Advertising

Online Advertising Companies can do much more than just help you with your advertising. They can help you to optimize both your website and your sales. Find out just how by reading this article.

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Online Advertising Companies enable internet based business. Without advertising,How Online Advertising Companies Help Their Customers Articles whether conventional or online there would be nowhere near the level of sales activity that there is today. We would have to rely on word of mouth, and even if you employed an army of sales people going around to get your business or product known, they would reach only a fraction that can be reached by harnessing the power of the World Wide Web.

Some website owners actually do their own online advertising, but there is now a growing trend of online businesses that prefer to employ the services of specialist Online Advertising Companies. While it is not particularly difficult to do your own online advertising, it is very time consuming, demanding hours of your time that you could otherwise usefully use to focus on other more important aspects of running your business.

Using Online Advertising Companies makes good business sense in many ways. Not only does it free up your own time, but it also means that you can avail your business the services of a professional, experienced, team of marketing experts who know their trade inside out.

The really great thing about advertising online is that it is very cost effective. If you take the time for a moment to think about conventional advertising, you’ll see what I mean. With conventional advertising, to reach audience of any decent size, and one that contains enough sales potential, (bearing in mind that most people won’t be interested in your product), you will have to advertise on a massive scale. We’re talking about things like national radio, national TV and the national press. The problem with those of course is that they are all so expensive.

Because Online Advertising Companies use the power of the internet, which is in essence a free media, they can reach a far larger audience for a fraction of what conventional advertising would cost. But more importantly, it enables truly targeted advertising. In other words, you can direct your adverts at people who are actually interested in what it is you have to sell. The result is more cost effective advertising and increased sales.

There are many different approaches to online advertising, some cheaper than others. Take article writing for example. If you have the skill and knowledge to write your own sales copy, article marketing can cost nothing, except of course your time. Then there’s email advertising.

This is another low cost form of advertising, but again it does take time to construct and send each individual email, not to mention having a large enough list of potential clients’ email addresses in the first place. The best Online Advertising Companies would offer both of these forms of advertising in their portfolio of different methodologies. The difference is that they would have specialist skilled writers in their employ for writing professional, informed articles, and they would have a team of project managers for formulating and administering email campaigns.

There are so many different types of advertising techniques that it would take years of practice to become proficient in them all. In addition to email advertising and article writing there is pay per click, search engine optimization, social website advertising, paid and free online directories, affiliate marketing, cell phone marketing … the list is seemingly endless.

The most effective advertising campaigns are often a mixture of these different methodologies, so just imagine how long it is going to take you to familiarize yourself with all of them; far better than to use Online Advertising Companies who are already au fait with all of these different techniques. Not only will they know how to employ them, but they will also have a good instinct for which particular methodologies to combine and use for best effect in your own campaigns.

Another advertising market that is almost impossible to tap into yourself is multilingual advertising. Much is made of the so-called “global village” that has been created by the World Wide Web. It means that there is an enormous market out there in cyberspace just waiting to be tapped into. But unless you can speak Mandarin, or Urdu, or whatever, you are never going to be able to communicate effectively. However, this is another area where the top internet advertising companies can help.

One of the most important things for many website owners when it comes down to internet advertising is getting a decent recent on their advertising investments. If you spend a fortune on marketing but it gets you no results, it’s just a waste of time and money. You might just as well save yourself all the hassle and simply set light to a few dollar bills instead. Same end result.

If, however, you decide to bite the bullet and you hire one of the best internet advertising companies, you stand a far better chance of getting effective advertising that will result in increased sales. In fact, the extra revenue that you get from your increased sales should more than compensate for the cost of hiring your advertising partner in the first place. In other words, this is not just an expense, it’s an investment.

You can get other benefits too from teaming up with the best internet advertising companies, benefits that impact on your website’s operation. Part of effective search engine optimization is making sure that your website works at its optimum best. So a good internet marketing company will also help you to fine tune your website by making sure that it uses the best coding, and that you employ the best keywords strategically dispersed throughout your web pages. The other thing they will do is to look at your conversion rate. This is the relationship between visitors and paying customers. If it is too low, they can suggest and implement tweaks to your website to improve the visitor experience and help to lead them into placing that all important order.

“How much should I spend on radio advertising?” “How do I know I am getting the best radio advertising rates?” “What radio stations should I advertise on?” “What are good and bad radio advertising prices?” “How many spots should I air on a radio station?”

