Experience of Radio Advertising

I.S.T.

Hi All,

I am considering doing some radio advertising for our website. It is very expensive so I am apprehensive about spending money on this as I have no experience in the area. We took out some magazine advertising before and the response was extremely poor.

I was wondering if any of you have used radio advertising in the past and what your experience of it was.

Thanks.

blue4ever

Without sounding crass: If your web business lends itself to a radio audience, then give it a whirl - but remember punters have the memory span of a doughnut.

Make sure that your web address is easy enough/tricky enough to be remembered. Many websites on radio use seo! with a line like 'just search for "pink elephant" on google" - having optimised their site for that expression - but that may have a short lifespan.

Personally, it think its good for branding and not necessarily for direct response. Either print or adwords might be a solution.

Magazines can be good - if, again, its the right medium and you have to right ad for the site/medium.

seachto7

I suppose it depends on your audience and target market.

A PPC campaign could be worth launching, and set up day parting so you could target those searching online during the day or at night.

You could also have a content campaign and target forums such as boards, but also a host of others. It has a low click through rate, but is a cheap way of branding.

Are you talking national or local radio?

I.S.T.

seachto7 wrote: »

Are you talking national or local radio?

National radio.

blue4ever

Have a look at your own map - heavy concentration in Dublin/Limerick/Cork/Waterford etc - national might be a bit of a waste. Have a look at the local stations - might suit your fit better.

I will pm you a link

Macers

There's a few things to consider for radio advertising.

Firsty cost obviously - also the cost of the production of the ad.

Secondly target audience as previously mentioned - ie Region specific or national.

Thirdly (and related to above) target age. ie 15-25 year olds wouldn't listen to Radio 1 etc so station selection would be crucial.

bigneacy

Do your sums and find out if it might be better to go with the 4 regionals + 1 dublin station and 1 cork station, rather than a national campaign.

91011

magazine advertising is great for building and maintaining brand awareness over a long period of time - it is useless as a once off advertising tool.

Radio is very effective if used properly. You Absolutley MUST get a properly scripted advert and then look for the target market. Then you have to allow for a 6 week campaign with response really only taking effect in week 3 /4.
Good way of saving money is to only run Mon/Wed/Fri and in higher frequency.
Another tip is to try one decent local station - such as kfm in kildare and see if radio works for you - if this works, then go national.

I.S.T.

Thanks for all the tips guys. Went ahead with Newstalk ads this and next week. Today is the first day. Fingers crossed it works well :-)

lucidus

any updates on how it went?

robbie1876

I heard your ad and downloaded the app, it worked for me!

As someone who used to sell radio advertising in the 90s, I think you got the ad and the frequency just about spot on. It's difficult to get the creative just right so that it's catchy but not annoying, interesting but not too wordy. And we all know there's nothing worse than over saturation of an ad, no matter how brilliant it is.

I would imagine in your case it is difficult to quantify the success of the ad. iTunes doesn't ask you where you heard about the app when you download it. How do you feel the campaign went? Would you do it again?

I.S.T.

lucidus wrote: »

any updates on how it went?

robbie1876 wrote: »

I heard your ad and downloaded the app, it worked for me!

As someone who used to sell radio advertising in the 90s, I think you got the ad and the frequency just about spot on. It's difficult to get the creative just right so that it's catchy but not annoying, interesting but not too wordy. And we all know there's nothing worse than over saturation of an ad, no matter how brilliant it is.

I would imagine in your case it is difficult to quantify the success of the ad. iTunes doesn't ask you where you heard about the app when you download it. How do you feel the campaign went? Would you do it again?

Hi Guys,

I was a bit disappointed with the response. We did double the traffic to the website but have not sold near enough apps to cover the cost of the ads. So I don't think we will be doing radio advertising for the app again. I think the problem might not be so much the advertising but the product. IPhone users are notoriously tight and expect to pay no more than a euro or so for an app (in fact there is an expectation from many that the app should be free!). Unfortuantely it is not viable for us to sell at this low price.

In answer to robbie1876, I would consider radio advertising in the future, just not for this particular product.