TV and radio ads offer a powerful way to bring your message to consumers. After all, approximately 54% of the U.S. population listens to radio daily, while 75% watches television every day. With that reach, you can’t ignore the impacts of TV and radio advertising, but how do you know that your marketing efforts are reaching the right customers? The key to effective television and radio marketing is careful ad buying. Where you decide to place your advertisements and when you choose to have them played will have an enormous impact on the returns you get from your campaigns. Even the best ads will fall flat without careful ad buying.
What TV and Radio Ad Buying Means for Your Business
When you decide to invest in TV or radio advertising as part of your marketing strategy, you don’t simply purchase ad time and let the stations decide when to play your advertisement. Instead, you need to know the demographic you want to target and choose advertising spaces and times that appeal to that group. By knowing your demographic, you will be able to make these decisions about TV and radio ad buying:
- Which stations to target. Different radio and television stations appeal to different demographics. You need to identify the demographic group you hope to reach, and then pick the stations that will give you the best chance of reaching that target market.
- When to run your ads. For TV and radio advertising, timing matters. Stations use different kinds of programming to reach different audiences at various times throughout the day, and it’s important to understand when your target demographic will be tuning in. For example, if your demographic usually listens to drive-time radio during rush hour, you will want your ads to run during that time, rather than during a late-night specialty show when your demographic is unlikely to be paying attention. These timing strategies are equally as important for television ads. The TV programs that are running when your ads air will dramatically impact who sees them.
During the ad buying process, companies negotiate pricing with stations to get their ads shown at the best possible times for their target demographics while sticking to their budgets. Advertising during times when the biggest mix of demographics is tuned in—rush hour for radio stations and prime time for network television—is typically the most costly option.
How Your Business Can Make Targeted Buying Decisions
TV and radio stations should be able to provide you with information about the demographics they reach during the time slots you are considering. You can also check the audience numbers for the times when your ads are set to run. These numbers are important—just because a station reaches a certain demographic at a particular time doesn’t mean that the station has a significant enough number of viewers or listeners to be valuable to you. A different station might reach that demographic more effectively.
When you make a decision about buying ads, resist the urge to scatter your ads across time slots, and thereby demographics, by spreading your advertising dollars around. Unless you are making a large ad buy, concentrated, consistent advertising in the same time slots is more effective than sporadic advertising across different programming windows.
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