As a business owner, you’ve set your marketing budget, and you’re considering various opportunities, but you might not be sure where you will get the most bang for your buck with the budget you’ve allocated. With 93% of American adults listening to radio each week, it is a wise choice for a business looking to strategically reach their target audience. Wise marketers will make an effort to dominate a media space, ensuring their target market is fully grasping the message, and at that time, when the budget allows and this is achieved, bringing in another media to supplement this and help increase your reach and add another aspect to your story is smart. If you’ve reached the point where you have dominated your space and want to add a new aspect to your marketing strategy, magazine advertising might be a great way to add a visual aspect to your successful audio efforts. When looking to cross promote on radio and magazine advertising, here are some tips to ensure these work together to get the most bang for your marketing buck.
Target the Same Audience
When you set your business plan and marketing strategy, we know you probably spent quite a bit of time defining your perfect target audience. You can probably recite it by memory at this point. So, when it comes to using an integrated marketing approach, you’ll want to ensure that all of your messaging is targeting the same audience. Since you already know the specific demographics targeted by your print marketing, match that up with radio stations that also target those demographics to ensure your message is being heard by your ideal audience.
Consistent Messaging
Advertising in both radio and magazine, you’ll want to ensure that your messaging is concise and consistent. It’s important that your print ads and radio ads both share the same tone, style, and brand identity so that when a reader sees or hears your ad, they quickly associate with your brand. The same is true with radio. When they hear your ad, they should realize quickly that it’s your brand or product.
Frequency is an important element to focus on. When we talk about frequency, we’re essentially talking about the number of times your advertising message is received by the target audience. Depending on your brand or business, there are some factors to consider when determining your frequency strategy, such as customer loyalty, how established your brand is, what’s the purchase cycle for your product or service, the competitiveness of your marketplace, and your target audience.
Business writer J. Conrad Levinson wrote about the “Rule of 27” in his book “Guerrilla Marketing.” He says that “a marketing message must penetrate the mind of a prospect a total of nine times before that prospect becomes a customer, and your message gets missed or ignored two out of three times.” This is even more true in today’s day and age, given all the added clutter, than it was when Levinson wrote his book in the 1980s. By increasing your overall frequency, you’re going to better the chance that your message is heard and read.
Strengthen Brand
As a business owner, we know that your goal is to get your products and services in front of as many potential customers as possible. A cross-channel marketing approach will help increase your sales, but will also help strengthen your brand. By targeting both magazine readers and radio listeners with messaging that’s branded to your standards, your brand will become a more-recognized and recalled brand.
Ensure your brand standards are set and utilized through all marketing channels so that the target consumer will have a strong awareness of your brand so that it is recognizable and front of mind when they need your product or service.
Grow Awareness
As part of your marketing strategy, using both magazine and radio advertising can help raise the overall awareness of your business. Strategically using awareness campaigns to grow awareness will get you more bang for your buck.
Much like the name would suggest, the goal of an awareness campaign is to make potential customers more aware of your brand, which in turn would improve your brand authority and authenticity. These types of campaigns tend to run a longer course and aim to convert customers over a period of time.
An awareness campaign should ideally focus on reach, frequency, and strong branding. Awareness ads can be placed in magazines, and are great because of the longer shelf life of a magazine, and radio ads with consistent brand messaging, are great to complement a magazine ad for your awareness campaign because of the frequency and reach that are available to that channel.
Drive Action
Awareness isn’t the only thing you need to get the most bang for your buck. You’ll also want to convince potential customers to visit your store or take a very specific action and grow your sales, which can be effectively done with an action campaign. The goal of an action campaign is to encourage action, whether that’s buying a product or attending a grand opening event or a promotional sale.
Action campaigns are effective across radio and magazine advertising when they effectively utilize a clear, concise and strong call-to-action (CTA). While these channels vary in delivery, using your strong messaging coupled with an effective CTA is what makes these two channels effective for action campaigns. It’s important to plan your action campaigns far in advance especially for magazine advertising due to the lead time necessary to place your ads for the campaign, also ensuring the action campaign won’t end before the magazine comes off the shelf.
As the business owner, your goal is to give your potential customers enough information that they understand your sale or promotion, where you are located, and where they can go for more information. Given that magazines have much longer lead times than other mediums, they can be the perfect vehicle for you to get your message out early, then as your event/promotion nears radio advertising can be used to drive the point home. Ideally, you can use an awareness campaign and an action campaign in tandem to boost exposure while enhance your marketing message.
With a print advertising approach, a business owner has to consciously be aware of that product's shelf life, as well as its runtime. Magazines tend to have a longer shelf life than other print products, as they’ll commonly sit around on a table or in an office long after they are published, so this definitely helps put your message in front of a large number of eyeballs.
Next Steps
Now that we’ve shown you how radio advertising and magazine advertising can work hand-in-hand, it’s time to put your newfound knowledge to use. If you’re not quite ready to create an integrated marketing strategy, we understand. We’re here to help or answer any questions you may have. Contact us to learn more about cross-channel marketing and how it can boost your sales.
