A successful marketing campaign is powered by a well-crafted, carefully considered strategy. But what does that mean? How do you choose the right audience and platform for your marketing message? To achieve the highest ROI public media campaign, you need to take a creative, data-driven approach.
Radio is one of the most effective and accessible mediums for your marketing efforts. By choosing to sponsor a public radio station, you benefit from a loyal, engaged audience that views your messages as less intrusive and more aligned with their interests and values.
Choosing the Right Marketing Campaign Goals
Determining the most effective public radio strategy depends upon your campaign goals. Each of the following strategies combines campaign duration and message frequency for specific purposes:
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If you want to raise awareness of listener events for small businesses or non-profits and have a limited budget, consider a short duration campaign.
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When you want to create broad awareness of new products or drive attendance to large events, a short campaign with heavy message frequency is effective.
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To create long-term awareness and familiarity for ongoing or annual campaigns, consider a longer campaign with light frequency.
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To maximize a station's audience by reaching both occasional and frequent listeners, choose a long campaign with heavy frequency.
One of the most critical factors for determining the best frequency for your messages is turnover. Turnover is how often the audience changes in a time period or daypart. Public radio stations have low turnover, meaning fewer messages are necessary to reach a majority of the audience. This makes your campaign more efficient, driving up ROI.
Public Media’s Audience
Public media audiences are, on average, more affluent, educated, well-traveled, and active in their communities. They actively seek out and value educational opportunities, so they gravitate to public media.
Sponsor messages inform and educate the listener, and are appreciated for their tone and tenor, often resulting in higher engagement. The audience not only trusts sponsors but holds them in high esteem. 73% of public radio listeners have a more positive opinion of a company when they find out it supports public radio (Kantar, NPR State of Sponsorship Survey, April 2021).
Data-Driven Results
Demonstrating the efficacy of your marketing campaign is critical. It not only highlights the success of your team but assures executives that you are meeting or exceeding business goals while producing an impressive return on investment. Market Enginuity Audience Analytics can help measure the results of your public media campaign with data-driven results. It allows you to optimize your campaigns while proving the return on your public radio ad spend.
Prove Your ROI
Proving the ROI of your public media campaign shows how it furthers your business goals, such as increasing reach, generating leads, driving brand awareness, or differentiating your brand. The benefits are increased through audience perception of your business as a responsible corporate citizen and benefactor for causes they care about. An Edison Research study of NPR listeners shows compelling proof of the efficacy of public media campaigns, including:
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40% have recommended a company, service, or product from NPR advertisements, compared to 27% on commercial radio.
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47% feel that listening to a sponsor message is a fair tradeoff for free content.
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46% have given a new product, service, or company consideration after hearing a public radio ad.
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82% of NPR listeners have responded to a sponsor message by taking action.
Public radio connects with a highly educated, affluent, and influential audience of loyal listeners. That loyalty extends to sponsors, resulting in greater ROI. Download our ebook for more information on how to create a high ROI public media campaign that achieves your marketing goals.
