With all the flashy ways to target an audience online, it’s easy to automatically assume if you’re looking to increase quality web traffic, your first stop needs to be with a digital approach, right? Well not necessarily. A study from the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) found that “radio generated an average 29% lift in google search activity.” Sure, there are many ways to increase and retarget audiences online, but for a lot of businesses, you can actually have a more efficient reach with mass mediums like broadcast radio. Turns out the “theater of the mind” is a more powerful force than a lot of people gives it credit for.
The RAB found some interesting paradigms, like which dayparts on radio drove the highest search, and with no surprise AM Drive is the winner and Midday just 1% behind. Now, the last thing you want to do is go out there and buy these two dayparts exclusively based on these statistics alone. You need to know your audience, know the data to support which channels to reach your target most efficiently, and think which creative you’ll be using to get a response.
But why does this all matter anyway? Well, according to a 2016 study by Forrester 71% of people start their purchasing journey using a search engine to discover a new product or service and 74% used a search engine during their consideration and purchasing phase. In many respects getting someone interested in your business enough to find you online is the toughest part. Once you can get someone to your website and be engaging with your brand there are ways to learn more about your prospect and how to better serve them through smart content and bring them down the conversion funnel.
If you’re in an industry that has a large audience radio’s reach can actually be more efficient than some of the different types of display advertising online. So not only can you increase your search activity and online engagement, but you can also serve other objectives in your marketing like increasing brand awareness and minimizing your cost to reach your audience (your CPM). Same goes for television for that matter, both drive awareness and consumer interest which naturally these days lead to the machine known as Google.
