Branding on the radio is about making an emotional connection with your customers and ensuring your business is the first one on their minds when they think of a particular product or service. When done consistently and through various advertising methods, your efforts will result in a powerful message.
But what are the appropriate steps to take when determining how to brand your company on the radio? What part of your brand needs to shine? Below are three key areas to consider when creating your action plan.
1. Your Brand: The Heart and Soul of Your Business
First, you need to define your brand. But before you reach for your laptop or pen and paper, force yourself to really consider how your customers feel about your brand – not what you think they feel about your brand.
Your customers – or target audience – are the ones engaging with your brand. They have perceptions, feelings, and thoughts about it – and those may not always align with what is actually said or what you’d like said.
Best-selling author, blogger, and 2013 Direct Marketing Hall of Famer, Seth Godin shares, “A brand is a set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.”
So take it right to the source. Learn more about your brand by talking with your customers. This could be done relatively quickly through an online survey, a survey on social media, a focus group, or even by asking questions during daily interactions with your customers.
Here are a few questions you could ask:
• Why do you think (insert your brand) exists?
• What value does (insert your brand) bring to you? {Fulfillment? Relief? Joy? Love? Peace of Mind?}
• Tell me about your favorite (service, product) experience with (insert your brand)
• What do you like and dislike about (insert your brand)?
• What is it about (insert your brand) that differentiates it from the competition?
This is an important step in better understanding how customers relate to your brand. Review the responses and you’ll likely see similar words and phrases that your customers use to describe your brand. These are the words you can incorporate into your advertising copy.
2. It All Starts with a Plan
Now that you have a better sense of your brand perception - and more importantly, what issues it helps customers resolve - it’s time to formulate your plan.
Developing your plan for marketing and advertising will help you understand the different ways your message might reach your target customers. Determining which methods you’ll use depends on your customers. What are the various resources they use or watering holes they search to solve problems? That’s where you can be engaging them with your brand – whether it’s an online or radio ad, a mailing, a story, a blog post, or an article in a magazine, it’s important to be where your potential customers are.
The benefit of radio advertising is a strong, brief, and consistent message. And if radio turns out to be one of your customer’s resources – it should definitely be considered as one of the advertising methods you incorporate into your overall strategy.
3. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Along with radio advertising, delivering your brand message through diverse marketing channels will reinforce a consistent brand experience. Anything that represents your brand, from brochures and business cards to interactive media such as radio and Internet advertising, should send the same message to your customers.
Building your brand – especially if your own perception is different than your customers’ – won’t happen overnight. But delivering your message consistently – through various methods – will help get you there faster.
To learn more about creating a powerful advertising strategy that keeps your customers top-of-mind, contact one of our Branding Experts.