive time") did generate more traffic to our website. But, the additional traffic barely offset the additional expense of this costly time period. There was little overall difference between ad-time and listener response ("Website"). Since it there is not a conclusively highly-effective time period, we believe it is best to distribute announcements among the time periods.
The radio industry’s standard Cost Per Lead (CPL) is $10.00. Based upon visitors to congregations, phone calls, and website hits during this project, our CPL was $39.00 – nearly four times the industry standard.
This project's primary objective of measuring advertising effectiveness was ground-breaking and ambitious. The Radio Team met all of the project's objectives ("Objectives") and we are pleased that with this report, we can supply data that is as exact and pure as could be collected. Every ad, every phone call, every visitor, and every website visit were tracked as closely as possible, with a focus that has never been attempted before. Even with this focus, different interpretations can be made and human error is noticed. But with this report, we can demonstrate what worked and what didn't work, and we offer these conclusions to you, the reader.

Good luck with your endeavors.

¹ November 2001 and January 2002 phone conversations with Mr. John Hurley, Director of UUA’s Office of Information.