Advantages and Disadvantages of Radio Advertising for Small Businesses

Radio is often a far underutilized medium for advertising. Typically, it costs much less money to produce a radio commercial and buy airtime than to buy television airtime or to do a photo shoot for a magazine print ad. For a radio commercial to be effective, it needs to grab the listener’s attentionquickly and cover all the key points in a concise, informative and entertaining manner.

Your ad can be in the form of radio copy read by on-air personalities or you can have a pre-produced spot of 5, 30 or 60 seconds. Remember copyright usage (Chapter 11) before using recorded music. If you write advertising copy, make sure you write in a conversational style and repeat important information during the ad. Don’t try to pack too much into the copy.

Placement is the other key to radio advertising. An ad during morning or evening "drive time" will be far more effective than an ad at 2 a.m. In addition, you will want to select the type of station(s) most listened to by your buying demographics. Once you’ve chosen a station and requested the time slots during which you wish to advertise, you’ll be quoted rates. Typically radio ads are bought in chunks since a high frequency of commercials during a short period of time has been proven to be most effective. You may also opt for summer placement, since radio listenership usually increases during June through August.

Advantages of radio advertising:

# Inexpensive to produce commercial spots
# Easy to make last minute changes and/or update radio scripts or spots
# Can buy in blocks and reach your target market consistently for a period of time

Disadvantages of radio advertising:

# Very dependent on placement
# Limited time in which to include all pertinent information
# Scripts are typically only as good as the talent reading them

Before advertising on theradio, get the listener demographics and the ratings for each station in your market.