Radio Station Advertising — the Samurai Sword of Small-Business Success

With radio station advertising, you can cut right to the heart of your target market in 60 seconds or less. You can zero in on your favorite demographics, such as 25-54-year-old men — or women, or women with children, or Christian women with children, or Christian women with children schooled at home — through the type of radio programming they listen to every day. You can also reach people who live in selected cities, towns and time zones.

Radio programmers specialize in finding untapped or under-served markets and then building radio programs to appeal to those markets. What this means to small businesses is that targeted radio station advertising is likely to be both more effective and less costly than, say, mass-appeal newspaper or television advertising. To put it another way, you can usually get a lot more bang for your buck with radio commercials than with newspaper ads or television spots.
Small businesses can increase their radio advertising effectiveness by slicing and dicing some of the variables that affect the success of radio commercials:

1) Length — 40-second radio commercials tend to outperform 30-second ones because those extra 10 seconds make a big difference in listener retention. If your advertising budget will stretch to 60 seconds, you can increase your radio advertising effectiveness even further.

2) Memorable — Repeat your main benefit 3 times during your commercial to help your listeners remember it. End the commercial with a strong call to action that includes the address of your store, so they can come down and visit you; or your website url, so they can look you up on the Internet; or your phone number, so they can pick up the phone and call you.

3) Simple — Use one idea per ad. If you have two ideas, make two ads and combine them into one campaign. Keep details to a minimum. The more people have to remember, the more they will forget.

4) Timing — If you can catch people at a time when they’re driving, that’s when you’ll achieve the best retention rates and return on investment of your advertising dollars.

5) Catchy — People love jingles, especially musical ones and funny ones. If you can develop a clever jingle that contains the essence of the unique selling proposition of your small business, then you can win big with radio advertising.

Stations and agencies that sell radio advertising have been selling more ads in recent years as the effectiveness of radio advertising has become more widely known. Although the cost of radio advertising. has gone up somewhat commensurate with this, it is still the most cost-effective way for small businesses looking to build their brand, increase their market share,and make more sales.

Tip: You can get better deals by buying advertising packages. Stations sell radio advertising in packages that reduce the per-spot cost by spreading multiple commercials out over different times of the day and running for several weeks or months per package. Also, the radio-station industry has consolidated quite a bit in the last few years, so you can now buy exposure on several stations simultaneously, in several formats and for several audiences. This is why radio station advertising is now the secret weapon behind many small-business successes.