Radio advertising

[OliverLuke]

Hi,

Does anybody have any experience of radio advertising. I looked at price packages of a local radio station and I couldn't believe how cheap it was. £120 for 40 adverts over 2 weeks.

Thanks

 

[RevaxMedia]

Hi,

Does anybody have any experience of radio advertising. I looked at price packages of a local radio station and I couldn't believe how cheap it was. £120 for 40 adverts over 2 weeks.

Thanks

I did 2 weeks work experience (when I was at school) in Capital Radio (was Galaxy Radio) and I saw that the clients constantly changed as the ROI was poor - and they needed to record their own advert or hire the studio (they had two).

If you can create your own advert, whats £120 really?

 

[british steve]

Hi,

Does anybody have any experience of radio advertising. I looked at price packages of a local radio station and I couldn't believe how cheap it was. £120 for 40 adverts over 2 weeks.

Thanks

We have done radio advertising before. We spent over £30k with what was at the time Virgin Radio (now Absolute Radio) One thing we found is that its only worth advertising between the hours of 7am and 9am and 4pm to 7pm - outside of these hours response was between poor and a waste of money!

That said the advertising paid for itself and made a profit.

For £120 you may find your adds are played at times when no one is listening!

 

[The JMS Group]

Hi - We're a large producer of commercials for UK radio - more than 1,500 ads every year.

You're definitely not going to get any sort of worthwhile campaign for £120. Radio can be a very effective advertising medium but unfortunately so many people do not have their expectations met by the lowest-price package, there's not enough exposure for your commercial and when it does air it's at a time there are very few listeners - the stations will gladly take your cash for airtime in those quiet periods and if you don't come back for more then it's no big loss to them.

I would invest much more money in the airtime (perhaps consulting a media-buying agency to gain a more strategic approach rather than working with the sales execs at the station) and run your campaign for as long as possible (I'm talking several months) to increase your exposure, but make sure to go elsewhere for the production of your commercials, getting these produced via the station incurs absolutely massive mark-ups yet stations drive commercial producers like us to make the ads at the very lowest cost possible, so you risk getting a commercial that sounds very similar to the ads for everyone else that bought the same deal... and pay over the odds for it.

You can find out more from the horse's mouth as it were over at jms-group.com/blog

Hope that's of some help!

Tom

 

[Moneyman]

Local radio only works if you are very local. But try to have a book now deal or it always goes in one ear and out the other.

 

[The JMS Group]

Absolutely - I second that. Most of our clients promote a 'time limited offer' with ads that consistently reinforce the message that listeners have a limited time in which to act. Once the offer has expired, the next campaign soon follows before listeners forget about the advertiser - always be on the radar, but always be offering something new.

 

[garyk]

Local radio only works if you are very local. But try to have a book now deal or it always goes in one ear and out the other.

Yep as MM says keep it local. The problem with radio advertising is the same as print advertising is that is not targeted so your response is always going to be way lower than targeted advertising. Unless of course the station you can give you a detailed demographic breakdown of their listeners (doubtful) and your product neatly fits their highest demographic.