How to Get the Most Out of Your Radio Advertising

A radio spot has very little time to work, and the listener is usually busy with something else. When money is wasted on radio, the medium is rarely to blame. The cause is more often a message that tried to say too much, spoke to nobody in particular, or ended without telling the listener what to do next. A larger schedule does not fix any of those problems; it only repeats them more often. Before buying airtime, ask whether you can describe your offer to one specific kind of customer in a few plain sentences. If you cannot, the schedule is not ready to be bought. For the buying side of the question, start with the overview of radio advertising in the Atlanta area.

On radio the script does all the heavy lifting. There is no picture to help, and the listener may be merging onto a highway. If the first moments do not engage that person, the rest of the spot is wasted airtime.

Radio copy is easiest to understand as an elevator pitch for a stranger. It should be entertaining enough to keep them listening, specific about what you offer and why it matters to them, and short enough to finish before the doors open. Say what customers get from you in the words a customer would use. Read the script aloud before it is recorded, because a line that looks fine on paper often stumbles in the mouth. Make the business name easy to catch and say it more than once, since a listener who cannot remember who was advertising cannot respond.

Hold the spot to one main idea. A script that covers a list of services, a sale, a new location and a holiday greeting leaves the listener with nothing to hold on to. Writing and producing the spot well is where the extra care pays off.

Strong radio starts with a picture of the listener, sometimes called a buyer persona: who this person is, what job they need done and what is holding them back. Just as important is where they are in the buying process. Are they hearing about your business for the first time, so the job is awareness? Are they already comparing options, so the job is to show why you are the sensible choice? Or are they existing customers, so the job is to remind them why they chose you and bring them back?

Each of those jobs calls for a different spot, and trying to do all three at once makes the message vague. Because a short spot cannot be everything to everyone, choose the listener and the job, then write only for them. Station representatives can help with the audience side: ask what kind of listener tunes in at the time your spot would run and whether that matches the person you just described. The article on what savvy business owners know about radio advertising explains how stations, formats and dayparts divide an audience.

Think about how you would invite a friend to a party. You would not read out a list of decorations. You would say that it is going to be fun, and tell them when to show up. A radio spot works the same way. Features, such as product specifications, brand lists or the history of the company, are the decorations. What the listener wants to hear about is the benefit: what gets easier, what worry goes away, what they get to enjoy.

Kirk Donovan learned early on that retail advertising involves more than audience ratings, demographic breakdowns and cute creative copy. What counts is whether people respond. That idea works as a simple test for any script. If a listener finishes the spot without a reason to act and a way to act, the spot has not done its job. Whoever writes the script, the creative work comes down to keeping that purpose in view, line by line.

After the invitation comes the RSVP. The call to action names exactly where to go and what to do, and it asks for a small commitment that shows real interest. Depending on the business, that might be visiting a location, requesting a quote through a web address, calling the office, or mentioning a particular phrase on arrival. Choose one and repeat it, because a person driving down the road cannot write down several options.

Make the response easy to say and easy to remember

A short, plain web address beats a long one with hyphens or extra words. A phrase that sounds natural when spoken beats one that only reads well. Test the line the way a listener would hear it, with no spelling and no pause to look at a screen.

Match the destination to the promise

If the spot promises a particular offer, the web page or the counter should deliver that offer in the same words. A gap between what the listener heard and what they find is one of the quieter ways radio money disappears.

Only after the copy and the listener are settled should you decide how much airtime to buy. Frequency matters on radio because listeners are rarely giving full attention, so a message usually has to be heard more than once before it registers. A smaller set of well-chosen stations and time slots, repeated often enough to be remembered, usually serves an advertiser better than a thin spread across many. Keep the message consistent across the run so recognition can build, and change it when you have a reason, such as a new offer or a clear sign that it is not producing a response.

Treat the first run as information. Count what came in, find out from each new customer what prompted the contact, and look at web traffic around the times the spot aired. If listeners respond but do not buy, the offer may be the problem. If almost nobody responds, look at the copy and the schedule. Radio makes revision easy, so use it, and alter a single element per round so that you can see which change mattered.

• Can you name the one listener this spot is for?
• Does the opening give that listener a reason to keep listening?
• Is there one main idea, stated in the words a customer would use?
• Is the business name easy to catch, and is it repeated?
• Is there one action, and is it easy to say and remember?
• Do you have a way to count the people who respond?

If the answer to any of these is no, fix the script before paying for airtime. The collected radio advertising articles offer more detail on audiences, stations and schedules.