by James Shaw and Amelia Penner

Radio Advertising in the Okanagan - Part 2 of 2

Last time we talked about how the basics of using radio in your marketing mix.  In case you missed Part 1, we covered:

• Deciding on the right radio station
• Knowing who your audience is
• Choosing the right time of day
• Comparing Okanagan radio stations

Get Them to Remember
Hearing is not the same as listening. People hear background noise, but listening is focused and active. The average person needs to hear your radio ad 11 times before they will actually listen to it. Once they do listen to it, are your customers remembering what you say? Below are some suggestions to create a winning ad:

• Use humor - people love to laugh
• Create curiosity upfront with an odd intro or sound - a well designed ad interrupts the listeners’ current thought process to switch them from “hearing” to “listening”
• Mention some related facts or “did you knows?”
• Turn part of your ad into a catchy song that is sure to get stuck in someone’s head
• Make your ad a conversation between two people
• Sponsor the news or sports or weather with a quick 10sec sound bite (shorter ads but more repetition for the same dollars)
• Jump on board with a station’s contests or quizzes. You may have to provide prizes which will cost extra money, but the brand awareness and foot traffic may be well worth it.

Most importantly, do not forget to mention the name and important contact information of your business. You do not want them to remember just your ad, you want them to remember you. The average person needs to listen to something at least 3 times before they can remember it. So... repeat repeat repeat.

Get Them to Take Action
What is the goal of your ad? Do you want them to call you, check out your website, or come into your store? If no one is taking action, try some of these tips:

• Say the phone number and email address in a way that they will remember
• Advertise a sale. Yes, people still love sales. Be specific though. Eg. “No tax on all couches and loveseats this Saturday and Sunday only.”
• Make a limited time offer or limited amount available. In the example above, the sale is limited to a certain product and a specific time frame. Interested listeners now have an image of a new couch in their minds AND a deadline. A bit of pressure prompts action.

Whatever you want your listener to do - make it clear and easy.

Measure Your Results!
John Wanamaker, a US department store merchant, once came up with the most famous advertising quote of all time:

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

So inevitably the phone rings (or the web traffic spikes).... do you have any idea if they are calling because of your radio ad or because of your website or yellow pages listing, or billboard, or newspaper ad, or.... or....? Let’s talk for a moment about ways to measure and compare.

Call Tracking
Companies like MongooseMetrics (MongooseMetrics Tracking) allow you to register a separate phone number to use in your radio ad (or wherever you like). When someone calls this number it will still ring on your phone at work, but you will be able to track online how many people called from hearing your radio ad. Tip: you can use unique phone numbers on other ads too, like print and web ads. It’s a great way to measure the effectiveness of each to start to understand what type of marketing is making your phone ring.

Web Traffic Tracking
There are a few different ways you can track who is visiting your site from your radio ad.

1. You can register a new domain that forwards people to your website
2. You can add a subdomain (subdomain.website.com)
3. You can add a section to your website (website.com/section)

All of these unique URL’s can be tracked within your web stats program (we love Google Analytics - it’s good and it’s free!). Using unique URL’s for each piece of your marketing campaign makes it easier to attribute the source of the traffic that results from them. The next step is to change things around in the current ad to boost its effectiveness or dump the losers and boost the winners.... but that’s a topic for another article.

Buying Radio Ads
Here are a few quick tips to remember when buying radio spots...

