But what are the differing factors and how do you assure success with your radio campaign? There are many paths to success but far more to failure.  Show me the details of a failed campaign and I’ll show you what was done incorrectly.  Below are some guidelines for successful radio advertising: How much does it cost? Radio is a medium of reach and frequency.  The basic budgetary question to ask when considering radio is “how many people can I afford to reach, frequently enough for my message to take hold with an audience?”

The bigger the station’s audience, the more people you reach and the more people you reach the more you can expect to pay, regardless of the station the largest audiences are listening during radio’s primetime hours – Monday through Friday 5AM to 8PM. 

The most popular stations have the largest listenership and cost the most to advertise on.  The less popular stations with smaller audiences cost less to run commercials. 

See below to take some of the mystery out of typical costs of advertising in the Los Angeles Radio market. Tier 1 stations reach the most listeners while Tier 3 stations reach the least.  Please note – these figures are approximate examples and will vary.

Approximate minimum weekly on-air radio campaign expenditure in Los Angeles:

Primetime / Monday – Friday 5A-8P
Tier 1 stations start @ approximately $7,500 + weekly
Tier 2 stations start @ approximately $4,250 + weekly
Tier 3 stations start @ approximately $2,000 + weekly

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How Many Spots?
How many spots does my business get for the above mentioned weekly prices?

That depends.  Rates fluctuate from station to station, week to week.  It’s a supply and demand business… there’s only 24-hours in a day and only so many of those hours can be used for commercials.  When many different advertisers pressure a station’s inventory rates will rise.

The investment levels listed above are more about achieving a frequency of three on a week with average demand for airtime in the Los Angeles market.

What’s a frequency of three?  A general rule of thumb in radio, a three frequency is the minimum number of times the average radio listener needs to be exposed to your businesses message before they can be expected to take action.

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What about off-primetime?
Non-primetime hours can offer great opportunity to gain entry to the audience of a Tier 1 radio station’s audience without diving into the expense of a primetime investment.

Off-prime or non-prime includes nights, weekends and overnights.  Depending on the station these time periods may be more or less opportune for your business to capitalize.

Some stations price their weekends nearly the same as their primetime.  Some have evening programs that advertisers fill up faster than that same station’s primetime schedule.  Each radio station is going to have its unique set of non-prime programming and advertising circumstances.

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Non-Primetime / M-F Evenings, Overnights or Weekends
Tier 1 stations start @ approximately $2,500 + weekly
Tier 2 stations start @ approximately $1,750 + weekly
Tier 3 stations – You probably don’t want to do this.

The cost of advertising during non-prime hours on a Tier 3 station is… basically losing your advertising investment dollars.  Why?  Because 95% of the time there’s not a large enough audience to successfully advertise solely during non-prime hours on a Tier 3 station.  Many Tier 3 stations reserve their non-prime hours for block programming – a specialty vehicle for radio programming / infomercials.

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Which station for my business? Each radio station, whether AM or FM has a demographic profile of primary listeners that an advertiser ought to direct their attention.  It’s not so much the type of music being played or the topics being discussed but the listeners who are attracted to that programming.  How many people are listening?  Are they male or female?  How old are they?  What’s their average income?  How are they employed?  Etc.  However, audiences listen to music and talk stations differently.  And since Talk Radio is generally found on the AM dial and Music Radio is generally found on the FM dial, we’ll divide and conquer those two topics below. [ back to top ]

Talk
Talk radio is more intimate and demands an active foreground listenership.  When taking Aunt Gertrude to the grocery store it’s hard to hold a conversation with her about her dentures while also listening to talk radio.  There are too many voices talking and not enough attention span to go around.  This makes talk radio a one-on-one proposition.

Talk radio’s programming… well, talks!  Talk radio’s commercials… well, they talk too!  Therefore, the audience often times doesn’t differentiate between programming and commercial content. 

So, when talk radio the programming talks and the commercials talk too… the audience listens and is more likely to respond immediately to a commercial.

This makes talk radio outstanding for DR advertising – I.e. direct response.  (Pick up the phone or go to this website and buy our products and services.)

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Music
Music stations are less intimate and more often have a passive background listenership.  It’s easy to talk dentures with Aunt Gertrude with music playing in the background… you just tune out Auntie Gertrude… kidding, of course!  You tune out the music and hang on every word about Aunt Gertie’s false teeth!  You get the picture – right?

