Moneyball: Brand Lift Studies for Radio Sales
• Advertisers are increasingly looking for proof that their campaigns are working. You can hear ROAS — Return on Ad Spend — talked about in podcasts commercials targeting businesspeople. John Wanamaker, founder of the long-gone Philadelphia-area department store Wanamaker’s, is often quoted saying, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
Alphabet or Meta say they’ll give you a brand lift study to prove the effectiveness of the advertising you bought — if you spend enough. If you’re a marketing consultant for a local radio station or local radio group, you’re being called on to deliver metrics of this type to prove that the ad schedules you’ve sold are working.
NuVoodoo clients are finding success in increased renewals, extensions, and additional sales by supplying their clients with brand lift studies. These radio companies accept the small expenditure involved as a reasonable sales expense and an investment in their success.
We had the pleasure of presenting results from a brand lift study conducted for a client radio group working with a community bank during a webinar last week hosted by the RAB, titled, “Radio Works for Financial Services.”
RAB members can find a recording of the entire webinar on the RAB website or you can watch our segment on the NuVoodoo webinars page. The concept of brand lift studies is simple: screen two samples across the same demo, ethnic composition, and geography. One sample is screened to have been exposed to your client’s campaign. The other sample is an unexposed “control” group.
The brand lift study showcased in the webinar not only highlighted the effectiveness of the bank’s campaign, but also the strength of local radio in driving awareness, trust, and community connection. Earlier this year a small, yet expanding, local bank launched its very first radio campaign. Competing with much larger institutions, our client, the cluster of radio stations, knew they were starting at near zero awareness. The goal for the stations was clear: reinforce the bank’s community-first approach, highlight its personalized banking services, and support expansion of the new branches it had added in the region.
Our belief that radio can move the needle on perceptions of client businesses was born out in the data. Among those in our sample who were exposed to ads (those in the gold-colored bars in the chart above), the percentage who would consider this bank rose 21 points compared to the unexposed “control” group (shown in the gray bars). By going deeper with our interview to get results that mattered to this client, we were able to show that trust rose 27 points and the perception that the bank is “part of my community” rose 26 points among those exposed to the campaign.
You’ll get all the details in the webinar video, either on the RAB website or on the NuVoodoo webinars page.
Giant digital players say they give away brand lift studies for a large enough ad spend, but we can scale brand lift studies to make them work for radio ad budgets. Studies can be run across a group or market cluster. We can cover several clients in a study when schedules align. We’ve worked hard to make costs commensurate with budgets. Reach out to me at leigh@nuvoodoo.com for more information. — Leigh Jacobs
