Four States Small Business Blog

Radio advertising remains an effective and powerful tool for reaching your customers, but ensuring that your radio ad creative is conveying the right message — a message that will get listeners to buy — is essential. We’ve put together a list of five questions to ask your radio partner to ensure that they are creating quality ads for your company.

This may be the point in the year when you and your marketing team are taking a look back at the marketing efforts of 2016 and evaluating what exactly it cost your company. Or, if you’re a new business owner, you may be determining what kind of expenditure you’ll need to make to start advertising. Either way, there’s something important you need to remember to do: view marketing as an investment. Quite simply, marketing isn’t something that’s merely nice to have or a good idea that you can get to later, and the costs associated should never be considered without the ultimate impact it has on your bottom line.

Invariably, what decision makers are looking for when evaluating any spending is results, and it’s no different when considering a marketing budget. Results are the only thing that matter when you get to the bottom line. In today’s article, we’ll touch on why you should be planning your marketing budget to get results, as well as help you put those results into perspective so that your marketing budget doesn’t get wasted.

As far as music formats go, country stations have some of the most loyal listeners. This is especially true in the Four State Area, where country music reigns supreme.

Contributing to local causes can help bring brand awareness and show corporate social responsibility amongst your community, which is why it is worth including it in your marketing plan. According to the 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer, 80 percent of consumers think that companies should make an extended effort to improve social and economic conditions in their region while increasing their profits.

For businesses located on a major road or in a busy shopping center, certain types of advertising work great. For example, a billboard alerting motorists that your restaurant is just ahead is a good way to advertise to hungry travelers. But if your business is located off the beaten path, you need to find successful advertising tactics to get customers in the door. A great way to do that is to drive traffic to your business with radio advertising, which has a proven track record of success.

Digital marketing is a valuable tool for businesses of all types and sizes. That’s because the internet plays a crucial role in how people make their purchasing decisions. In fact, 81 percent of consumers today conduct online research before buying a product or service.

The desire for instant gratification is often part and parcel of human nature, whether you’re looking at the world as a customer or as a business owner or marketer. As the path to purchase fragments, and micro moments and personalization become more important, immediate gratification becomes easier for the customer. However, as tempting as it is to look at marketing ROI in the same way, business owners need to remember that advertising is an investment, and advertising success and brand development take time to achieve.

In 1983, Advertising Age magazine published an article in which the authors cited evidence that consumers prefer ear-oriented messaging as compared with eye-oriented messaging. Speech is the primary form of communication for human beings, and for advertisers, this fact holds significant implications. It means that advertising for the ear is more effective than print advertising that’s designed to be received by the eye.

In business, every dollar spent counts against the bottom line. While owners and managers alike look for ways to pinch every penny they can, they tend to avoid skimping on important investments that offer growth opportunities. Unfortunately, many businesses don't look at advertising and marketing as an investment and don’t realize how important reaching customers with advertising is to increase sales and company growth. Price shopping advertising opportunities only to take advantage of your cheapest option can hurt your bottom line. In today's blog post, we'll discuss four major reasons for why cheaper isn't better, and why you should be hiring trained professionals that are willing to not only invest in themselves, but also in their product.