The SKINNY on Radio Advertising

From meager beginnings in 1920, radio has grown with us to be a major player in advertising. The radio industry says they get about 8 percent of all advertising bucks. Not bad when you consider the many ways to hawk your service or product

They get their fair share because radio works. With over twelve THOUSAND radio stations in the country, the music and news they broadcast is everywhere.

Radio is the mobile medium. Few cars have TV's up front, and few drivers can read the New York Times while driving (safely). The advertising on radio targets you passively. You don't have to be looking at it or reading it to get the message.

Radio's strength is drive time. The times of the day when most people are in their cars driving to and from work. You can sound like a pro when you call 'em AMD and PMD.

AMD is morning (AM) drive time, typically 6 to 10am. AMD is traditionally the most expensive radio time because that's when more people listen.

PMD is afternoon (PM) drive and is considered to be 4 to 7pm.

Other radio slots are DAY which represents 10a to 4p period and EVE, 7 to midnight.

Most radio stations offer two ways to buy ads. Specific placement (I want to be in the Roscoe Billy Bob Show) and ROS (Run of Station) a formula that spreads your announcments into all dayparts, including late night and overnight. Of course there are specials and sponsorships, too.

Here are my tips for buying radio ads

+ Always use 30 second ads. If you can say the whole Lord's Prayer in 20 seconds, 30 is enough for your business (no matter what the media person says)

+ Buy advertising on the stations that reach your target customers, not the ones you like. Just because you listen doesn't mean everyone does (especially if you like Classical Music)

+ Buy ads on two or more stations if possible. Few markets have one radio station so dominant that it reaches all the listeners.

+ Buy one week on one station, the next week on the other, back and fourth. Limit your buy to 4 weeks in any month, two on each station. 48 weeks per year gets thew same impact of 52 and saves 4.

+ Buy at least 12 ads a week (18 on each if you can afford it) and advertise every other month.

+ Insist on no overnight or evening ads. Ask for a package that puts you in AMD and PMD at a discount. Like the newspaper inches committment, you are talking about over 400 ads per year per station.

For more about radio get my article "Do Your Radio Ads Work?" Send a blank eMail to MailTo:RadioAds@BigIdeasGroup.com

Remember the media salesperson is interested in selling ads, not improving your business. It is up to you to be the expert and make the informed decisions.

Subscribe to "BIG Mike's BIG Ideas" Newsletter MailTo:subscribe-956603364@ezinedirector.net

Other Articles in This Category:

The Shrinking Ad Dollar
Seven Ways to Kick Up the Power of Your Print Advertising - More Small Business Power Tools
Top Design and Marketing Tips from a Branding Expert
Getting the Most Out of Your Networking Group
4 Ways to Double the Power of Your Business Cards
10 Tips to Use Giveaways Effectively
Cable TV Advertising; Mobile Detailing Customers
Advertising, Public Relations, Newsletters, and Newsletters for Your Small Business
Ten Ways To Sell Advertising Space Fast
Tips for Using Paid Advertising
8 Low Cost Ways To Advertise, Promote and Market Your Business
3 Things Every Yellow Pages Advertiser Needs to Know
Using Ad Agencies and Designers
Direct Response Advertising; Radio vs TV
10 Simple Techniques To Make Your Ad Get Powerful Attention
15 Tips for Better Yellow Page Ads
Science of Advertising and How to Benefit From It
Electronic Display Signs

RELATED ARTICLES

How to Write Great Headlines
According to experts, just changing the headline of an ad or sales letter has been known to dramatically improve the effectiveness of an ad or sales letter by up to 1700 percent! Yes, headlines are that powerful--and that important!

Getting the Most Out of Your Networking Group
Here is my personal list of things to do at your networking group:

3 Inside Secrets To Making You Richer Using Direct Mail!
Making money using direct mail isn't easy. And anyone who tells you it is, is lying.

Humor in Advertising
Many of the most memorable ad campaigns around tend to be funny. Advertisers use this strategy to attract customers to their product. Audiences like to be entertained, but not pitched. People will pay more attention to a humorous commercial than a factual or serious one, opening themselves up to be influenced. The key to funny advertising is assuring the humor is appropriate to both product and customer. The balance between funny and obnoxious can often be delicate; and a marketer must be certain the positive effects outweigh the negative before an advertisement can be introduced.

