Sound ADvice on Radio Advertising Success

To kick off the brand new year, I am going to share with you stories of success that business owners from around the country shared last year.  These are their stories of how they grew their profits using radio advertising to invite customers to their retail stores.

These stories can be applied to your business this year and if you want my help, we can tell your success story in about a dozen months too. These are radio advertising success stories that I found on a website for jewelry stores and the words are those of the owners.

Let’s start with London Smith.  He’s one of the owners of a couple of stores in Oklahoma.  Here’s what he says about advertising on the radio:

 Radio is alive and well. About 20 to 25 percent of our advertising budget is dedicated to radio. We have our commercials on a variety of stations – 10 total. All the formats are covered, from pop-hits and classic rock to sports and talk. I’m 26 and I listen to the radio.

Jeffery Hess, owns stores in Florida and here’s his advice:

I’m a student of advertising and spend about $1 million on advertising each year. I strongly believe that radio is a very viable medium. Simply invest in airtime with the most dominant radio station in town and it will be very effective. And, be sure to hire the radio station’s strongest on-air personality to do your commercials.

Tammy is the V-P of Sales at Peter & Company Jewelers in Ohio.  She says:

About 13 percent of our total advertising budget is dedicated to radio. If you’re going to do radio, you have to do it all the time. Own it. Use it frequently. Use the same station(s). And, saturate your market with your message. If you don’t, radio won’t work for you. For 15 years, we’ve advertised with a local station. It’s mainly talk radio with some sports coverage mixed in. People come in mentioning the station’s call letters. We feel it has been a good return-on-investment. Plus, the station has some very good voice talents to draw on. It costs a little more money, but it’s worth it. It’s been very good for us.

Tammy’s experience is similar to what WOWO radio advertisers experience when we have Pat Miller or Kayla Blakeslee do live endorsement ads.  We have several advertising partners who use personality endorsement ads on WOWO year after year after year.

I’ve got one more to share with you from Connie who runs a jewelry store in Texas.  Here is what she said when asked about advertising on the radio:

Radio certainly works for us. About six to seven years ago, we were invested in advertising on cable television. With people using DVR technology, they’d fast-forward through all of the commercials. Radio was our first choice when leaving cable. With radio, you have to really get your message out there a lot in terms of frequency and be consistent with your radio message. For us, seeing that we’re a suburb of Houston, we want a wide listening audience to know that we do custom work and sell quality diamonds. This helps us reach a broad age demographic of 30 to 60 with middle to upper middle class incomes. Radio makes up 30 percent of our advertising budget. With radio, you need to find out what message works and the demographic you want to reach.

Those are the words of Connie, Jeffery, London and Tammy.  I figured you’d want to hear from your peers in the business world about the power of radio advertising when it’s done properly. Pretty sound ADvice.

And now I want to also invite you to check out a new newsletter that I am offering starting this year. 

It’s also called Sound ADvice.  Once a week, it will arrive in your email and be filled with Sound ADvice on how to make this year your best yet. The link is right below.