Radio advertising is an innovative way to reach thousands, and sometimes millions of listeners. It is an art in and of itself and you face the challenge of having a limited time, it's generally sold in slots of 15, 30, and 60 second duration, to get your message across to your audience. Therefore, the right things need to be said in order to create a lasting impression with your listeners.

An advertising guru once said: "the aim of radio advertising is to sell the sizzle not the bacon." Also you have to place your ads at the same times that your target is more likely to be listening. If your customers are late night listeners then it wouldn't make any sense to run your spots early in the morning. It is a great marketing tool for helping you promote your online business and is a very powerful medium.

It can be a very productive way for a company to use its advertising dollars if it's done correctly. Radio advertising usually is more effective if it's combined with some other form of advertising. For example, print or television ads run in conjunction with your radio campaign can be very effective. Radio advertising is invasive and persuasive and reaches a captive audience.

Another reason why radio may be advantageous is that your target may not be magazine readers or television watchers and this medium may be the only way to get their attention. Internet Marketers also need to realize that radio advertising is, in some cases, far less expensive than other forms of advertising.

Plus, with the popularity of Internet Radio sky rocketing this offers another audience to tap into and the list of benefits derived from radio is growing exponentially. Radio advertising is another way to get one's online business or organization recognized both locally and nationally if that's your goal. For those entities looking to reach as many people as possible, it is simply another convenient marketing solution.

Another major advantage of radio advertising is that it is inexpensive to produce ads and to place them. This allows small business owners the luxury of placing advertisements on more than one station in a given market. Direct response radio advertising is a very powerful way to grow your business profitably. According to John Blackledge analyst with JP Morgan, Internet radio advertising was estimated at $500 million in 2007.

Local radio advertising is limited to a specific and contained demographic area and is both considerably less costly to produce and can be narrowly tailored to the audiences of particular stations. Of all the traditional advertising media, radio advertising is the least avoided, according to Canadian media studies.

Offline methods have been shown to be very effective at driving traffic online. If increasing Web traffic is your goal, and why shouldn't it be, then using traditional media outlets to increase traffic should be a part of your internet marketing strategy. Ultimately, you'll need to weigh the pros and cons to decide whether radio advertising is right for your business.