When listening to music radio without Aunt Gertrude it is a one-on-one proposition as well.  But often times when the music stops and commercials begin listeners jump to the next music station for more tunes.  After all, no one listens to radio for the commercials they listen for programming content.

However, savvy programming directors are paid big bucks to stay ahead of that curve and work diligently to get listeners to stay tuned.

Nevertheless, music stations are typically better at branding than they are at making phones ring.  That’s not to say music stations cannot make phones ring.  There are caveats to much in radio – but you’re beginning to get that, aren’t you?

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Endorsements
An endorsement is when a station’s personality or someone of notoriety, like Michael Jordan, vocalizes their support of your product or service.  Endorsements are the mother of all advertising regardless of the medium.  (No one EVER spent $100+ on gym shoes until Michael Jordan became a basketball god.)

There’s nothing like a Bill Handel, John Kobylt or Ken Chiampou endorsement on KFI-AM 640, or a Ryan Seacrest endorsement on KIIS-FM 102.7.

Station personality endorsements, budget providing, are the way to go in radio advertising.  Why?  Because it’s the personality audiences have tuned in to listen to lending their good name and credibility to your business.  When a station’s personality reads (usually live) your businesses commercial that announcement becomes part of the stations programming – thus implying that the station endorses your products and services too.

Endorsements come at a higher price per spot, generally carry a long-term commitment, plus a talent fee and require station as well as the talent approval… but their oh, so worth it!

Can’t afford a station personality endorsement but want something other than a voice-over actor in your spot?  Voice it yourself.  Other than a station personality you, the business owner, are the next best person to sell your products and services.  This works providing you sound good on-air.  And “good” doesn’t mean polished, it means believable and credible.

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Creative – disclaimer – please take no offense! Now hear this!  You, Mr. Business Owner, cannot see the forest through the trees!  Unless you are one in a million… and maybe you are… but probably, you are not.  Please take no offense.  It’s common.  Your business is your baby.  Who else could possibly come up with a better story about how great your baby is than you?

Here’s the thing, consumers these days don’t care how great you are!  For the most part they don’t care where you are located.  While they don’t want an idiot helping them they also don’t care how friendly, knowledgeable and courteous your staff is – even though your staff should be anyway.  Your prospective customers are probably not overly concerned about your selection.  They don’t care about the awards your business has amassed.  And why should they? 

It’s their hard earned money that they are considering giving to you.  But, what’s in it for them?  Why should they choose your business as the benefactor of their earnings?

Creative, or the content of your commercial, is about the unique position you place your business in the minds of your prospective customers.  Creative is really big, very vital, no kidding, seriously important!  (I’m trying to make a point here.)

In the Los Angeles market, once up and running, a business can expect to spend six-figures in radio advertising easily.  If you promise to be the “buy today use tonight” big screen store and cannot or do not follow through with that promise operationally, you’re wasting a lot of money. 

Just think, spending all kinds of money, time and energy on a campaign that succeeds in getting customers to buy from you but then fails to deliver on the ultimate promise? 

Think that customer would come back?

Nope.

Think that customer is going to share the unpleasant story?

Yep.

In that analogy, like many other situations, creative is directly tied to your businesses operations.  And you were just wondering how much a spot costs…

If you haven’t already figured it out, we’re talking about a long-term partnership here… partnership in a very literal sense.

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How long does it take? Getting a radio campaign going can be compared to getting an idle battleship, in the middle of ocean and with a sleeping crew, ready for combat. The officers first must wake the crew, get them to their stations, fire up the engines and put the ship in forward motion.  When the propellers first start rotating the ship doesn’t immediately take off.  It takes time for momentum to build.

Once the ship is cruising along it can be maneuvered much more easily and with greater accuracy. 

So, how long does it take to get a campaign up and running?  That depends greatly on the message, business, market, economy and lots of other elements…

If we’re targeting a relational customer or one who will patronize your business because of reputation and regardless of price… then 3-months is a fair amount of time to expect to begin seeing a return on investment.

If we’re targeting a transactional customer, or one who is out for the lowest price and best deal… then a week or two… heck, maybe just a couple days with super high-frequency.

Be careful when deciding which type of customer to pursue!  The near-term sales volume and immediate gratification of the transactional customer can be appealing.  But sales volume and better margins come from the relational customer who you’ve pursued for the long-haul, have invested in and own an area of their mind.

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