If your small business is in the construction industry, the best advertising mix for you to consider when choosing a radio format to advertise with will be the one that the people you want to reach actually listen to.
There is one thing about most small construction businesses and that is that many of them spend a lot of time listening to a radio.
If not actively listening to a radio over the noise of electric drills and the general banging going on around a construction site, there is often a radio on somewhere. Tilers and Painters in particular, like to have a radio playing in their workplace but how much they actually concentrate on what the announcer is saying, could be another matter. Unless, of course, it’s the latest sports results and then they seem to actively listen.
Whether this is because sport is a big conversation topic among them and their mates and everyone likes to be able to take part in the conversations around them, or is it because they are genuinely interested? Either way, the important part to remember here is that many construction contractors do actively listen to these sports news items.
So if you are a construction contractor working in the building industry and you are thinking of doing some radio advertising to project managers or builders because you want more sub-contract work, then the best time for your radio ad to be the most effective for you will be to make sure that your ad is read or heard as close as possible to the time slot of these sports broadcasts. Either just before or just after is the best time.
You can place your radio ad to be heard at your nominated times but sometimes, you may have to pay a premium to get your wanted ad-time. Most radio sales reps have packages of time slots that their station want to fill and these will often consist of a mixture of random times.
When buying radio ads, you are actually buying air-time. This is the product these sales reps are selling and if they sell you a radio package where many of the time slots may be cheaper to buy (while still being very expensive!) your radio ad will simply not be heard by those you are wanting to reach. This is as useless to your small business as fly-screens on a submarine!
Radio air time is very expensive and today doesn’t have the same audiences as it had twenty years ago. Even with a radio switched on, it has simply become a background noise that unless someone is actively listening for something, your ad simply won’t get noticed.
So if you decide to try radio advertising, make sure your ad begins with a noise that gets their attention. But be careful when doing this because some noises are so ‘real’ today they can cause distress or give someone such a fright their first response is anger. This is not a good introduction for your business.
If you do decide to give radio advertising a go, make sure the time slot you choose to use matches the audience you want to reach in the format that you are comfortable using to introduce your small construction business to your targeted listeners.
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