Years ago I used to work in radio and back then a radio survey was done every 6 months to see how many listeners were listening to each station.
These numbers were then used as ammunition over the next 6 months for selling advertising.
You could then go out and say “We have the number one music station in the market”.
But some other radio sales people would use these numbers and skew the results. They would concoct some way of getting every station to be number one for something.
Station X is number one in the market for people aged 55-64 who are employed part time and are interested in big game hunting.
My Sales manager at the time who say “Lies, damn lies and statistics!” (At the time I thought he was a genius for coming up with such a great line, but later found out he was quoting Mark Twain), which it was.
Full Circle
Being out of radio now for some time I haven’t been subject to this dishonesty (creativeness?), but I have found a new trick others in the online marketing world are using.
I have always been a believer in results in marketing, I have also been a believer of not mistaking correlation with causation. This is why I have always said to people not to be too concerned with search rankings. Don’t get me wrong, in this day and age search rankings are important to all businesses and this is why we offer SEO services. But being the top search ranking for “business card, stationery, dl marketing print” should not be an aim of your SEO campaign. I mean who talks like that!
This is what I mean about coming full circle.
Your real goal should be to bring more qualified traffic to your site, who then take actionable steps. A tactic to get there is to get better search rankings across a range of targeted keywords.
Your goal should not be to get better search rankings. Anyone can get better search rankings if they are not fussy about what keywords they are focusing on. Just like those radio reps not caring who the target demograph is, as long as we can say this station is number one for something.
If you want the down low on Lies, damn lies and statistics, give me a call and i’ll shout you a coffee and tell you all I know about the dark old days of radio.