How to Create Ads that Sell with Little Effort
One of the main problems people find with marketing, is the actual selling. How can you create ads which sell?

Do Your Radio Ads Work?
Most small businesses don't have a high powered advertising agency to produce selling radio commercials for them and end up with something akin to a high school play, or with the business owner reading tired copy.

Predictions for 2010
2005 puts us at the mid-point of the first decade of the new millenium. What will things look like at the end of the 1st decade of the new millenium in the world of advertising? I thought I'd project where the ad industry is headed and what 2010 (or sooner) might look like. This two-part article will take those discussions a few steps further. First, we'll look at a scenario that is likely to be common by 2010 when the heretofore separate worlds of TV advertising, search marketing, behavioral targeting and inventory yield management blend together. If you buy some of this scenario, it's interesting to look at the implications for ad agencies. In part two, I'll speculate on the likelihood of Google being the biggest "ad agency" in world. If you look through the prism I lay out, it will cause you to think differently about where the industry is headed whether or not you agree with some of the specifics.

Is Advertising Art?
Oh Grand and Glorious Southern Guru, I am perplexed. What ails thee, my peabrained little grasshopper? My sleep has been short, my walls have been climbed, my hair has been pulled.

Fax Advertising : Hitting Your Target Immediately
In the business of marketing and advertising, it used to be that companies that wanted to get the word out quickly to key customers on a new development would rely on email with follow-up phone calls. But with the new technologies available in fax broadcasting, fax advertising has taken over as the advertising medium of choice when it comes to contacting your customers at the speed of light.

The Graphic Problem
Digital printing has revolutionized the sign industry. Current printers can reproduce an image at 1440 dpi (dots per inch) at virtually any size. But they are worthless if the original image is of low resolution. We define resolution using pixels. A pixel is commonly thought of as the smallest individual unit of an image (tiny dots if you will). If the pixel content is low, the image will look fuzzy. Anyone that has blown up a picture in a popular program like Adobe Photoshop has experienced the pixilation of an image. The most common way to express the resolution of an image is via two integers: the first is the number of pixel columns or width and the second is the number of pixel rows or height. Another common way to express resolution is by giving the total number of pixels in the image (usually expressed as megapixels). It is determined by simply multiplying the pixel columns by the pixel rows.

How To Make Your Yellow Page Ads Work
I hear it often, "advertising in the Yellow Pages directory doesn't work!" I smile knowingly and wait for a pause in the conversation, and this is what I say in response to their claims?

Customer-Involving Signage and Selling
Here's some easy ways to create signage that will attract, not annoy customers (and local government agencies that regulate signage):

Womentisements
The unnecessary and extensive use of female models in advertisements is common not only in America & Europe, but also in Pakistan and rest of the world. Women are used to sell everything from cars to cigarettes. These advertisements use attractive women posing in ways. This type of advertisements initially started in the West to sell special women products, alcohol and adult entertainments. Gradually this trend spreaded to other markets & products and unfortunately it has been adopted by our market also.

Persistant Advertising Will Do No Harm!
From my experience, I've been on many discussion groups and have spoken to many other like minded people. The one topic that always seems to arise is how to get massive sales right away.

Small Cards, Big Ideas: Alternative Uses for Business Cards
Aggressive business card marketing isn't about handing your business cards out to everyone you see.

Electronic Display Signs
Electronic display signs are used nowadays in great extent to display important information instantly all over the world, which uses LED technology, which stands for light- emitting diodes. These are widely used in the worlds of commerce, government and even non-profit organizations.

Dont Put All Your Eggs in The Same Basket
Solution: You can protect yourself by partnering with other lead sources because it is unlikely that they will all have a problem or technical issue at the same time.

Design Your Own Newspaper Ads
Many people in business lay-out (design) their own ads. That old adage "If It Is To Be It Is Up To Me" prevails. Do it yourself and you may get what you want. Many newspaper salespeople are poor at conveying customer wants to the design department, and slow are retunring proofs. The result is an ad with errors, not approved by the cusotmer.

Change, or Reinforce?
Do you know about the distinction - and it's a useful one - between communication that tries to reinforce and communication that tries to get change?

16 Methods for Getting Free Advertising
2. Check with local newspapers. Before going to press, many smaller newspapers have space left that needs filling.. Your ad may be just the right size to occupy this unfilled space and they will run it free.

Category Home | Site Category Map