A new report by the RAB (Radio Advertising Bureau) indicates that radio has now seen seven consecutive quarters of growth. In addition, digital, off-air, and network broadcasts are all now seeing strong gains in advertising revenue.

“The positive growth we’ve seen over the twenty-one month period is unprecedented since the late 1990′s. Once again, this underscores Radio’s strength during these unusual economic times,” says Jeff Haley, President and CEO of RAB.

Radio’s 2% Q3 increase to $4.527B caps seven consecutive quarters of upward momentum.  Revenue for year-to-date through September is also up 2% over the same period last year, to $12.891B.

Spot Revenue maintained its steady course, while Network spending grew 2%. Digital once again posted the largest increases for the quarter (+17%) and year-to-date (+18%), with other Off-Air up 10% and 8% for those periods, respectively.

“Advertisers’ expanding use of Digital and Off-Air platforms to complement their sustaining broadcast commitment strengthens Radio’s current and long term viability,” stated Haley.

“The live and local environment that Radio offers provides an ideal platform for a diverse group of advertisers to zero in on their target audiences,” adds Haley.  “This strong marketing mix affirms Radio’s position as a trusted partner to many, including this group representing the top ten for Q3.”

Read the Full Report Here (opens in new window as PDF)

As Arbitron readies its full release of RADAR 109 on 6/20, it announced some of the data from the report. Broadcasters added more than 1.9 million weekly listeners in the past year.  Additionally, radio is attracting more young listeners, with the number of weekly listeners 18-34 and 12-17 rising.  Radio now reaches nearly 66.5 million Adults 18-34 and more than 22.8 million Persons 12-17 on a weekly basis.

The number of 12+ Persons listening to radio each week now reaches an estimated 241.5 million or 93.1% of all Persons twelve and older. As compared to the June 2010 report, the number of radio listeners increased across all major demos, with Adults aged 18-34 showing the biggest gains, adding nearly 350,000 weekly listeners in the age group in the past year.

Read More at Radio Business Report

Make your message RELEVANT and about THE LISTENER
By creating a message that’s relevant to your target demo’s life, they’ll create an interest in your commercial, and want to know more. Once you get a listener WANTING to learn about your product or service, their minds are open to absorb information, and you can brand your company’s name into their long term memory. Illustrate the experience of using your product, show how your service benefits them, and use terms and concepts that paint a picture. If listeners can see it in their life, they’ll create a need for it. If you start an ad only with information about your company, you may lose the listener before they even realize they want what you sell. Give them a relevant reason to care about you first.

Make your message INTERESTING and HARD TO IGNORE
A common ad is a common mistake. When creating, don’t fall into the trap of worrying about what a radio ad should or typically sounds like. Try to avoid being like others. If your commercial has unique elements, it’ll better stand out in the commercial clutter and make people curious to learn more. If it’s filled with common clichés and generalities, not many will remember it. Since today’s consumers are hit by over 5000 advertisements a day (signs, tv, online, etc), you really need to be different to make an impact. Find one or two really interesting and beneficial points, and don’t let people ignore the message, or even worse FORGET it. But how do you avoid being ignored? Be entertaining, make an interesting point, tell a story, be anything but the usual!

Read the rest at www.formula52.com

1. Don’t Underestimate The Power of Radio

The voice is a wonderful thing.

Used properly, it can move you to tears, unleash a fury of anger, sooth both physical and mental pain, irritate you like chalk on a blackboard, hypnotize you into the most embarrassing behavior, fire you up & motivate you to accomplish the most daunting tasks, fire up a nation to battle, seduce the most cold-hearted soul and yes, it can certainly convince you to happily part with your money.

In fact, the people who make radio production their livelihood, are paid quite handsomely to get you to do things that are not on your priority list.

Ever listen to a movie trailer? Listen to the announcer. His job is to get you to see that movie. Whether you realize it or not, the impact of that voice lasts longer than you may be aware of.

You may remember the visuals, but it is the EMOTIONAL AUDIO IMPRINT that leaves you with a “I’ve got to see this when it comes out!” memory.

It is the same subliminal effect that radio can create.

2. Get The Best Creative Production Possible

Why do you want the best creative possible? Well, there are several reasons.

1) it makes your advertising more effective

2) the cost of your campaign can actually be lower if more people respond to a better commercial, as fewer spots are necessary to make the same impact

3) better creative is more memorable.

4) strong creativity entertains and sells at the same time

5) powerful creative radio spots get people talking about the spot & consequently the product

“OK,” you’re saying, “but this sounds like it’s going to cost a fortune!”

