Radio Advertising the good wellness

How Can Radio Advertising Boost Your Business?

Radio advertising offers you the opportunity to deliver a simple yet powerful message to a targeted group of consumers that may be interested in your product or service.

Radio advertising allows you to deliver a short and powerful message to your target audience.

You can write and produce the ad yourself with minimal effort and then identify the stations that best serve your market. If you are lucky, you might even find a popular radio DJ with a large following to take a personal interest in your product or service and deliver the message on air during his or her show. This will give an extra “endorsement” boost to your radio spot.

How Much Does Radio Advertising Cost?

The cost of a 15-, 30-, or 60-second radio commercial will depend upon the frequency of the ad broadcast and the time of day that the announcement runs. Morning and evening drive times are usually more expensive than middle-of-the-day or late-night spots because the radio audience tends to peak during commuting hours.

There are production costs to consider in addition to the spot expenditure. These will be determined by your need for music backgrounds, sound effects, and use of professional or amateur actors, such as yourself, to read your copy.

Which Radio Station Should I Choose?

Your target market should determine the type of station you choose to advertise on. If you are looking to appeal to men between the ages of 18 and 30, for instance, you might want to consider advertising on an all-sports station or an FM rock station.

Your target market should determine the radio station(s) on which you choose to advertise.

In general, because you know your product or service better than anyone else, you should write the copy yourself. Make sure you communicate the benefits of your product or service in such a way that listeners will immediately identify with it.

You’re Not Buying a Commercial—You’re Buying an Audience

Radio stations sell time, and they sell access to markets. The key feature of a radio station is its format—the type of programming it features and the style of the announcers. The format determines the audience the station appeals to, and the audience it delivers to advertisers. Some of the most common descriptions are:

• Top 40
• All talk
• Progressive rock
• Golden oldies
• All news
• Classical
• Adult contemporary
• Beautiful (easy listening)

Some local stations are affiliated with national broadcast networks such as CBS. These stations have more credibility as a news source, and consequently will be able to charge higher rates.

Buying Radio Time: Pick Your Day-Parts

Radio stations design their programming to attract certain listeners, and then sell those listeners to advertisers in tiny increments. A radio station has an ad time inventory of about 18 minutes per hour, which it sells in increments of 15 seconds, 30 seconds, and 60 seconds (:15s, :30s, and :60s). But not all minutes are valued equally. Audience size shifts dramatically throughout the day, and radio rates vary to reflect the change in the estimated number of listeners you are reaching.

Not all minutes have the same value, so choose your time carefully…

The day is divided not into hours but into day-parts:

A.M. drive time, 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., has the most listeners. They are at their most receptive, too—ready for the news of the day, and the news of your product as well.

Midday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., will have considerably fewer listeners, but they are often very loyal to a certain station. These people are listening to the radio while they work, and they follow very predictable habits in their listening. If you do too, by advertising at the same time daily with the same message, you will build awareness quickly with these people.

P.M. drive time, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., will have almost as big an audience as the morning drive time. These people may be in more of a buying mood than those rushing to work in the morning.

Radio listener ship drops off rapidly once people get home and out of their cars. The evening belongs to television—unless you’re in a “shift town.” If you are buying radio time in a city where factories run around the clock, pay more attention to your local station’s Arbitron ratings than to these generalizations. Radio in the workplace is a powerful influence.

The Evening day-part lasts from 7 p.m. to midnight, and Late night from midnight to 6 a.m. At these times you’ll find fewer, but fanatically loyal, listeners. These listeners have made a conscious decision to listen to radio rather than watch TV. With the right creative approach and the right match of station format to product, the evening hours can lend themselves to breakthrough advertising. If evening gives you access to the right market, it could be your best time to buy.

Radio prices are based on the day-part, the length of the spot you run, and the frequency, or the number of times your ad will air over the course of a certain period. If you’re comparing radio to advertising in the newspaper, you might say that the day-part is analogous to what section of the newspaper you appear in, the length is equivalent to the size of the ad, and the frequency is comparable to how many days your ad appears in the paper.

Related: How Frequently Should I Advertise? 

Writing Radio Copy

You can write your own ad copy or you can hire an agency or have the radio station do it. You need to make sure that your ad:

• Gets people’s attention
• Gets across one or two powerful, simple, and easily conveyed messages that will drive people to buy your product or service
• Has a call to action, such as a limited-time special offer
• Clearly states the next step, such as the location of the store to visit, the website to go to, or the phone number to call
• Has plenty of repetition

Even if you decide to write your own ad and it is a simple so-called talking head, I suggest you don’t read it yourself, much as you probably want to. Get the radio station to provide a great-sounding voice that works for you.