Radio advertising offers the best bang for your buck when it comes to spreading word about your business to a wide and varied audience. Most people forget that the radio was primarily used to convey information over a widely distribute population; these days, everyone thinks that visual and digital channels are the only way to propagate any sort of product. Though definitely more traditional, advertising on a medium like the radio can be an extremely effective marketing strategy and the investment is definitely less than today’s more conventional channels of communication. Recent studies say that throwing the radio into our marketing mix can help reach up to 93% of the adult population on any given working day.

Radio ads reach people when other mediums cannot. Since it does not require its audience to stop what they are doing, the ads can communicate with its audience while they are driving, working or even sitting in a waiting room. The range of exposure of the radio, especially when used in conjunction with other media outlets, reinforces the brand in the minds of your customers, both present and future. It is scientifically proven that information that is passed through sound is retained the most. Using a catchy call for action jig at the end of the ad can also make it more memorable without having the audience write anything down to remember the information.

Another advantage of using audio ads, apart from the fact that they cost significantly less than both newspaper and TV ads, is that they can be created and aired quicker than other mediums. This means that changing a product specification or promoting special offers is easier. The best time slot for advertising your product depends on the audience you intend to reach and the amount of money you wish to spend on acquiring the slot for a certain amount of time, so choose wisely and watch your brand prosper.

You have successfully chosen a campaign objective, a target demographic and you have also created a radio commercial and aired it during set slots during the day. Customers are coming in to buy your products or partake in your services. But now, another problem arises. How will you know if your investment is beginning to pay off? Of course, the normal indication is a sudden surge in your customers, but how can you find out that they are here because they listened to your radio commercial and not because of some other media advertisement that you may have also invested in? Here are a few ways to make sure your radio advertising is garnering interest and bringing in the crowds.

One of the ways to measure the success of your radio ad is to create a metric consistent with that of the marketing objective. This type of success measurement takes two steps to figure out. This is one by measuring sales before the ad and after the ad, provided that the commercial on the radio is the only advertisement being done. The next method is to measure sales against an industry standard or benchmark. Such information is available in almost all industries both online and through government and private trade centres. This will give you a rough idea on how much profit you should be reaping for the amount you spend on advertising and many trade magazine and brochures provide additional information on how to boost sales through whatever advertising medium you choose to use.

The final method is considerably more hands-on and works best for services. Try asking customers directly on how they heard about the product through a multiple choice survey. This also works well when you are advertising for a specific aspect of your company and want to know that it is getting its exposure through your radio advertisement by including certain keywords in your survey. To sweeten the deal, certain discounts or bonuses can be availed.

Advertisements already have a bad rep for being a waste of time. With the ability to skip ads becoming more apparent in the age of the internet, it takes true creativity and the right amount of empathy to truly sway people away from pushing the dreaded ‘skip’ button, though tighter schedules and a faster corporate rat race are as much to blame. As people find less and less time to do the things they love, stealing their attention to advertise for a product they may or may not need has been honed into a mixture between a fine art form and a psychological exercise.

No longer are straightforward ads enough to hold a person’s attention. In order to succeed, today’s ads must be an amalgamation of clever marketing and the performing arts, delivering all the information relevant to the product and its audience while pushing the boundaries of its content medium. Empathy and the ability to create an emotional bond with the complete strangers in the crowd of listeners is also a major selling point. The contents should make them laugh, shed tears, criticize and believe in the facts being presented. The moment the audience begins to form an opinion about an ad, they have begun to think about it, accomplishing the task of the marketers.