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Radio Advertising- Get sales through Immediate Response

Copyright ? 2005

In America, 290 million people own more than 300 million

radios! Only radio can take your advertising message to

people while they ride bicycles, walk in the park, ride in

cars or climb mountains. Radio brings a sense of urgency to

its listeners that is second to none.

Contrary to the predictions of doom during the advent of

television, radio is alive and well today, and radio

advertising is a major part of the plan for advertisers

of every size and description.

In its pre-television days, radio was the national

advertisers' most economical way to communicate with

millions at a time. Syndicated programs of music, drama and

news were a common part of the American life-style. With

the advent of television, radio moved to the automobile and

the beach.

Along came the transistor and radio moved to the shirt

pocket. Today radio is every where. Millions awake to

the sound of clock radios, and for many the radio is the

last sound they hear before going to sleep. How can a small

business use this sound-only medium for effective

advertising? Only by understanding it and capitalizing on

its strengths.

Today's radio station is judged on its effectiveness not

only by the number of its listeners, but also who those

listeners are. Many of today's stations have positioned

themselves to reach a selective audience instead of a total

market.

In one marketplace, one station may play only country-

western

music, another rock music, a third only religious music,

while others feature 24-hour news broadcasts or talk shows.

As an advertiser, format programming allows you to buy

advertising on stations whose listener characteristics most

closely coincide with the profile of your firm's customers.

Buying time on a given station also can help you reach

audience segments that you may want to target to help

expand

your firm's total market segment thus enhancing your direct

response method of marketing.

Radio advertising is sold on the basis of time. That time

can vary from an entire program, which includes your

commercial announcements, top spot announcements ranging

from 10 to 60 seconds.

Price ranges are higher during drive time (the hours in the

morning and evening when the maximum number of people

are

in their cars going to or from work, school or other daytime

activities) and lower during the time when more people are

watching television.

Most stations offer package rate plans with a specified

number

of commercials guaranteed within a particular time slot.

Also, consider buying flights of commercials, i.e., an

intense saturation of 30-second or 1-minute spots in a

relatively short period of two or three weeks. Repeat this

flight technique during key promotional times of the year.

The sounds you can employ on radio include not only the

monologue of a man's or woman's voice, but dialogue and

dramatic conversations, vocal and instrumental music, and

sound effects of every imaginable nature, used individually

or in combinations.

The size of radio's audience, like the circulation of

newspapers,

is audited by independent organizations and available to

advertisers through station sales representatives. Arbitron,

one of the auditing firms, conducts its survey by having a

sample number of households keeping a written diary of the

radio listening habits of each occupant during a pre-

determined

period (usually one week).

Arbitron then summarizes the various stations' listeners by

time of day in 15-minute segments by sex and age of listener.

An advertiser can use the Arbitron data to select the station

or stations that best cover the desired target audience.

Radio advertising frequency is as high as you can afford.

Many stations now broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a

week. The number of commercial minutes any station can air

in each segment of programming is limited by the Federal

Communications Commission (FCC), but there is still the

opportunity to have a message repeated frequently in any

given period. It is also possible to have the radio station

come to your business for a remote broadcast with customer

interviews, prize giveaways and other crowd-drawing

techniques.