Nothing could be further from the truth. What will cost you a fortune, is a radio advertising campaign that falls flat because the production was not up to scratch!

Remember, advertising is an investment if you eventually get back more than you paid. It’s a fortune if you don’t get back anything!

In order to make sure that there’s a payback, I highly recommend you look at all the variables and creative production is high on the list!

3. Develop A Strategy & Stick With It

There are many ways to use radio. Short campaigns, long campaigns, image building, promotions, product launches etc.

The first thing to be aware of is that new advertisers have to develop name recognition with a station’s audience. This isn’t as important for long time advertisers who have used other media, but it is crucial for first-timers.

Well known advertisers are seen as reliable and trustworthy. The longer you advertise, the more favor you win with listeners. It is like money in the bank.

I advise all new advertisers to start with an introduction campaign to highlight who they are, what their product is and the benefits of shopping at their store.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t break the rules and have a grand opening with a fantastic door crasher special. Certainly that will work. But ideally, the best results for that type of scenario come when a “teaser campaign” precedes the grand opening.

Let me state that much of the advice offered here is what I believe to be the “safe route” to effective radio advertising. Even under less optimal conditions, radio can be quite effective!

What you want to do, however, is not succeed by throwing tons of money into your advertising, but rather cover all the essentials so that you have an effective and cost efficient campaign.

Good planning can go a long way.

Click Here to Learn More With Radio Advertising 101

Source: Blog Universal

In the marketing world, radio has earned the reputation of being the odd step-cousin. You know the one. No one knows quite what to do with him. Especially at family gatherings when everyone tries hard to avoid sitting with him. (After all, who knows WHAT he’ll start talking about.)

Much of that reputation comes from radio being tough to track. On one hand, radio does work. Businesses do notice an increase in sales when they add radio to the mix. However, radio doesn’t test well. In surveys and other tracking methods, radio tends to be the one with the dismal scores.

A good friend of mine, who’s also a marketing consultant but before that she sold radio for many years, has a theory about that. She says radio works on a subconscious or unconscious level. People remember the ad, but not that they heard it on the radio. So, they tend to credit a different medium for the ad, like the yellow pages. Yellow pages gets a boost while radio drops a few points.

Regardless, radio should not be ignored because it does work. And many marketing consultants will probably tell you radio is an excellent medium to reach a local market.

Read More

Every business wants it, but few know how to get it. I’m talking about instant recognition. The kind you get when you hear a slogan, some piece of music or even see a logo that brings a specific business to mind. Many businesses try to get that kind of recognition, but most go about it in all the wrong ways.

To promote social inclusion across the pools of the country and sometimes all over the world, radio advertisement is extremely flexible and feasible for business owners as they get fame for their business and for relevant commodity in few seconds. The duration of a radio ad is always no more than 60 seconds and some times it is about only 15-30 seconds only. So for getting more attention of the listeners depends on the power of radio ad. Radio ad producers always try their best to produce a radio ad that dose not listen or sounds before it and have lot monotony. So they write a powerful jingle and custom ad that has the ability to get the attention of the listeners at once and can strike their attention from all other tasks for which they are busy. This ability of the jingles (a sound behind the voice in the radio ad) impresses a listener a lot and remains active for a long time in one’s mind.

Another major advantage of radio advertising is that it is inexpensive to produce ads and to place them among the audience. This allows small business owners the luxury of placing advertisements on more than one station in a given market. Direct response radio advertising is a very powerful way to grow a business profitably.

Jingles and their lyrics have vaulted countless companies and products to worldwide fame, because they’re 400 times more effective than a commercial that’s simply spoken. While you’re innocently tapping your foot to a jingle and its lyrics, it’s communicating a message disguised in a melody that you’ll remember, and it’s giving life and personality to products normally regarded as ordinary, boring household items. Suddenly, these products are transformed into amazing inventions that you desperately and immediately want. And, much like nursery rhymes, remembering a product is easier when it’s associated with a catchy tune and simple, memorable lyrics. Amazingly, this technique can help us remember things for more than 20 years.

Benefits:

1. Build branding for your company. Nothing reinforces your image like a consistent, quality message. Jingles make a quality, catchy tune that’ll have your customers singing happily as they walk in your store!

2. Cost Effective. In the long run, jingles can prove its value. Instead of paying huge sums of money every month for a new commercial, your jingle stands the test of time and continues to impress months after it first hits the airwaves. With a simple update in copy, you can keep it fresh all the while keeping your audience updated as to what your company is promoting that particular month or week.

