Radio advertisements are proven to be an excellent investment for your business. A report by Nielsen found that radio reached the highest amount of consumers across all mediums.
A successful radio ad allows companies to develop more effective future advertising campaigns. However, unlike other advertisements, it's hard to determine whether your radio ad is getting traction. For this reason, it's best to use an integrated media approach for superior results.
Key Performance Indicators for Your Radio Advertisements
There are four ways you can track the success of your company's radio ads. While these aren't exact measurements, they can still give you a good idea of how well your ads are performing.
Reach
This metric refers to the amount of listeners who will hear your radio ad. If more people receive your message, your ROI will be higher. In some cases, this could mean increasing the frequency of your ads. An experienced radio station can help you plan out the best strategy for your business.
Keep in mind that there's no concrete method to determine the reach for radio ads. There are no solid analytics or measurements that calculate how many people have listened to your ad. Even if someone tuned in to a station that played the ad, there's no guarantee that they actually retained its information.
This is why integrating radio with other digital ads is so important. For example, companies can see exactly how many potential customers intentionally clicked on an online ad. Using other digital marketing channels in conjunction with radio can help expand your reach.
Brand Awareness
Even if you have a popular brand, frequent promotion is crucial to its success. You can make your business even more successful by advertising on multiple mediums. If you're not sure which one to prioritize, ask your current and future customers directly.
Surveys are one of the best ways to determine the brand awareness level of your business. When a new customer visits your store, use incentives to have them fill out an ad survey. You can offer coupons, sweepstakes entries, or a discount on your services and merchandise.
A customer rewards or referral program is also a good way to track the success of your ad. In your radio ad, be sure to mention the perks of your company's rewards program explicitly. An increase in memberships often indicates a successful ad.
Customer engagement is easiest to measure with branded search traffic. This metric measures how many users were led to your website by searching or clicking on branded keywords. You should compare these numbers before and after your radio ad has aired.
However, take this benchmark with a grain of salt. Traffic on any website can go up and down for various reasons unrelated to your ads. Depending on your business, you may also see spikes in traffic at different times of the year.
For example, an ice cream shop's website may see an unusually high number of visitors during the summer. Instead of examining the numbers weekly, look for branded traffic patterns over a few months. This will give you the most accurate indication of your advertisement campaign's reach.
Cost Per Lead
This indicator tells you how much money is needed to create one qualified lead. Tracking down a single lead can be difficult, and many leads won't convert into actual numbers. However, it's still a good way to get a rough idea of your radio campaign's reach.
This is another reason why it's important to integrate your radio ads with other advertising media. The success of integrated campaigns can easily be measured if you're using digital media. Digital display advertising, online landing pages, and paid search ads come with analytics. Contesting and content marketing that allows you to capture email addresses can show an immediate return on investment. Working with radio ads alone gives you a very limited idea of your campaign's success. Combining radio with these other digital solutions provides the grip that your marketing needs.
Return on Ad Spend
This is one of the most important KPIs because it determines if your ads are a good investment. Your ideal ROA amount will depend on the size of your company and how much you spend on the campaign. In general, earning triple the amount you spend on advertising is considered good.
However, just like your cost per lead, it's hard to measure your ROA using radio ads exclusively. You may end up spending less on individual leads only to have a disappointing ROA. When this happens, it's either because the conversion process isn't accurate or the leads weren't qualified enough.
Integration Equals Success
It's no secret that radio is still an incredibly effective method of advertising. However, it's important to use other mediums to pinpoint the performance of these ads. By using digital advertising alongside radio spots, you'll be able to track your company's growth and ROI more accurately.
