Heidi Martin - CBAA's Head of Strategy & Insights

After working with the CBAA for the past 18 months to review and improve the CBAA's data & insights, Heidi Martin has commenced as the CBAA's Head of Strategy & Insights.

Heidi brings to the CBAA over 15 year's experience working with organisations such as the NSW Government, ABC, SBS, Yahoo7 and more, helping these organisations grow through better understanding of their audiences and data driven decision making. Heidi now brings this expertise and experience to the community broadcasting sector.

You bring a wealth of knowledge to the CBAA and the sector - what are some of the things you're hoping to achieve as part of your role?

I’m excited to help the sector thrive, by making the best data and insights available to as many stations as possible and helping the CBAA incorporate data and insights into strategic decision making to help achieve our goals.

Considering your work with leading organisations in media and government, what are some of the strengths of the community broadcasting sector you'd like for stations to take advantage of?

The stand out for me is the depth of the relationship between listeners and community stations. That level of engagement can set us apart from other media. There is plenty of research out there that shows the impact of engaged listeners. I’d love to see us develop these stories for community radio engagement in delivering outcomes, whether that’s for community, government, funding bodies or sponsors.

Understanding our audience and community is key to the success of a community radio station. How can we take the data that is available to us and transform this into tangible benefits for our station?

Take the time to truly listen to the data that you have on hand. You might think your station is too small to have data or research. But everyone has some sort of data. The best place to start is with your listener feedback. Take a step back, look at a year’s worth of feedback from the phone, email, social. Summarise it. What are the recurrent themes? If you focussed your efforts on fixing the three most important things to your listeners do you think you’d be in a more successful place? Heck yes you will! Then tell your listeners what you’ve done based on their feedback, they feel involved and will be more than happy to help you down the track with research and want to be a continued part of helping you succeed. 

You're offered your very own community radio show - what's coming up this week on the Heidi Martin Show?

Good Dogs and Good Data