Every day at Radio Lounge,Radio Advertising Costs – What to Budget Articles we hear radio advertising questions such as these.

Honestly, there is so much confusion about radio advertising floating around – we can’t blame you for asking these questions. Why is advertising on the radio so mysterious? The answer is – radio advertising is not mysterious. It just helps to know how it works.

Effective radio advertising relies on two major components – the message (the radio commercial itself), and the media (that the radio spot airs on).

The Message

Let’s look first at the radio commercial itself. Before even thinking about which radio stations to air on, or how much to spend on radio advertising rates, you must think about what you are going to say in your radio ad. For this article, we are assuming that all call centers, fulfillments, websites, etc. lead generation, and sales closing processes have been put in place by you, the advertiser. Creating a radio commercial that helps drive traffic is extremely important to the advertising process.

The advertising industry is full of voice talents, radio personalities, DJ’s and others, all claiming to create radio commercials. Be careful here. When entering the arena of radio commercial production, look for a radio advertising agency that has experience and a track record of successful ad campaigns. Anyone can create a radio ad, but not everyone can create a radio ad that pulls traffic. Some radio stations provide free radio commercials if you advertise on their station. Most of these free commercials are never based on strategy and are just one of several dozen commercials that have to be created by an overworked radio production person in a five to fifteen minute window of time. Remember, you usually get what you pay for.

The most effective radio commercials are built on a solid, proven strategy. The copy is written using time tested formulas that maximize potential response. The talent is handpicked to best connect with the end user and the production is based upon clear, quality, and easy to absorb audio.

So…what does the radio commercial production process cost? The majority of radio commercials that work best usually fall into the $500 to $1000 price range. There are always exceptions to the rule (lots of revisions to copy or audio, additional voice talents, celebrity endorsements, etc.) but this figure generally covers development of a solid strategy, copy from experienced copywriters, performance by high caliber voice talents, and the highest quality production services.

The Media

For many with questions about radio advertising rates, and radio station prices, here is where the mystery begins. We will try to simplify the mystery of radio media buying as much as we can in this small amount of space.

A good radio advertising buy focuses on a few different things:

* Finding the best radio stations in a market that match your customer’s demographics (age, gender, income level, etc.) and psychographics (interests, beliefs, hobbies, personality traits, etc.).
* Finding the dayparts that best reach your target customer. Mornings? Middays? Afternoons?
* Selecting the top radio stations that most efficiently reach the highest potential customers, the right number of times (defined as frequency), for the least amount of money

Usually, when researching radio advertising costs, many potential radio advertisers have a pretty good idea of the first two points. However, when it comes down to finding the best station (or stations) at the best price, the radio advertising process becomes a little more challenging.

Here is how we tackle the process at Radio Lounge and determine how much to spend on radio advertising costs. Within the market you want to advertise in, we find the radio stations that have the best potential to reach your target customer. This is based on the formats of the radio stations. Urban Hip-hop stations will target different demographics than a News/Talk, or Soft Rock station. After we select a group of radio stations, we contact those stations to let them know we are thinking about advertising on their radio station. We ask for specific data from the radio stations called “rankers”. This is ratings data that most radio stations can provide based on specific requirements we have requested. From this point, we have a good idea which stations perform the best in our target demographics.

Once we have narrowed down the radio stations to just a few that will effectively reach our target customer, we then request a proposal based on certain criteria – dayparts, frequency goals, etc. From these proposals, we can see who reaches the target audience most efficiently – using tools like Cost Per Point (ratio of spot rate to ratings percentage), Cost Per Thousand (ratio of spot rate to audience category totals), etc. If a radio station is not competitive, we will often ask the station to resubmit a more competitive proposal. But, how will we know if all of the station’s radio advertising rates are too high. Radio Lounge has access to data that allows us to compare proposals against historical figures to determine if radio station prices are in line with market averages. We negotiate, and help execute the purchase.

Great…but what does this cost? It depends on the size of the market you wish to advertise in as determined by Arbitron (the radio ratings services). Radio advertising rates can be as high as $800 per 60 spots in a top market like New York City, or as low as $3 per 60 spots in Kerrville, TX. How will you know what to spend?