• Do not pay the standard rate card price - negotiate for a better deal
• Heavy load your ad spots into a short time period if your budget is small - alternate two weeks on and two weeks off to get the better bang for your buck
• Do not run on more than one station at the same time unless you have a large budget - switch between your target market stations to get increased frequency and measure the results
• Do not always buy direct - sometimes buying through an ad agency can get you a better deal

Do you have an opinion on a local radio station? Have good story about an epic radio ad failure or smashing success? Share it! For the good of all humankind and the ears of our children! Don’t not hold back! Okay, that was a bit melodramatic...

by James Shaw and Amelia Penner

Radio Advertising in the Okanagan - Part 1 of 2

For local retailers and service providers that market to the general population, advertising on the radio can be very effective.  Success or failure on the radio can be attributed to factors such as relevance, repetition, brand awareness, call to action, measurement, and creativity.  As with any other media, it’s important to integrate your radio campaign with other online and offline efforts.  An integrated campaign is greater than the sum of its parts.  For a primer on Integrated Marketing see: Engaging Customers: From Bored to Boombastic!

The Basics: What Station?  When?
Below are the basics of what you should already be doing with your radio ads.  If you cannot check off all of the following things, you need to address them before applying the other changes we suggest.

• Are you advertising on the radio station(s) your target audience listens to?
• Are you advertising during the times that your target audience is listening?

Relevance: Know Your Audience
The key to any marketing effort is understanding your audience.  Who are they really?  Are they 46 year old men who like sports, outdoor living, and drive trucks?  Are they 34 year old time-starved females with 2.5 kids, who believe mini-vans should have their own lane?  What radio station is your audience listening to?  Throughout Vernon, Kelowna, and Penticton there are a variety of stations that target different age groups and genders.  Unfortunately, the variety of stations creates overlap which makes it harder to choose between them.

Time of Day
Typically the best times to run your ad are when people are driving to and from work.  These would be 6am to 10am and 4pm to 7pm.  The theory is that there are more listeners during these peak periods.  This is balanced by the fact that these spots may be more expensive and there could be more ads crowded together, making it easier for your ad get lost in the noise.  Eg. if your spot is 6th in a series of 7 spots back to back, has your audience already flipped the station before hearing it?


Kelowna Radio Stations

Penticton Radio Stations

Vernon Radio Stations

About the Charts...

Hopefully the charts above are a helpful resource.  The Okanagan radio scene is quite fragmented and there is a lot of overlap.  This is great for listeners - more choice!  But for advertisers, it means the decision of which station to buy is harder, and often you will need to buy more than one station to be effective.

Most of the data provided in the charts come from the radio stations themselves.   There are a few important exceptions.  First "Core Demographic" means just that: it's the core demo, but of course there are 20 year olds listening to the news on AM1150, and 45 year old men listening to Britney Spears on SunFM (yikes!).  There are always exceptions.  Also, note that "Teens" is not an official demographic in the radio world.  We have just added it in there because it's true.

Relative Popularity

Radio Marketing Bureau is a great source of information for stats and ideas

I'm sure that we may have started a minor war and fans/employees of the various stations all have their opinion on which station is the most popular.  It's important to note that we ranked the stations in relative popularity based on available data from stations (taken with a big grain of salt), a report from CHBC (a TV channel would be less biased supposedly?), BBM Canada's industry rankings (ranked with paper diaries) and by the "seat of our pants" feelings (highly subjective!).  So to sum it up...  Our rankings are not scientific or definitive.   The stations ranked "High" seem to swap first/second/third positions often, and radio reps can tweak the data (with age or time of day bracketing) to boost their station above others.  Another issue with popularity ranking is the source of the data itself.  The Okanagan is still in the stone age when it comes to measuring radio's reach, audience, duration, and listener demographics.  Very literally, we still use paper/pencil and keep "diaries" about what we remember listening to... then mail the journal in.  Bigger metros, like Vancouver and Calgary, use digital gadgets called Portable People Meters (PPM) which "listen" to the radio stations that are on when Jenny or John go about their day.  PPMs are much more accurate.  In Vancouver, PPMs have found to significant adjust male/female listenership vs. paper journals.  Check out Radio Marketing Bureau's PPM Bulletin 8:Vancouver if you're interested.

One final note on popularity... who cares!  Ask your own customers.  Do a phone survey or online poll.  Find out for yourself.  Trust your instincts.  Plus, a small specialty station might offer a great deal over the big boys, better service and good exposure to a specific audience.  If the audience is a match, don't ignore the "less popular" stations.

