Marketing plays a vital role in any business and can ultimately determine the success or failure of a company. Although some perceive radio advertising to be too expensive for small businesses, and perhaps even an obsolete medium to reach audiences, they could not be more wrong. In fact, radio advertising is affordable and has proven to be the most effective medium for delivery of advertisements to targeted audiences.
Audience - Potential Customers
In North America, about 95% of people listen to the radio on a weekly basis. People wake up to the radio in the morning, listen to the radio on the way to and from work, hear it while at the workplace, and may stay up to hear the late-night talk shows.
Radio talk programs, morning shows, shock-jocks, and listener call-in shows all provide an enormous audience base for you to advertise your product or service.
Targeting your Audience
In addition to the sheer size of your potential customer base, radio advertising provides an effective way to specifically target your prime audience. Every radio station appeals to its own unique demographic. Some radio stations are liberal, some conservative. There are religious stations, children's stations, and sports stations. This natural division of interests into specific listener groups makes radio the prime medium to selectively target your specific consumer base.
Not only do different consumer groups divide by station, but by listening times, as well. It has been shown that the majority of adults listen to the radio to and from work, while younger listeners are more often tuned in during the afternoon, after school. This means that if your business offers sports equipment for kids, then you can choose to advertise at 4:30 in the afternoon, on the children's stations and sports stations.
Budget
Radio is actually an extremely cost-effective medium for you to advertise your business on. Radio spots can require a smaller budget than advertising in newspapers and magazines. In addition, your radio ads can be more comparable to larger competitor's ads, since there is no cost of competing visually with them, such as with television ads.
Effectiveness
Perhaps the biggest benefit of using radio advertising is the effectiveness of ads on listeners. Radio is perceived as the most intimate of advertising mediums, because people are so often alone when listening to the radio, such as when driving to and from work.
Also, people usually tend to develop a personal relationship with their favorite radio stations and programs, more so than television. As a result, people have been found to be more accepting of radio ads than of any other type of advertising media. This intimacy provides an opportunity to contact more personally with consumers, and to arouse emotions in the listener which, if all goes well, will increase the chance of a sale.