Here’s a valuable system we have used from our history of working with radio advertising rates. The system is based on a solid branding schedule that may run one spot per day in the morning drive, one per day at midday, and one per day in the afternoon drive – Monday through to Friday, and two spots on Saturday and Sunday. That’s nineteen spots a week at sticker price. This type of schedule is good for achieving a desired frequency level of three (meaning the average listener to a station will hear the radio commercial at least three times). Under these broad assumptions, you can use the following chart as a rough guide to budgeting your radio advertising campaign.*

*Note, these are gross rates and do not include production costs or agency discounts. These are market averages for the standard radio schedule mentioned above, actual costs may vary. Different combinations of dayparts on different stations may cost much less.

* Markets 1 -5 (ex: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc.)
Expect to pay from $4000 to $8000 per week/per station for a top performing station.

* Markets 6 – 20 (ex: Dallas/Ft.Worth, Houston, Phoenix, San Diego, etc.)
Expect to pay from $2000 to $5000 per week/per station for a top performing station.

* Markets 21 – 50 (ex: Denver, Cleveland, Kansas City, etc.)
Expect to pay from $1000 to $3000 per week/per station for a top performing station.

* Markets 51- 150 (ex: Akron, Syracuse, Baton Rouge, etc.)
Expect to pay from $800 to $2000 per week/per station for a top performing station.

* Markets 150+ (ex: Myrtle Beach SC, Green Bay, Topeka, etc.)
Expect to pay from $500 to $1500 per week/per station for a top performing station.

You may be saying, “Wow! That can be expensive”. Relax, these are standards and radio advertising schedules come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes, schedules are smaller depending on advertising goals and objectives. However, we do recommend that you are able to commit to the range of minimums.

Leftovers?

Notice we have not mentioned remnant radio advertising here at all. Remnant advertising is the practice of buying unused inventory at deep discounts. Remnant advertising success exists more in theory than in practice. However, this is not to say that there are not advertisers who are having success with remnant advertising. If, and when, remnant advertising falls into your lap, we suggest you look into it. However, basing your entire radio ad campaign on remnant advertising may be shooting yourself in the foot. With the exception of a few times a year, most top performing radio stations do not have that much unsold inventory. Often, the largest advertisers have contracts that guarantee so many low cost/no cost spots that have to run. The reality is that if large advertisers (with the big dollar schedule) need their spots to run, or if another advertiser pays just one penny more than you did for your remnant spots – bump! You just got bumped off the air that day. You may pay for twenty spots and only get two that air. The stations will make it up to you, but what if you were counting on that advertising to drive sales. Or better yet, in the age of consolidated radio groups your remnant advertising might run on the third to the last rated station in the market. The result is NO RESULT and you have just wasted money for nothing. We really do believe that when it comes to radio advertising YOU TRULY DO GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

Now that radio advertising rates have been explained, you may ask the question, how long should I advertise? The type of radio advertising helps define the length of a campaign. Advertising for an event? We recommend shorter, more compact schedules to create buzz leading up to the event or launch. Branding a product? Often, long term schedules with a bit of breathing room work best. Maybe even flighting could work (on two weeks, off two weeks). Most of the time, the two things that will determine how long to run a radio advertising campaign will be advertiser goals (traffic numbers), and external factors such as sales cycles. Oh yeah, and usually budget affects the length of the campaign. It is not desired, but that’s reality.

The Total Cost

You may be thinking, “So if I want to run a spot on three top Houston radio stations, I should expect to pay $1000 for a commercial, plus $3000 per week per station…that’s $10,000 for one week’s worth of advertising!” That’s true, and may be just what it takes to reach over half a million potential well targeted customers. The real question is, “How much money can you make off half a million potential targeted customers?” Is it more than $10,000 a week? $40,000 a month? These are questions to ask yourself, because in the world of advertising, that is pretty good traffic.

It works even better when you let Radio Lounge reduce that cost even further. What if Radio Lounge was able to get you a great radio advertising schedule by providing an instant discount ABOVE the negotiated lowest radio station price?

Launch Your Radio Advertising Campaign

You may still have many questions about radio advertising. That’s why we are here. We want to help you get the biggest bang for the radio advertising buck. Radio Lounge has worked with thousands of radio advertising campaigns. We know what works and what does not. Let Radio Lounge help you with all facets of strategic development, creative development, copywriting, production, media planning, media negotiation, and monitoring of your radio advertising campaign.