Coming next week in Part 2....

• Getting creative...
• Do you stand out from “the noise”? Be creative - remember radio is the “theater of the mind”.
• Does your ad prompt action? Don’t forget a call to action. What do you want the listener to do exactly? Call you? Drive by? Visit a website? Be specific.
• Different types of radio ads (eg. sponsorships, contests, etc.)
• How to test and measure your radio campaigns
• Tips for buying radio advertising

Continue on to Okanagan Radio Advertising Part 2

by Amelia Penner & James Shaw

With a bit of creativity and effort, you can have a list of 1000's of people to stay in touch with via email.  Best of all, it's really cheap!

All companies should have a database of clients and prospective clients that they use for newsletters, promotions, etc.  When using your list to send out announcements or run a promotion, its success is only as good as the people in your database.  This can be a challenge if you are new to collecting customer's information or if you are dragging around a list that you created years ago.

Here are some tips on how to build up your email list:

1.   Customers - a natural place to start
If you are not already collecting your customer's information, start!  People who have previously purchased from you, and have had a positive experience, are likely to come back again.

You can easily get their information from them as they make their purchase by asking for their name, number, and email address.  Let them know that you will be using their email to sign them up for a newsletter filled with information and promotions that they may enjoy.

In a retail store, you can also have a newsletter sign up as part of a comment form.  One local retail that we worked with built a list from 0 to 3000 subscribers using a simple in-store comment box/prize draw incentive.

2.   Connections - extend into your business network
Everyone has connections, whether family, friends, or suppliers.  Next time you are in contact with these people ask if they would be interested in receiving information about your business along with lots of exciting deals.

When using these contacts to fill up your email list realize that they may not be as likely to respond to a campaign as a previous customer.  You can ensure a greater response by having great content and deals that bring them into your store.

3.   Prospects - not customers yet, but hopefully they will be!
People love contests because they love to get free stuff.  Next time you have a giveaway or promotion advertise it on your website and tell people about it on Facebook and Twitter.  As people sign up for the contest, have an option to opt into your newsletter.

Not only does this allow you to see the success of your promotion, but you just gained a list of people who are interested in your company.  Now it is your job to turn them from a prospect into a customer.

4.   No Store?  No problem.
If you are in the B2B sector (business to business) and don't have a physical storefront, there are other tactics you can use to build your email list:

Social Media: use network sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and industry blogs to create teasers that draw people back to a capture page.  Use the capture page to offer a free download (whitepaper, report, tool, widget) in exchange for their contact info.

Host webinars or live chat opportunities that require people to register beforehand.  Now you'll have their contact info for follow-up later.

Enter people that you meet at trade shows and networking events into your email database.  Send them a personal message letting them know it was great talking with them.  Later when you send your newsletter they'll recognize you and your company.

5.   List Management - it will manage you if you're not careful!
As your email database grows you'll want to manage it properly using software. Segmenting your list into different groups for more targeted email blasts will become important. Managing unsubscribers is critical as well. Gathering statistics on how your emails are performing is really useful for tweaking and improving future communications. All of these features are available with email marketing software.

Note: if people can not easily unsubscribe from your newsletter they will get angry!  Use email marketing software like Constant Contact, Vertical Response, or NEDmail and list management will be a cinch.

6.   Spamming - a fine line
In Canada, the SPAM laws are actually pretty relaxed.  You don't technically need consent to send someone an email, but be aware that many people will consider it SPAM and it will hurt your reputation if you continually send irrelevant junk.  Word will get around even faster if your market is local!  Be careful.  Be transparent, identify who you are, give a relevant subject line, allow people to opt-out or unsubscribe, and try to be decent person in general.  Check here for more info: http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/canspam/canada/

Happy emailing!

Comments or Questions?  We'd love to hear them!
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