5 Tips from the Radio Experts at Hubbard Chicago

When you’re developing a radio advertising plan, there are a lot of moving parts. Some of the most important decisions involve choosing the right radio station, planning the right schedule and frequency to reach your audience, and knowing what’s working and what’s not, so you can make adjustments and improve your radio campaign results.

At Hubbard Chicago, we know radio. For today’s post, we’re sharing insights and perspectives from our creative department on the essential elements to building a successful radio advertising campaign.

5 Tips from the Radio Experts at Hubbard Chicago

1. Crafting Your Radio Script:

A longer spot gives you more time to tell your story. It also provides an opportunity to repeat your brand name and call to action. However, you don’t always have 60 seconds! And capturing your listeners attention requires a powerful, grabbing first few moments.

Avoid overloading your listeners with too much information, particularly numbers, which will cause them to tune out. Instead, tell them a story. Appeal to your listeners with both logic and emotion. Remember that one of the unique advantages of a radio ad is it gives you the ability to paint a picture with words and sounds.

2. Producing Your Radio Spot:

Details matter with radio spots. Your voice-over talent should match the tone of your ad—and there’s a fine line between excited and corny, or emotional and overly dramatic. Great sound quality is critical, and so is recording in a professional studio with experts who know what music and sound effects to add, how to infuse the right feeling, and get the message across loud in clear.

3. Choosing the Best Time:

Listeners on their way to work in the morning are very different than mid-day or late-night listeners. Your radio advertising campaign needs to consider both frequency—how many times an individual listener will hear your ad—and reach, how many different listeners will hear your ads. At Hubbard Chicago, we choose time slots that are the best fit for both your target audience and your campaign objectives.

4. Planning the Best Schedule:

Ads are more effective when repeated, but it’s important to strike a balance. You want your listener to be exposed to your message multiple times so they can take it in and remember it later, if not the entire script, at least the action you wanted them to take or the emotion you wanted them to associate with your brand. However, you don’t want to risk annoying them! It’s our job to find the right balance, so our clients’ radio spots are as effective as possible.

5. Choosing the Right Station:

You could have a great radio spot with killer creative, but not reach the right target audience because you’re on the wrong station. At Hubbard Chicago, we analyze data from our different stations and programs to identify the best matches for our clients’ target audience needs. Plus, our stations offer other services to build on your radio advertising success, like sponsorship opportunities and social media promotion to name a few.

Working with a radio professional can help you identify the questions you should be asking and the answers you need to develop a marketing strategy and radio ads that get results. Questions about radio ads, or interested in talking with our team? Click below to contact us.