Any time small business owners see articles or posts about marketing these days, they are routinely about types of digital marketing or related strategies. Digital marketing certainly has a place in the small business arsenal, but it’s not the only or even necessarily the best way of reaching local customers.
Sometimes, the old advertising standby of radio gets to local customers better and faster than anything online. That doesn’t make a radio marketing campaign a sure thing. It still takes some thought and effort.
If you’re considering advertising on the radio, keep reading for five radio advertising tips to help you make your campaign a success.
1. Keep If Focused
The length of radio ads fall into four precise blocks. You get 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, or a full minute.
A minute may sound like a long time, but that averages out to around 150 words for your ad. For a 15-second spot, you get around 35 words.
Boil your message down to the bare essentials. For example, “Bob’s Used Cars is knocking 10 percent off of every vehicle for one day only, this Friday!” It tells the listener everything they need to know and you can say it in under 10 seconds.
2. Know Your Target Audience
The language you use and offers you promote in an ad will depend on your intended audience. If you’re selling luxury jewelry, you’ll talk up the quality of your products for an adult audience. If you’re selling silly sunglasses for teens, you’ll talk up the fun and probably the discount price.
3. Timing
Different audiences tune in to the radio at different times a day. Talk with the radio station about their listener demographics across the day. Then pick the times your ideal customers are most likely tuning in to listen.
4. Call To Action
Unless you’re doing some kind of brand building, your radio commercials need calls to action. That’s typically the last sentence in the ad. It’s where you ask or tell the listener to do something.
“Visit today for the best pepperoni pizza in X,” is a good example. Keep it direct and simple for the best results.
5. Test
Almost no one gets their ads right the first time. That means you must test different versions of the ad.
You can adjust the actual language, the background music, and even get different voiceover artists. You can test versions with male and female speakers. Keep testing versions and the timing of the ad until you see results.
Leveraging Radio Advertising Tips
When you first move into radio advertising, focus on the essentials first. Get your audience pinned down. Then, work on the writing so it will appeal to that audience.
Once you think you’ve got the right message, strip out excess words. Work your calls to action until they shine. Then, produce a couple of versions of the ad.
Once you have those, test and retest in different time slots until you hit a winning combo.
Looking for more small business marketing tips? Check out the posts in our business section.
