A Comprehensive Guide to Leveraging Radio In Your Marketing Playlist
Part One is designed for the radio newbie or small to medium sized enterprises. If you have never advertised on radio, or only do so a few times a year, this guide will assist you in gaining a deeper understanding on budgeting, selecting spots and stations, and what your commercials should say.
Please note that any costings provided are examples only, and budgets vary from business to business.
Part One: Intro to Radio
Welcome to the world of radio advertising! Radio is hella fun-from a production standpoint it’s just as fun as video with a thousand per cent less stress!
As a medium, it's cool, it intertwines music, celebrity and pop culture! It's delivered in a hundred-year-old medium whose format has scarcely changed. It remains community-driven, a mouthpiece of the people and of the emerging voices of a society: our thought leaders. Listen to the radio and you will quickly learn popular opinion on trending topics regardless of whether they are cultural or economic in nature. Radio is the medium around which communities huddle in their most important moments-to learn what is happening with hurricane and natural disaster, deaths or assassinations, coups and election nights. If you're in politics, radio should always be in your back pocket. If you're a business, radio should consistently be in your marketing plan.
Do You Have a Small or Medium Sized Enterprise? Tune In!
This section speaks specifically to small and medium sized enterprises because there's often hesitation from young or small businesses to put in the dollars that traditional and mass media requires of them. Don't let what you think it’s going to cost frighten you-if you play your cards right you can work with a budget less than $5,000.
For anyone foraying for the first time into a promotion spend in the $5K- $20K region like this, I firmly plant radio at the top of the list. Obviously, it could be credit my background in broadcast, but the truth simply is that radio is far reaching, effective and delivers on your bang for buck not only in terms of production cost but the media spend. If you're just starting to spend some real money advertising your business offline and you're feeling nervous-don’t be. Radio is almost a guaranteed win.
Radio Has Many Shapes And Sizes
How you structure your radio plan, or the shape your radio ads take, depend a bit on your objectives, and how you've calculated your budget. A few rules of thumb:
Your spend needs to generate a profit so don't overspend, but do get the most value.
Don't forget that you have to budget for PRODUCTION as well as airtime.
When it comes to airtime - paying a slightly higher price for drive time or a station with a better audience (demographics and numbers) is better than just looking for the cheapest option. In radio it's not about the lowest price, but the greatest value and stations will always work with you.
When booking, it's worth it to have someone who can create your media plan and book/negotiate on your behalf.
Advertising on radio doesn’t always look the same either. There are:
Standard 30, 45 or 60 second ads which are your bread and butter
Jingles and donut jingles which cement your brand identity and build up a lot of hype around your brand, a promotion or a season like Christmas
Duty announcer scripts for when your budget is really tight or you need to maximise profit for a smaller event or sale
15 or 30 minute interviews when education is really important and you have to explain complicated details or you are your business and want to connect more personally to your audience
5 minute or 15 minute pre-recorded programmes that can fit nicely into your corporate communications plan
And annual programme sponsorship to get the best bang for buck for larger product portfolios or larger enterprises with ongoing sales needs
For the small and medium sized business radio newbie, your plan is likely to include interviews, standard commercials and duty announcer scripts, though many businesses will see a mix of all of the above.
Now, a little insight into when and how you might advertise on radio.
Short Term Promotion/Campaign
What is it: A short term promotion which has a prize element or is running alongside a larger scale event, or a campaign that requires an action from users. This could be a brand celebrating a birthday with competition and prize, a brand piggybacking on the current generated by a major local festival (e.g. crop over campaign, reggae festival promotion) or an educational campaign asking users to take action in a short timeframe (for e.g. filing your taxes on time)
Timeframe: 2-6 weeks
Budget: $3,000-$20,000
Format
Your radio ad will either need to build hype and excitement within the theme of your campaign, or explain the mechanics of your competition. It should be clear what the prize is, if any, and not only what action is expected of the customer but how they can take action. You'll also need to drive users to a place they can get more information- usually online or in store. Don't expect to fit every detail into your commercial, and do use half hours/15 minute on-air interviews to complement your commercials, especially if your competition mechanics are complicated.
