If the idea of traditional advertising—placing an ad on the radio, television, or in a local newspaper—seems a bit old school, you’re certainly not wrong. But that doesn’t mean it’s ineffective. In fact, it may help you streamline the customers’ journey.
Wait, isn’t Brandography is a digital marketing company? Why on earth are we telling you about the benefits of traditional marketing? Because utilizing different media channels to advertise your products/services can help you reach a wider pool of potential customers and generate more leads.
If your goal is to drive traffic to your company’s website, or to the front door of your business, you’ll need to create different touch points to help you accomplish this important task.
“Touch points are interactions between businesses and customers that occur during the customer’s journey. These moments significantly influence customer experience as well as brand perception,” (Hubspot).
How many touch points do you need?
This will depend on your marketing goals, and the time and investment you have available. Regardless of the final number you land on, one key component is that all touch points must work together to lead your customers in the right direction and to the desired conversion (e.g., order online, schedule an appointment, stop in, or contact you).
Aside from creating effective touch points during the customer’s journey, when it comes time to track and measure the success of your traditional ad campaigns, digital holds the key!
In fact, the same tools we rely on to measure your paid and social campaigns can actually remove any guesswork from traditional media efforts.
Don’t believe us? Let’s talk about radio marketing for a moment to give you a clear picture of what we mean.
Why Advertise on the Radio?
Radio marketing is one of the most traditional marketing avenues. It involves your company purchasing ad spots to air your brand’s commercials. And unlike advertising on social media, Amazon, or Google, it helps you catch your audience’s attention when they’re not glued to their screens. This means grabbing their interests when they’re on the move.
Okay, that sounds simple enough. But think about how much radio marketing has evolved from its early years.
You’re no longer tied down to airing your campaigns on local radio stations. Instead, you have the option of satellite or internet radio, which means you can tailor your ads to reach a specific type of audience with certain interests, geo locations, backgrounds, and even political views.
You also have more options on how you want to air, or stream, your radio ads:
Live reads
You may choose to have a popular radio personality or DJ read your ads out loud during a show’s airing.
Sponsorships
You can help sponsor certain radio shows or stations, thereby becoming part of the program and radio’s brand image.
Baked in
These types of ads allow you to become part of the show’s regular broadcast, meaning they’re featured in the beginning, middle, or end of the show and can be either read aloud by the host or pre-recorded.
And let’s not forget how many types of ads you can run, including
- Testimonials from satisfied customers
- Scripted commercials
- Jingles
- Celebrity endorsements
What’s even more exciting is that thanks to radio marketing, we now have podcast advertising!
DID YOU KNOW that 60% of listeners searched for a product after hearing about it in a podcast ad? Right now, 78% of the U.S. population is aware of podcasts—and over 57% of this group has already listened to at least one podcast.
It’s estimated that by 2024, there will be 100 million podcast listeners—and that’s just in the United States!
Like radio marketing, you can easily track and monitor your podcast ad performance to ensure it generates new leads and drives customers to your website or physical location—depending on your goals.
Okay, you get the idea. There’s a lot you can do with radio, and especially podcasts, these days [we’ll get into podcast advertising in a future article. For now, let’s keep the focus on traditional advertising].
Understanding How Radio & Digital Work Together
Radio will not only grab the listeners’ attention and spark interest, but it can also boost your digital ads, increase your SEO/SEM rankings, and improve your social media outreach.
And all these elements, together, can help generate leads that increase sales.
Here’s a Quick Example
Let’s say someone is in the market for a new mattress and searches for a non-branded term like “Minneapolis Mattress store” to start the research process.
Let’s also say they have heard a consistent branding message from their favorite radio talent on a local radio station for Mike’s Mattress Company.
At the same time, Mike’s Mattress Company is also running a PPC ad that’s targeting similar phrases to “Minneapolis Mattress store” or “Mattress store in Minneapolis.” Now, imagine this ad is running next to two other companies.
In terms of paid results, one would more likely choose the familiar PPC brand, right? After all, your favorite personality endorsed it. So, because you trust his option, you’re more prone to choose it.
Or, in the event that the user skipped the PPC section, he or she would still likely click on Mike’s Mattress Company in the organic results, as, again, this is more familiar thanks to the radio branding the user heard earlier.
This potential customer started the purchasing cycle with the simple need of a new mattress. The cycle can speed up once he or she knows who they want to purchase that mattress from. Even though the user might not have started searching for Mike’s Mattress Company, you can see how the user would be more willing to visit Mike’s in the end.
The Problem with Radio Marketing
This now brings us to a major issue surrounding radio marketing: it never gets the type of credit it deserves.
When a business invests in radio marketing, it expects customers to say “I heard you on the radio.” But when was the last time you stepped into a business and told someone, “Jimmy, from the morning show, sent me!”
Probably not too often… or ever, right? When asked how customers heard about a brand, they typically resort to the standard “a friend told me about it,” or “I came here years ago” or “I found it online.”
So, even if you did hear about a company on a radio ad, it’s easier to answer this way than to start a conversation about what radio station you listen to.
So, how do you know if your radio ads are working?
Measuring activity generated by a radio campaign sounds difficult, but you can actually track your ads using the same tools you utilize for digital campaigns.
Google Analytics, for instance, is a great tool for tracking your website’s activity. That said, most people don’t realize you can use it to track the results of your offline ad campaigns, too!
In our next article, we’ll discuss how you can actively monitor your radio ads and create campaigns that work in tandem with your other marketing channels.
