How to measure radio ads performance

One strength of digital or online ads is the ability to track them fairly accurately. The distributor can tell you exactly how many times your ad was seen or listened to. Most online ads are clickable and lead to a corresponding website. Those links are then trackable, as is any traffic on the website.

With traditional radio ads, tracking performance is a little more complicated. Radio stations can give you estimates of the number of listeners at a given time, but you don’t know exactly how many people are hearing your ad. 

Tracking performance is even more difficult. However, there are a few ways that you can measure radio ads performance. 

A few of the best ways to measure the effectiveness of a radio ad include:

Use a vanity URL

If the goal of your radio campaign is to drive traffic to your website, a vanity URL can help you figure out roughly how many people came to your website via the radio ad campaign. 

A vanity URL is a descriptive, memorable and pronounceable URL usually used to redirect URLs from one location to another. Basically, you purchase a short, branded URL and then create short links which you then can track. These links redirect to a page on your website.

Use a vanity phone number

A vanity phone number is similar to a vanity URL. It’s a unique phone number that is easy to remember. They usually use a word instead of numbers, like 1-800-FLOWERS. You can set up tracking on your phone number so that you know exactly how many people called, or you could just track manually. If you only have one vanity phone number for your radio ads, you can attribute those calls to the ads. 

Give out a coupon or discount code

If your radio ad mentions that any customers using a specific code get a discount, you then can attribute any customers who use that code as coming from the radio campaign. 

Ask your customers

If you talk with customers one-on-one, you can simply ask them how they heard about you and record the answers. Another way to poll customers is through incentivized surveys, where the customer receives a survey after a purchase and can earn a discount or coupon by completing it. 

Track foot traffic

Tracking your foot traffic is another way to measure the impact of a radio campaign. If your only advertising is a radio campaign and your foot traffic goes up during that time, you may correlate that with the campaign, although you’d want to consider any other factors as well. 

Track sales

No doubt you are already tracking how many sales you make. If your sales go up during a radio campaign or shortly thereafter, this could be attributed to the radio ads. Both tracking sales and tracking foot traffic isn’t 100% accurate, but at least they can be an indicator. 

Work with Hybrid Media to run traditional radio ads or radio ads online

For professional help getting your traditional or online radio ads heard by your target audience, work with the team at Hybrid Media. Put our team’s 300+ years of marketing and media experience to work for you. 

Direct Response advertising focuses on delivering ROI by quickly capturing the attention of listeners and leading them to a call to action. At Hybrid Media, we purchase millions of dollars of low-cost media each week, resulting in significant savings for all of our clients. How much can you save? Contact us for a free consultation today!