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I want to hear from anyone who has used radio advertising. We are starting a radio campaign this week. I was already committed to it when I spoke to Randy Bird and he made me feel that I was making a good investment. WE have a terrific station in our area called The Fish. They are a contemporary christian radio station that will fit our target audience perfectly. Primary audience is women 28-55 married with 2 kids drives the SUV owns a middle to upper class home. We are going to start with 3 days 3 sixty second ads to begin. Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday from 8-5. They have the number one audience on Sundays and I am hoping to use that day for branding the name. We will be using the HB jingle in the ad. I for one can’t stand it and I can;t get it out of my head after hearing it so many times trying to download it. This is a good thing because it is one of those things that once you hear it a few times it just won’t go away. We are going with the funny and not strait at you approach that tends to help with branding and keeping you in the customers head. I would love feedback on others that have tried it and what works for you.
I did a year long radio campaign several years ago with 3 to 4 ads daily that was a pretty good deal. In my opinion it was a limited success. I did receive imediate work from the ad thoughout the year but the real results was the name recognition it gave Heaven’s Best. For 2 years following the ads customers mentioned they heard it on the radio. I have a local christian radio station that wants to sit and review their station with me. I’d give it another shot I think if the price is right.
In advertising there are a lot of things to consider, but read your post Loren, I thought I would talk about how to pick the advertising time frames.
What I mean by that is do you advertise in one place continuously, off and on, or one place for a couple months another place for a couple months etc.
1. So continuous means advertising in the same place(s) all year round. This works, but in my opinion after a while, people tune out unless you are changing the ad every couple of months. There is a billboard here in Rexburg that is for the same company, but they change it up every once in a while (not enough in my opinion) but when they change it, I notice the billboard again.
2. Intermitten or non-continuous (I can’t remember the exact phrase) is when you advertise for a couple months and then stop advertising for a couple months and then advertise for a couple months. This I think is a good idea because you save money and when the advertising starts up again the ad seems fresh to the customers again.
3. The third, is when you have a continuous advertising campaign, but change to different medias throughout the campaign. Look at the schedule below. I’m trying to take into account that Heaven’s Best is more of a summer company. People are inside during the winter and outside during the summer. This also is important when considering time slots for each day and what days each week to advertise in.
J–F–M–A–M–J–J–A–S–O–N–D
Newspaper–x–x–x
x–x
Billboard
x–x
x–x
Radio
x–x–x
Flyers
x–x—x–x–x
TV
x–x—x
This isn’t meant to be a all inclusive schedule, but that way you get the idea. This allows for a continuous pressence but gets to people at different times and through multiple media. I think this is what I would try so that way I could get into peoples’ minds when summer is starting so when they decide to have the carpet cleaned, they would call me. Maybe my thinking is backwards and you don’t need to advertise during your busy time, but rather during your slow time.But I just thought I would share my thoughts on the subject.
I just started an ad campaign on our local Christian station. I sponser the weather. I have been on for two months and have tracked one phone call and job to the spot. I pay $150 a month. I am hoping I will get more from the ad when spring comes.
The radio spot did well for us. It took over two months for the phone to start ringing. We stopped a few months back due to cost and so many jobs for other franchises that I am not able to afford to cover the cost. We are still getting calls from the radio station two months later. Our cost ran around $1050 a month. Kind of hard to pay that much when I have to refer out 30-40 percent of them.
we had similar results when we ran a radio campain at a smaller local station over the course of three to four months time i was only able specificaly track 2 calls to the ad. the hard part with radio to me is its hard to track the calls absolutly to the radio. What i mean is average joe is driving home from work, hears our ad, laughs, and forgets it, then a month later he comes home and his wife yells at him for traking in mud, so he grabs the phone book, sees our ad, remebers hearing about us from… somewhere, calls and reports that he found us in the yellow pages. Were going to be trying another campaign in a few months and hopefully will get more direct results.
I did radio for 12 months several years ago. When I tracked the jobs there were some directly related to the ad only and many was word of mouth and then they heard the ad. However, even after I stopped customers said I heard your ad on the radio and acted as if it was still on. The name recognition factor seems to be good with radio. I was told several times and places that it takes 3 months exposure on the radio. I’d give it 6 months and reevaluate if the cost is affordable.
What are some of the funny or catchy ads that people have done for the radio?
I am currently trading the radio station 50/50. I will do $800 of work for them next week. I get 3 ads per day Monday – Friday on 2 different fm stations, and “free” ads on one am station. There are only 5 local fm radio stations in the area, and few come in from other areas. I currently have one of the pre-recorded ads off the advertising web sites. However, this area has a real “small town/buy local” mentality so I wonder if there would be a more effective ad that I could use. The station is easy to work with and is willing to help me record my own ad with little to no cost.
NOTE: About 5 years ago Heaven’s Best was running strong in the area, so there is some name recognition, although there have been a few people who were not very happy with their last visit.
I still have only had one job tracked to the ad on the radio. Been sponsering the weather for over three months now. I am close to pulling sponsership.
I’ve had my ad going for about a month now. We haven’t gotten any jobs directly from the radio yet, but a lot of the people we are working for have commented on hearing the ads. Other people I talk to have mentioned the “catchy jingle” and other things.
Next week I’m going in to “personalize” the ads a little bit. We will record short descriptions of the services we offer, and still include excerpts of the Jingle. Seems like people here in Cody really respond to the local/hometown idea.
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