When budgets are tight, radio offers a unique advantage and an opportunity at a level playing field.  Radio dollars go farther than TV dollars, fill the gaps in newspaper dollars, and provide a reach not touched by print ad dollars.  Snapple is perhaps one of the best know radio success stories.  Aggressively promoted by Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh, the once tiny beverage company was bringing in over $24 million in sales within just a few years. 

Everyone's Internet (EV1) is another example of a small brand turned national almost exclusively through the use of radio advertising.  Starting with a mere $20,000 advertising budget, their goal was to spend just $30 in radio advertising for each new subscriber.  According to Robert Marsh, CEO of EV1, their goals were blown out of the water when Ad Results Inc. started marketing their service on Sport Radio 610 AM.  The company grew from revenues of $1.36 million in 1998 to $34 million by the year 2002.

But you don't have to be a start-up to benefit from a radio campaign.  Successful companies with profitable TV, print and Internet campaigns are often looking for new ways to expand.  There's a law of diminishing returns when it comes to advertising dollars spent in any one media.  Once you have reached the peak efficiency in reach and frequency in any single media, adding more coverage will bring an increasingly smaller percentage increase in sales.  At some point, you may even start getting a negative ROI on the increased spending. 

Radio is an exceptional complement to both booming and not-so-booming advertising campaigns.  Multiple studies have been conducted on the effects of adding radio as a supplement to a TV-only advertising campaign.  In a 2001 Radio Multiplier study, it was found that "if 10% of a given TV budget is redeployed into Radio, the efficiency of the campaign in building awareness increases on average by 15%." 

Tests on Radio/TV Synergy by PreTesting Company found that the combination of radio and TV is more powerful than TV alone.  See table below.

Yet sometimes more convincing than tests and studies are real life success stories from someone who has been there before.  AT&T, Compaq and Grolsch Beer are all national brands that have used radio successfully in their advertising campaigns. 

Breathing new life into an old brand

According to an article published in MediaPost, when Grolsch beer was looking for a new way to revitalize their aging brand, they turned to radio.  They had previously found the use of radio effective in their Sam Adams campaign.  In the Grolsch campaign, they had relied heavily on magazine ads, but decided to try radio when they wanted to pick up the pace.  Grolsch used humorous ads targeted at young males and aired during heavy commute times.  Grolsch sales went from 600,000 cases to more than 2 million cases within 4 years.

When you've nowhere to go but up

In a case study published on a particular AT&T campaign, AT&T turned to radio when it became apparent that adding more coverage to their already extensive TV campaign may not be the most economical way to increase sales.  The AT&T division needed to promote a specific telecommunications service against a major competitor that held the number one market position.  AT&T decided to use money scheduled for increased spending on TV to a supplemental radio campaign.  According to the case study, this campaign helped increase AT&T's market share in this division by 39%. 

Trim the budget, increase the sales

A major over-the-counter health care product had already covered about 50% of the national market in their TV campaign.  When looking to increase winter sales, they were struck by the price difference between radio and TV.  They found they could cover 100 percent of the country with radio for less than the cost they were currently spending to cover just 50% of the nation with TV.  But would the radio campaign be effective?  Could they risk going to an all radio campaign?

They conducted a study in which they ran radio-only in test markets and TV-only in control markets.  As reported in the case study published by RAEL, they covered more area with radio at less cost and found that:  "After eight weeks of using Radio instead of TV, the test markets showed a sales lift of +3.6 percentage points of sales growth over what was seen in the TV-only control markets."  The company decided to turn to all radio for the 2003 winter campaign.  The expected savings in advertising was to be $800,000 while their national reach would be doubled.

Getting past the clutter

Educating customers about a new type of high-tech device can be a challenge.  Doing it at Christmas can be a nightmare.  How do you cut past the clutter long enough to tell them about your great new invention?  Compaq faced just that problem in December of 2000 when it decided to push iPAQs for the Christmas season.  The company decided to use local DJs in 18 key markets across the country.  The DJs were provided with iPAQs so they could be personally familiar with the product, and they began promoting the product during their shows.  Radio spot commercials and in-store demonstrations were run concurrently, bringing awareness of the product to the forefront of shoppers' minds.  The innovative and aggressive advertising campaign succeeded in boosting sell-through hundreds of percentage points.   

Radio advertising has been repeatedly successful in difficult marketing situations.  Whether used concurrently with other media, or used as a stand-alone advertising method, radio has proven time and time again to be a cost-effective, powerful choice.  It is effective both for heightening brand awareness and driving direct sales, and it can be targeted to both national and local campaigns.  Fortune 500 and start-up companies alike do well when turning to radio as their partner in success.