Depending which survey you believe, approximately 95% of radio audiences find their favorite station “by accident” or through “word of mouth”.
      That’s not because advertising doesn’t work, but because stations are too easy to find.
      Unlike our clients’ locations, listeners can find our location without looking… a simple push of the scan button does it for them!
      So why invest in billboards, TV and other audience-promotion advertising if less than five percent of our audience will be generated by it?
1.) Advertisers are people too. They see and hear our advertising and get the impression we’re bigger than life!

2.) Staff morale, both on air and off, gets a definite lift that you can hear over the speaker and in sales presentations when your station is making the extra effort and investment to improve its profile in the market place.

3.) Reinforcement – Advertising and a high in-market profile tells your existing audience that they have made the right choice and chosen a popular station.

4.) Leading by example. Advertisers expect us to practice what we preach. If we do nothing but wait for audiences to find us by accident, it sends a signal that those of us in advertising do not believe in advertising. 

      I once managed the number thirteen station in a four station market (numbers four through twelve were near-by major market stations) but we actually out-billed the number one station five months out of twelve.
       Much of that sales success was the result of the huge market profile of our window-sticker, billboard and bus-back campaigns that advertisers were exposed to on their way to work every day. We looked successful!
       Audience promotion for radio stations does work, just not in the way some of us think it does.