media update’s Talisa Jansen van Rensburg takes you through the top three ways of advertising your brand on radio.
Radio advertising should most definitely be something you add to your marketing strategy, simply because recent stats compiled by Businesstech show exactly how many people you could be reaching on South Africa’s top radio stations.
Between October 2018 and March 2019:
This shows that many people within South Africa do listen to radio, which gives brands a great opportunity to advertise their brand on radio stations.
Here are the top three types of radio advertising your brand can use:
1. Live reads
A live read is when the broadcaster on the show reads your advertisement in real-time on the air. This concept
works in a similar way to influencer marketing in terms of it making use of a well-known and liked on-air personality who will entice people to engage with the advertisement.
For example, Jeremy Mansfield is a well-known South African radio presenter and has been in the business since 1985. This means that he has built up a fan base over the past 34 years, and many listeners have followed him from station to station. This means that the people who listen to his live reads might be more willing to purchase a product or service as opposed to if another ‘newer’ host read the same commercial.
2. Sponsorships
This type of radio advertising is not so much in your listeners’ faces, which is beneficial for your brand. Why? Because people are exposed to an enormous amount of advertisements every day, meaning the chances of them turning the radio off when they hear another advertisement is very high. People only listen to ads that they have a personal interest in or that doesn’t
push the brand.
With sponsorship, the on-air presenter knows how to advertise without making the listener feel like they’ve just listened to an add. The key to sponsorships is
subtleness.
That’s why sponsorships usually take place in between segments, such weather, traffic and sports.
For example: “This hour’s traffic was brought to you by Nescafe, be sure to satisfy all your coffee needs with Nescafe and stay awake in traffic!”
3. Advertising spots
An advertising spot is when you buy time on the air, giving you the freedom to choose when you want your advertisement to be heard. Normally, the top and bottom of the hour would be
more expensive than the 15 minute mark. This means that if you’re looking at times to advertise,, the top of the hour would be 14:00, for example, and the bottom of the hour would be 14:30. So it would be best to avoid these and rather go for 14:15 if you’re not willing to pay more.
Additionally, 5pm and 7pm are high traffic hours, meaning that there tend to be more listeners, which will also make these time spots more expensive. That’s why it’s important to choose your time wisely.
For example, if your target audience consists of stay-at-home moms, paying extra money for a 5pm spot would not make sense, because your audience would not be sitting in traffic. You might then opt for a cheaper slot or perhaps in the early mornings when they’re on their way to dropping the children off at school.
Do you think that many brands miss out on radio advertising because they focus too much on social media? Let us know in the comments section below.
*Image courtesy of Pixabay