There are two reasons why advertising on Tampa radio stations is more effective than advertising on TV.
The first reason is reach. In a study conducted by Nielsen, the number of consumers who are exposed to a commercial contributes profoundly to the number of sales it will create. This is discussed in depth in the free eBook, "Seven Steps For Advertising Successfully In Tampa Bay."
Among all media available to Tampa Bay business owners, radio offers the biggest reach.
The second reason why radio advertising is so powerful has been revealed in a new study Mindshare, an advertising agency that buys media for some of the most successful companies in the world including General Mills, Nestlé, Domino's, IBM, Rolex, and John Deere. The Mindshare study indicates that when a brand tells a story using audio media, it elicits a 21% higher emotional intensity than the same story told using visual media.
According to AdWeek, the Mindshare study used brain activity detected from electroencephalograms (EEGS) and galvanic skin response technology (which measures changes in sweat gland activity) to get a deeper sense of how advertising resonates with people.Adweek quotes Mindshare's Arafel Buzan as saying, “Sound and the human experience are intimately and neurologically linked. It’s the first language we learn, and from infancy is processed faster and with greater emotional prioritization than any of our other senses.”
Ms. Buzan goes on to say, "The longstanding rule in creative, that storytelling requires sight, sound, and motion, has also insisted that sight is the most important part of that equation. So while over the years marketers have made the choices to buy visual-only mediums, the industry has largely devalued the potential of sound existing on its own for storytelling.”
Many local small business owners and marketers have discovered the power of telling their stories with advertising on Tampa radio stations.
Jon Polizzi owns Electric Today, LLC has owned Electric Today, LLC with his dad and brother since 2004. The company provides residential electrical and air conditioning repairs to customers in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Manatee counties.
In late 2017, Electric Today began advertising on Tampa Bay radio. The results have been spectacular.
"Last year," says Mr. Polizzi, "our business grew 67%. The only thing we did differently was to add radio advertising into our marketing mix. I attribute most of our growth to what we have done on the radio."
"Our first attempt at radio advertising did not work so well. We made the mistake of not buying enough commercials to be effective."
"We then started advertising on Tampa radio every week with very high repetition, and that's when we started getting results," says Mr. Polizzi. "Our return on investment (ROI) has been really good."
Hungry Howie's Chooses Radio Advertising Over TV
Hungry Howie's is the 12th largest chain of pizza restaurants in America based on sales volume. The company has 551 locations. Seventy-one of the stores are in the Tampa Bay area.
For the past 33 years, advertising on Tampa radio has helped Hungry Howie's grow from just 20 locations in the Tampa Bay area to 210 throughout the state.
"Our Florida locations outsell all of the other stores across the country," says Barry Devine, founder of Devine Advertising, a St. Petersburg based small business that has been responsible for Hungry Howie's marketing since 1986.
"The only thing we do differently here in Florida," says Mr. Devine, "is we use lots of radio advertising. Far more than the Hungry Howie's locations in other states."
"Look, we've tried TV and cable advertising, but it was too expensive to generate the frequency we need," says Mr. Devine, "and nobody really reads the newspaper anymore. And we don't use streaming media like Pandora or Spotify because they just don't have the hometown feel like Tampa radio does. We want our customers to think of us as their local pizza joint."
"Occasionally," says Mr. Devine, "one of your store managers will tell me that we are wasting our money on radio advertising because no one listens anymore."
"When they tell me that I offer to give his store a radio campaign at no-charge to invite customers in for a free large pizza. In 33 years, no one has ever taken me up on that offer because, they know, the results would be overwhelming because radio advertising does work."
