As a business owner, you might understand the effectiveness of radio advertising, but it's important to note that to ensure you're reaching and persuading your target audience, you need to choose the right radio station and the right frequency for your business. It’s important to consider audience demographics and station involvement in the community, as well as the frequency of your ads in the context of your advertising budget. In this post, we provide some tips for choosing the best radio station and frequency for your business’ advertising.

Choosing a radio station

First, consider your target persona. A thorough understanding of your target audience’s demographics, as well as your persona’s habits, needs, and likes is essential to selecting the radio station that is most likely to reach your target market.

Before choosing a radio station, consider the following factors:

• Audience demographics
• Audience loyalty
• Audience engagement
• Station involvement in community
• Station engagement outside of radio — social media, website, live remotes, events, charity support

Analyze audience data for the radio station and compare it to your target persona to determine if it makes sense to advertise with that station.

Choosing frequency

Frequency refers to the average number of times a person will hear your radio ad. Reach is the number of different people who hear your ad. Reach and frequency can be at odds with each other. With a limited ad budget, higher reach means lower frequency and higher frequency means lower reach. Research shows that messages are more effective when repeated. But that can get expensive. A frequency of 3 — reaching a person three times per week — will give your business the best opportunity to make an impression on a station’s listeners. It’s important not to spread your budget — and your message — too thin by trying to reach more people if it means they won’t hear your message at least three times per week.

Station type

Business owners must consider the question of “What radio station type should I advertise with?” It’s important to understand whether the radio station has a steady distribution of listeners throughout the day or if the majority of their listeners are at specific times, like morning or afternoon drive time. Once you’ve determined the portion of your advertising budget to be spent on radio ads, you can decide whether it makes sense to place ads on a monthly basis or plan an entire year’s worth of campaigns. Consider the cost of advertising opportunities on the station you’ve identified as best matching your target persona and compare it with the amount of money you have to spend over a specific time.

Work with your account rep to develop a plan for success. Contact Zimmer today, and we’ll help you develop and launch an advertising campaign that gets results.