Radio Advertising for Small Business Owners – Part 2

In the first part of this series on radio advertising, I talked about some high level considerations for small business owners when getting into radio advertising.

If you think radio advertising is a good move for your small business, you’ll probably find yourself talking to a sales rep. Here’s what to expect, and some tips for getting the most for your money:

Radio is sold in Bulk – a 13 week campaign is fairly standard in radio. Your sales rep will tell you that you need at least 13 weeks to break through the clutter in the market, (and they are probably right). Buying a few radio ads here and there is largely a waste of your money – success depends on repetition.

The Price is Negotiable – unsold advertising time generates exactly $0 in revenue for the station. Don’t agree to anything right away and you may find that the price for your campaign magically drops as the potential start date draws closer. I’ve seen the price drop 10% to 40% depending on the station and the amount of business you are bringing to the table.

What you get is Negotiable – if you can’t get the rep to move on their price very much, get them to give you more air time for the same price. There’s a catch here – as I told you in Part 1 of this series, ads outside of the morning and evening drive times aren’t really worth much, so don’t be fooled when the rep tries to give you a boatload of “free” ads on Sunday morning. Those ads won’t add much value to your campaign.

It bears repeating that you must get as many ads as possible from your campaign in the morning and evening drive dayparts.

More tomorrow on putting your radio ad together…