3. It’s a great word. Is there a cooler name than jingle? We think not.

4. Easy to remember. You know what it’s like, you get a song stuck in your head and all day long you’re singing it. Just imagine when a potential customer is singing about your business all day long!

5. They’ve stood the test of time. Jingles have been around since 1923, right around the time that commercial radio came to the public. 80 something years later, we feel like we do justice to this age old practice, let us prove it to you!

Source: Push Button Jingles

Transitioning a consumer from merely an interested party into a potential customer, is one of the most important steps in advertising. This period is known to marketers as a call to action and can take on numerous forms. Traditionally 800 numbers and websites have been the most popular methods utilized across all advertising forms. In the world of radio advertising though, the website is currently the most popularly utilized call to action. But is it the most effective?

In the world of radio advertising, the most common call to action traditionally used was the website. But it begs the question, where are consumers listening to the radio? Generally, it’s not somewhere with a computer in immediate range. Right then and there, potential customers are lost because of their inability to engage with the advertiser.

Mobile phones on the other hand are generally on hand wherever the customer may be, presenting a viable option for easy interaction between the consumer and the advertiser via SMS Marketing.

So in this day and age a web address may not be the most effective way to appeal to customers and the case studies are backing it up!!

A New Zealand Tourism company would give a definite yes. By implementing a SMS marketing component to radio advertising, they experienced some excellent results the easy way. For the duration of their campaign, two separate calls to action were offered – the traditional website choice and a SMS marketing option. The addition of the SMS marketing option nearly doubled the total responses received by the company, drawing hefty praise from their marketing team.

Far from a unique case though, when a multinational financial company offered three separate calls to action in their radio campaign, which one do you think received the most responses? SMS marketing proved to be by far the most popular and effective choice, receiving twice as many responses than the internet and three times as many responses as a free-phone number.

Source: www.webmarksolutions.com

What does Radio advertising cost? Great question! How much airtime do you want? That’s the answer. All ad campaigns are different, just look at your advertising budget in other areas. How much does your newspaper advertising cost? Ask your business friends and they’ll give you different replies. Do you want hourly, daily or weekly exposure?

An owner with a single store may spend $5000 a month and get some solid exposure whilst a chain store might invest ten times that number during a specific campaign.

When you’re driving around in your car, you hear the same ads time after time, so you know they work. If you want to get the word out about your product, you need to air your ads many times during the day. Regular radio advertisers know that to get results you need to air your ad frequently to get results.

They are prepared to invest to get their messages heard. Rather than asking about radio advertising costs you should ask what investment am I prepared to make to ensure that they work.

That’s all fine but what does it cost! You need to think about how many people will get to hear your message for a good CPT (cost per thousand). It’s better than any other method available today. Prices will be different from town to town, talk show to talk show and will also depend on the time of day you want to air your message.

Popular stations will charge you more than less popular stations and prices inside a popular station will vary depending on shows that you want to use. It all depends on who your customers are…

Radio is a great medium because it has really flexible costs and availability to almost any business. You really don’t need a mega budget.

Source: Articles Base

No doubt you’ve heard this famous quote on selling before, but do you realize just how critical it is to your next radio advertising campaign?

TV ads show you what the wrapper looks like but radio is a brilliant, made for medium to sell the “sizzle”. The mind is magical. Make your audience taste, feel and touch your product through the power of their imagination. Communicate your message this way to get customers banging down your door.

Small business owners aren’t necessarily professional marketers and are hesitant to take place their first radio ad.

Don’t be. Follow a few simple steps and you could be benefiting from the power of radio this weekend.

As with any marketing campaign you must first decide who your target market is, otherwise you’ll lose money. Have a plan of attack and monitor your results, closely.

Do something different.
Don’t copy an ad promoting a product similar to yours. Certain death awaits radio ads that copy an existing format. Find an angle. Offer something different. Can you discount if customers buy in bulk or order before a certain date.

Enter everyone who buys after hearing your commercial into a free competition. Stand out, be creative.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Radio advertisements benefit from being repeated, building response rates over the life of your campaign. It’s important to work out a long term deal when it comes to negotiating a contract with your local radio station.

Be ready for the response.
Make sure your business is ready to handle the increased demands resulting from your successful ad campaign. Ensure your website is up to date and has sufficient bandwidth to cope with the extra demand.

Call to action.
Your radio advertising campaign will not be a success unless each ad includes something to make people act. Your message has to grab and keep the listeners attention,long enough for them to make the call or enter your website’s url.

Source: Creative Advertising Blog