Radio advertising is a powerful and effective marketing tool for your online business — in fact every week over 90% of Australians listen to the radio at some point during their day and better still, one in four people are online while listening to the radio.

With clever advertising you’ll reach customers and increase your online sales through the radio. But what are the essentials to a great radio ad, and how do you get your message to someone who is nowhere near a screen or have a pen to hand?

Read on for six powerful tips that can hook your listeners, and craft a great radio advertising campaign that will work for your online business.

Connect with a growing audience

Despite some thought that ‘traditional’ marketing platforms such as radio are on the decline, a recent report revealed Australian commercial radio audiences to be on the incline… with a record 10.3 million Australians tuning in each week in the five metropolitan capitals.

Know your audience

You need to know what audience will be listening to your ad. How old are they? What’s their gender? What are their spending habits? How much do they earn? Can you describe the person that will most likely listen to your radio advert?

Radio stations spend a lot of time and money researching their audiences. With the right advice from an independent radio advertising expert, you can easily select a station and timeslot that appeals exclusively to your target audience.

Creating your radio advert

Once you’ve identified who your customers are and the right radio station for your advertising, ask yourself what time “your people” are listening. Is it best to put your advert out there while they’re eating breakfast, driving to or from work or perhaps the middle of the night? If you’re selling a cure for insomnia, what better time and place to advertise on talk-back radio!?

Convert radio listeners to website visitors

Most radio ad slots are 30 seconds long so start strong, if you can’t get the listeners attention, you’ve lost the battle. If your listener is in a car, they might switch the station. If they are online, they might mute the commercial.

Good radio copy is short and sweet. Don’t waste time with boring introductions, get straight to the point and start hammering the benefits then finish with your website address. It’s also good to repeat your business name at least three times so it sinks in.

Advertising your website address on the radio

Here’s some important factors to consider when driving traffic to your website via a radio advertising campaign:

  • Avoid trying to be clever in your domain name, spell it as it should be
  • Never use a domain name with a hyphen, it makes it harder to advertise on radio
  • Keep your domain simple and short, people won’t remember complicated ones
  • Repeat your brand name at least three times if your domain name is complicated - in the hope that listeners will remember your name and search via Google instead
  • Keep it simple. For example, don't direct customers to a specific page like mydomain.com/stuff.php – the slash and the .php will only confuse people

User design

If you are doing a special promotion and driving customers to your website, make sure you make it easy for them. Don’t make them search for it. You went to all the trouble of creating a radio advert and getting them to your website - make the special promotion prominent, smack bang on your homepage.

Obligation-Free Radio Advertising Advice

At Radio Results, we pride ourselves on providing honest and valuable advice, and will always inform businesses with small advertising budgets of the realistic outcomes of their radio advertising campaign.

In some cases, it may be more cost effective for a new or developing businesses to invest in a marketing strategy that requires a smaller initial outlay, such as boosting your website’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

For further information about the interesting world of SEO, we recommend getting in touch with the experienced digital marketers at Cloud9 Online.

And for more valuable advice on radio advertising, please contact me by completing the contact form. If you’re still at the early stages of considering radio advertising, feel free to follow me on social media or sign up below for my regular newsletter.