Radio advertising is one of the most dominant marketing strategies for offering exceptional returns on investment (ROI). Not only is it a lot cheaper than other media properties, but it also has the significant advantage of reaching a larger audience. The radio boasts a weekly reach of 82.5% among U.S. adults, each of whom averages 99 minutes of listening time per day. The majority of these 99 minutes are spent while commuting or traveling. Radio’s portability promises advertising accessibility that enables marketing to occur in places and times that other media properties may have difficulty reaching or tapping into.
Whether you have been using radio commercials as part of a long-term business strategy or are considering diving into a new form of media advertisement, it is essential to measure the ROI of your ad expenses. However, the immediate sales increase is just one part of the equation. Dedicated marketing analysis is necessary to gauge the effectiveness of marketing ads. Here are the three most efficient steps to measure your ROI and determine your radio advertising success level.
Test Brand Awareness
Imprinting your brand in the minds of potential consumers is one of the critical aspects of making an ad campaign successful. It is even more crucial when your potential buyers encounter your product or service through radio advertisements – without the convenience of seeing your brand logo or design. In this context, it is crucial to associate your brand with a well-known product category or service.
You can use formal and informal efforts to assess the effectiveness of radio commercials in developing brand loyalty. One option is by offering exclusive discounts through your radio ad. When a buyer or client approaches your business for the first time using a coupon or voucher code you spread through radio ads, you will know that they heard and reacted to your commercial.
Additionally, when you run a direct-response radio ad, wherein the buyer or customer is urged to call you, the number of calls you receive is a tangible measure of your ad’s failure or success. It is essential to put together a very enticing commercial that will let the customers take action. More calls received means your ad is successful and can convert to more sales and ROI.
You may also ask new customers to fill out surveys in exchange for sweepstakes entries. In the form, you may ask how they came across your brand. Not only does it help measure your radio ad ROI, but it also allows you to determine your other platforms’ performance – social media pages, website, TV advertising, etc.
Compare Website Traffic
One of the hallmarks of a successful business is healthy website traffic. The number of people who visit your site daily measures the effectiveness of all your marketing strategies combined. It is also an excellent tool to isolate and evaluate the success of your radio ad campaign.
Before launching your radio commercial, take note of the analytics of your website. How many visitors do you get per day? What percentage of that traffic comes from organic search? How many arrive at your site by visiting your URL directly? Compare your website’s traffic and engagement analytics before and after running a radio advertisement. You can even create a dedicated landing page for consumers who may have heard your ad through the radio to make it easier to determine your ad campaign’s success.
It is also imperative to pay attention to the quality of your traffic. Look at how many visitors proceed to purchase your product and how many bounce out of your site. After hearing a radio ad, potential customers who visit your site are more likely to be converted to sales. For this, you may consider using more sophisticated tools to track your commercial impact with more granularity and precision.
Calculate Gross Sales and ROAS
You need to know whether your investment in radio ads turned a profit or put you at a deficit. The most concrete method of evaluating whether your radio commercials are effective is calculating your return on ad spend (ROAS) against your gross sales. To calculate this, divide the difference between your ad revenue and ad investment by the amount you spent on your commercial. Put simply:
(ad revenue – ad investment) / ad investment = ROAS
Suppose you are not confident with your analysis or data about brand awareness and website traffic. You can also look at gross sales to see if your post-advertisement sales doubled, at the minimum. But a good indicator that your radio ads are worth every penny is a triple return on the amount invested in advertising. In that case, ROAS alone can make or break the deal when measuring the ROI of radio advertisements.
Most marketers prefer performance-based advertising with the help of experts in the industry of radio advertising. You can control your budget in this type of per-inquiry or per-call marketing, where you will only pay for the leads or calls you will generate from your radio ad campaign. In this case, it can be easy to see the performance of your radio ad campaign and realize if the ad spending you do is all worth it based on the results, leads, or calls you will generate and be converted as sales.
Conclusion
Keep in mind these three key performance indicators for your radio ads. These factors will help you decide if you should continue investing in radio ad campaigns or if it is time to rethink your marketing strategy. Overall, radio has proven to be a highly effective advertising medium. It has tremendous potential for marketing professionals who know how and where to invest their money to make their business grow.
For the past 40+ years, we at Airtime Media have helped many companies make a profitable ROI and satisfaction from their ad spend. To learn more about radio advertising that works and can deliver $$$ for your business, give us a call at 888-373-8463. You may also leave us your details here, and we will get back to you with more information.