How Adding Radio to TV Advertising Can Tune-In to Major Results

Television has always been a powerful medium for reaching audiences. Yet for all its power, there’s a proven opportunity for you to achieve even better marketing results with your TV advertising.

The truth is, using only TV to reach your audience isn’t as effective as it used to be. If TV is providing you with your desired marketing results, you shouldn’t stop using this channel but instead, you should consider adding another marketing channel. Radio advertising in particular has the potential to boost your TV campaign’s effectiveness by as much as 35%. In today’s post, we want to show you how radio and TV advertising work better together to help you achieve your marketing goals.

A Note on Why You Should Add Radio

There’s numerous media channels to consider, but radio will have a significant impact on your marketing results. Part of this is due to the fact that radio can radically lift your reach. Radio reaches 93% of adults in the US, or 228.5 million consumers, according to Nielsen, which is roughly 12 million more than TV alone. And as we’ve often noted, radio has a huge impact on recall, is cost-effective when strategically deployed, and holds listener’s attention in both time spent listening and share of ear. But the focus here isn’t on what radio can do alone.

Three Ways Radio Can Supercharge Your TV Campaigns

While TV and radio have distinct advantages, together they can increase the memorability, ROI, and reach of your advertising campaign. Below we’ve shared three different ways radio advertising can amplify your TV marketing and boost your results by up to 35%.

1. Boosting the Memorability of TV Advertising

Adding radio not only lifts brand awareness, but it also makes your TV ad more memorable. In a recent study from Nielsen, those who heard a radio ad were 35% more aware of the corresponding TV ad than those who only saw the TV ad.

As noted in AdAge, this is most effective when there are common elements in each ad. For instance, using the same star athlete shown using your medical product in a TV spot to talk about the product on-air will lift memorability.

Most importantly, radio does heavy lifting in terms of unaided recall. A study from Local Ad Recall, as reported by InsideRadio, found that unaided brand recall among companies leveraging radio in their media mix was 5x greater than those without it. And according to the RAB, replacing one of two TV ads with two radio ads lifted unaided recall by more than 34%.

2. Increasing ROI

According to the Advertising Research Foundation (as reported by AdAge), just increasing the number of media channels used in a marketing campaign from one to two can lift ROI by 19%, and adding as many as five can lift it by 35%. Similarly, another study from Nielsen (reported by AdWeek) shows radio delivers $12 in sales for every $1 spent on advertising.

This is largely due to the way radio impacts purchase intent and brand perception. A case study from the IAB about a major retailer in the US revealed that adding radio to a TV and digital advertising mix lifted purchase intent from 10% to 90%. Meanwhile, brand perception doubled for a radio and TV mix over TV alone.

This demonstrates that having multiple touchpoints along the consumer journey makes a big difference. Consider a listener that hears your radio ad on the way home, then sees your TV spot while they’re relaxing on the couch, then is retargeted via a digital ad in the office the next day. With this kind of frequency and variety in messaging, you’ll increase your change of being top-of-mind when they decide to make a purchase.

3. Expanding Your Audience

As we mentioned, radio extends your reach, but not just in terms of the number of people it reaches in a given week. Radio also extends your reach throughout the day, especially at times when your audience is away from the TV, like during work hours or on their commute.

As noted by Nielsen, TV viewing peaks between 5 p.m. and 12 a.m., and radio use is higher than TV between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. Radio allows you to lift frequency and fill in the gaps for when you can’t reach your audience with TV alone. For instance, if you’re running an ad with a promotional offer for your restaurant on WBBM (CBS) in the evening, you can run an adjacent ad during the Sherman and Tingle Morning Show on 97.1 FM. This gives you an opportunity to reach radio listeners who may have missed your TV spot.

The moral of the story here is that radio doesn’t have to replace your already effective TV advertising (if it is indeed generating results) but instead can be the perfect complement to it and ultimately boost your marketing ROI. If you’re running TV ads right now and not utilizing the power of radio, it’s worth exploring for your marketing plan.