Brand Identity
What is it: New product on the market? Or you've been open awhile, sales have dipped, and you want to remind customers you're still around? Or maybe you've just rebranded and want to introduce the new you. This is where brand commercials typically come in.
Timeframe: 6 weeks to a year
Budget: $5,000 (short term) to $100,000 (long term)
Format
Brand identity is the most fun for the creatives and it's where you need to highlight your personality, your unique selling point and your strengths. In a melodic and catchy kinda way! For brand identity it's highly recommended you produce a sung jingle in addition to your standard commercials.
A jingle really showcases who you are, what you sound like, it defines the "sound and sense" of your identity (the audio version of "look and feel" of your visuals).
Good jingles are memorable, timeless and can imprint on customers for many years. Though you can produce short lived jingles to hype promos for a reasonable price, customarily jingles are seen as long term collateral. Plus, jingle production (should) afford you a portfolio of versions including your instrumental that you can use on videos and donuts for promo or campaign ads.
For launching a new product on the market, your timeframe and budget may be on the smaller end of the spectrum because you will need to reassess the success of the campaign after the initial first weeks, and move into phase 2 with new or adjusted objectives.
To remind customers you're still around, the same applies.
However, if you're in a competitive industry and require ongoing brand upkeep throughout the year, you'll want to be at the $100K per annum end of the spectrum.
(Remember: these figures are examples and could be less or more dependent on the size of your business.)
Sales and Events
What is it: Promotion of an upcoming sale or event. Typically a week, a weekend or 'one day only' in duration. Some sales are a recurring aspect of your marketing plan, such as to move stock at the end of a season or boost quarterly sales to meet targets and therefore may be duplicated quarterly or monthly.
Timeframe: 1-4 weeks
Budget: $2,000 to $10,000
Format
If your business is on the smaller end of the scale or the sale has a limited capacity such as seats in a restaurant or inventory you need to start with a careful look at your projected profits in order to calculate your budget. While I'm gung ho to produce your commercials any day, if your scale is too small, you'll waste budget that could be better spent on social or digital.
Here are the red flags that could indicate your scale is too small for radio:
You need to move a small number of inventory that will not generate more than your $2,000 spend
You need to fill a number of seats for a special event. For e.g. a cafe hosting a special Easter brunch. As proprietor of a restaurant you should know the average value of each seat in the house, and be able to project earnings for the special event you want to promote. Your first move should be to try to fill seats based off of existing customers (for e.g. social media or mailing list) and if that doesn't get you to capacity then you can throw in radio in the week preceding your event.
So, once you've confirmed radio makes sense for your sale or event, your key objectives are to push sales, build excitement, and emphasize the limited timeframe. Your ads will take the hard sell approach and likely include price points. With a smaller budget, you will likely use duty announcer scripts and standard radio commercials.
How To Maximise Radio Spend
Radio is not about spending the least dollars; it's about spending the best dollars. Here are some tips on how to maximize your radio budget:
You need to know your target audience, and which stations cater to those listeners. Don’t put the right ad in the wrong place!
You need to listen to the station you're advertising with to ensure you're happy with the content of the material your commercials appear against, the quality of the broadcast and even the content provided by the announcer on duty.
A network that controls more than one radio station is likely to give you more opportunity than a single station, unless the single station has programming that caters to your niche or presents your perfect audience.
If you have a group of companies or portfolio of brands, and you can spare an annual budget for radio (starting around $36,000 per annum) you should examine programme sponsorship – you get more value, more negotiating power and more opportunity to explore designing bespoke programmes.
Choosing the right days of the week or time of day can be a consideration for certain businesses. For e.g. food businesses want to advertise at meal times. Weekend-only operations can advertise from Thursday, rather than all week long.
Finally, knowing what you want to achieve from your radio advertising as it relates to your overall marketing plan can offer a lot of insight into your budget, timelines and even the type of commercial you produce.
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