When most business owners think about radio advertising they usually lump it in with television and newspaper advertising as being a medium that is easily exploited by large companies with big marketing budgets and high paid creative experts but not a good choice for small and medium size business. While it’s certainly true that large corporations do invest in radio advertising, many businesses are surprised to learn that radio advertising isn’t as out of reach for them as they would have thought. In fact, here are three basic concepts to think about if you’re a small business owner wondering if radio advertising would be a good fit for you:
1) Not all stations get agency dollars.
It’s easy to say that if you can’t advertise on the station with the largest number of listeners that there’s no point, but the truth is that there is great value existent in expanding your horizons to stations other than your markets top 2 or three stations. In fact, many stations fall below the radar of most advertising agencies because they’re not number one on the dial, but they still offer tremendous advertising opportunity. 88.9 Shine FM in Calgary for example boasts more than 150,000 weekly listeners more than 70% of which is comprised of women between the ages of 25 and 55. This is an extremely powerful demographic and a 1% success rate over 3 years would mean an addition 1,500 customers for your business. Not to mention, because most agencies are overlooking stations like Shine, you can usually get a better bang for your buck when negotiating rates and frequency.
2) You don’t need an expensive product.
While the cost of a $2500 monthly advertising campaign can be made up much easier with a few big sales of $1000 or more, it’s important for business owners to consider the lifetime value of a client. For example, a gym that sells $100 memberships may sell 5 memberships month one making only $500. But if they sell five more in month two they’ve now made $1500 (an additional $500 from the first group plus another $500 for the new members). Five more in month three and they’ve made $3000 and so on as the profit from each month compounds. By the end of the first year the gym has made $39,000 off of their $30,000 investment. They’re now in a position where their advertising budget is covered and they’re profiting every month.
3) Exclusivity isn’t important
Sometimes a business can be inclined to think that if another company in their industry already has market penetration on a station that there’s no sense advertising on that station. With that mindset, why would you start a business in the first place. The beautiful thing about the free market system is that you can compete. Obviously you would need to come onto a station like this with the right strategy in place, but that last thing you want to do is ignore the possibility. What usually happens is that all company’s in that industry benefit from the increased awareness. The existing advertiser benefits from the new blood on the station, and the new advertiser benefits from the industry awareness their predesesor created.
So with this in mind, ask yourself the question. If they haven’t heard of you, what are the odds they’ll do business with you? If you don’t have enough market penetration, then go ahead and call a local radio station. If you’re in Calgary, check this out then contact me! I’m happy to sit down with you to answer your questions!
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