Radio is a popular listening medium for consumers in all age groups and reaches groups with diverse demographics. That makes radio an excellent choice to expend advertising dollars. Combined radio and digital channels drive sales to levels that neither radio nor digital media alone can equal.
Nielsen's ratings say that radio reaches 92% of adults in the US every single week. TV and smartphones only reach 87% and 81% of adults in the US, respectively, while PCs and tablets reach an even lower 54% and 46%, respectively. To translate those percentages into sales advantage, radio ads alone drive sales up about 17%. Digital ads alone drive sales up about 14%. To reap the benefits of both worlds, consider modifying your marketing strategy by adding digital components to your next radio campaigns. Joining them, you potentially reap a sales increase of around 23%.
Why does digital marketing complement radio so well? Here a just a few reasons:
Digital Ads Connect With Consumers in Ways Radio Ads Don't
Digital ads create mental associations in consumers' minds that radio can't accomplish on its own. Let's start with the most obvious difference: digital ads express messages in colorful pictures or imagery that depend on a consumer's visual sense and the associations that each person's experience brings to those images. Compare that to radio ads that depend solely on a consumer's auditory sense.
Also, digital ads are often interactive, where an information exchange takes place between the computer, tablet, or smartphone on the one side and the computer-user on the other. Radio ads cannot do that. The medium's legacy technology limits the transfer of information in radio ads. It is a one-way street.
Retargeting Affects More Than Inbound Marketing Campaigns
Marketers usually describe remarketing in connection with Inbound Marketing strategies. But companies can retarget radio ads, too. Suppose a radio ad persuades its listeners to visit a landing page on a company's website. The company can then install a tracking pixel (or, cookie) from that landing page to the visitor's browser. The tracking pixel allows the business to send future ads across the web via display advertising to that site visitor. The display ads will relate to the pages the consumer visited on the site.
The Omnichannel Experience Reinforces Brand Messaging
Above all else, successful marketing must maintain consistent messaging across both radio and digital mediums. Such compatibility unites the radio and digital experiences in the consumer's mind and that unification reinforces brand awareness. Advertising built around seasonal sales, new product promotions, or special events must maintain consistent brand messaging so that it becomes ingrained in the consumer's mind.
Branded Search Is How Consumers Find You
In today's digital world, whatever a listener hears in a radio ad is likely to result in that consumer searching for the brand name on Google or another search engine site. Therefore, it is imperative that the business's website remains visible to all search engines through Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The site's visibility is the only way for search engines to drive web traffic to the business's web pages. That is also the way that your consistent messaging will coalesce from all ads.
Attract Unique Audiences By Combining Radio and Digital Ads
If there is one truth to learn about using radio as part of a marketing strategy, it is that not every prospective consumer will listen to the radio during the times that an ad plays. That's a definite disadvantage to solely using radio ads.
Digital ads, on the other hand, possess the peculiar benefit of displaying solely to those consumers further down the buyer's funnel that relates to a particular product.
Adding digital components to your next radio ad campaign, such as retargeting and branded search, also presents the marketing advantage of running ads 24/7/365. This ability potentially exposes your product/service to more prospective consumers who were unable to hear the radio ad.
