Radio advertising has been around for a long time, but it has not lost its potency. If anything, radio ads have become more helpful to businesses in recent years due to the advent of online radio advertising.
92% of Americans listen to the radio each week. And 25% of listeners become more interested in a brand after hearing an advertisement for it. This can make a huge difference for your brand.
Radio ads can be critically helpful to the success of your business. But some of the ways radio advertising can help you might surprise you. If you have not considered radio advertising for your business, you might be missing out on the ways it can benefit your brand.
Keep reading to find out the five surprising ways that radio advertising can help your business.
1. It Helps You Reach Your Target Audience
Radio advertising is one of the most effective ways of reaching your target audience. You already know who your potential customers are. Radio lets you reach them directly.
Not all radio stations are created equal. Every station will have a target demographic of listeners. You can discern what that target demographic is by the type of radio program the station produces. By choosing which radio station to advertise on, you are targeting your potential customers directly.
Additionally, radio stations have a local focus. On-air radio will target a specific city or region. This is truer for radio than it is for television.
If your brand has a local focus, you stand to benefit substantially from radio advertising. This is because your ad will be geographically relevant to every listener you reach.
If your brand has locally based locations or events, on-air advertising is very effective for publicizing them. You know that the listeners live in the vicinity of your brand, and can attend your events.
At the same time, radio has a wider reach than some other modes of targeted ads. Radio ads can reach anyone in the region with interests related to your brand.
In summary, radio advertising can be incredibly beneficial to your business because of its wide reach with a targeted focus.
2. It Induces Cognitive Thinking
Watching television can be a passive experience. Same with scrolling through your phone. But really listening to a radio program requires active listening.
This engages the cognitive part of your brain.
Cognitive skills help you do things like think, learn, reason, and remember. You want listeners to be engaging in these activities when listening to your ad.
Active listening means that listeners are actually engaging with your advertisement. This does a few things that can be helpful for your brand.
First, it creates better retention. Even if listeners don’t immediately seek out your brand, they remember your advertisement. When they need a product or service like yours, they are more likely to seek you out, because they have heard of you.
For more information on how to make your advertisement memorable or unique, click here.
Second, listeners are more likely to think about your service or product and whether they need it. Even if it hadn’t occurred to them to seek out that service before, they might now.
Radio has traditionally been called the “Cinderella medium.” This is because when things go right, the results can be incredible.
One of the reasons it can be so incredible is that the radio can be heard from pretty much anywhere. Think about it: most people listen to the radio when they are in their cars, traveling from place to place.
This can be beneficial in its own right. If your target customers are listening to the radio while they are out running errands, they are already in the buying headspace. If they are thinking about shopping when they hear your ad, they are more likely to seek out your product or service.
3. It Can Bolster Your Online Presence
Radio as the “Cinderella medium” has never been truer than it is now.
In addition to listening to the radio in the car, you can now stream radio programs and stations on the internet.
Some people think the radio is outdated because many people don’t have traditional radios in their homes anymore. But they are wrong.
Even though many people don’t have a traditional radio anymore outside of their car, many people have a smartphone. And if you have a smartphone, you have radio access.
This is great news for online brands. When your ad plays via online streaming, it can be paired with an advertisement banner. When listeners want to know more about your product or service when they hear your advertisement, they can click on the banner. From there, they will be led to your product site.
This can help you make a sale, or even gain social media followers if you link your banner to an Instagram or Facebook page. Before long, you will be able to advertise to your target customers from multiple platforms.
It also allows your brand to engage with listeners in multiple mediums. By listening to the audio advertisement and then seeing your graphic banner, they are engaging two of their senses with your brand. This means that they are more likely to remember you.
4. It Personalizes Your Brand
Given the choice, consumers will always opt to support a brand that they have a personal connection with. Radio advertising gives you the chance to form that personal connection.
It gives them a chance to know you, and to know your voice. This is why it is helpful to have consistency amongst your ads in terms of whose voice the consumer hears.
It might be your voice, as the business owner, or it might be a voice actor, standing in. Either way, it gives your brand a personal touch. Before long, consumers feel like they know you.
By introducing a voice to your audience, it helps you create an identity for your brand. Consider producing your advertisement with professionals who can help you craft that identity for your target customer.
This is the best thing that could possibly happen to your business. Consumers are more likely to go with brands they trust. By offering up a human side to your brand, you are inviting them to trust you.
We know by now that advertising is more effective when it engages emotions. By triggering memories or images or by telling a story, effective advertising can speak to people on a human level.
Radio advertising will allow you to do that with the sound of your voice. Never pass on an opportunity to connect emotionally with your audience.
5. It Maximizes Your ROI
Maximizing your ROI, or Return on Investment is crucial to any advertisement. Radio advertising helps you do this in a couple of different ways.
First, radio advertising can be a decently affordable way to get your message out there. Combined with the fact that you are almost definitely reaching your target audience, you are getting the most bang for your buck.
Secondly, the effectiveness of advertisements is maximized when they are repeated. Repetition will drastically affect your ROI. The more times a listener hears and engages with your advertisement, the more they are likely to remember it and act on it.
Repetition will drive home the point that your product or service is available and preferable to other similar services. This is also why it is productive to use a repeated tagline or phrase in your advertisement.
Thirdly, if your advertisement plays over online streaming, it is ultimately easier to track and measure your ROI. That’s because you get real-time results. This can help you figure out what works about your ad and what doesn’t.
Knowing how effective your ad is ultimately does two things for you. It tells you what you should change or keep the same for next time. As a result, it increases your ROI because you won’t make the same mistakes twice.
In this case, you are looking at radio advertising as a long-term investment. Your second ad will be better than your first, and your third will be better than your second.
If your radio ads are effective, you’ll want to keep producing them. Repetition over a long period of time will turn your voice and brand into a household name.
Radio Advertising Can Bolster Your Brand
Radio advertising may be one of the oldest forms of advertising, but it is just as relevant now as ever. Perhaps it is even more effective today, since the advent of online streaming. Radio advertising can bolster your brand by inducing cognitive thinking, adding personality to your brand, reaching your target audience, maximizing your online presence, and ultimately boosting your ROI.
To start planning your radio advertisement today, click here.
