It's been almost seven years since we last tried radio advertising here at InfoQuest so I was both intrigued and apprehensive when I first saw Google's new Audio Campaign feature advertised in our Google Adword account.
It was a laid back Friday night, and as usual I couldn't keep myself from logging on at home to see how our new Google Adwords campaign was doing. I'd seen the link for Google Audio Campaigns before but had pretty much ignored them. Our past experience with radio was unsuccessful and the process was tedious and expensive. My curiosity got the best of me and I decided to check it out. What follows is my one week journey back into radio.
Friday, August 1st, 8:00 PM
After clicking on the link to learn more I read the following:
"With Google Adwords, you can launch radio ad campaigns and track the resulting traffic and conversions -- all from within your Adwords account. Use the Google Ad Creation Marketplace to get help creating an ad that's customized to your business. Get in touch with professionals who provide quality scriptwriting, editing, production, and voice over talent, within a budget you set. Target customers on "top ten" stations in all 25 of the most popular US markets -- with Google Audio Ads, you have access to 1,600 terrestrial FM and AM radio stations, and we can even guarantee premium inventory during every standard day-part."
OK, so I'm a sucker for great copy and the idea that something out there could help us reach more customers --so what the heck, I'll commit to giving this a try on a test basis.
We have no radio ad, but I do have a service I'd like to try marketing over the airwaves so let’s see how this thing works.
Friday, August 1st, 8:30 PM
I decide to create our first Google Audio campaign and begin navigating the campaign creation wizard to select the demographics of an audience we'd like to reach.
My first choice was to determine if I'd like to reserve air time or bid for it in auction. Reserved air time is good for a specific time based event --say you want to play a commercial on a Friday night for an event on Saturday. I selected the auction option which is less expensive and allows me to obtain air-time based on my budget at a lower cost by playing the ads at various times based on other criteria I'd specify.
The next options were to specify a budget, duration for the campaign, and a bid price for the maximum cost I was willing to pay for each one thousand listeners (max CPM). I was surprised that the CPM bid range turned out to be a relatively low number. Experimenting with this combination of parameters allowed me to determine how many plays the commercial would receive over time based on my budget and CPM bid.
Now it was time to select the markets I wanted the commercial to run in. Since we're based in Pennsylvania and had a specific Adword campaign geared toward Pennsylvania customers, five radio markets in PA were automatically recommended from the existing Adword campaign. I decided to narrow that down slightly and have ads play only in our local metro market.
Having selected the market, I was now able to pick the type of radio station I wanted the ad to play on. The choices were pretty comprehensive with options like Adult Contemporary, Classical, Country, Oldies, Pop, Rock, Urban, Religious, News, Sports, Talk and other.
Now I had to decide when I wanted the ads to play. There are a lot of possible variations including days of the week and particular times of day - like morning or afternoon “drive times” - in whatever combinations you specify. For our campaign I decided to go with Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I chose morning and afternoon drive time and 7 PM-Midnight. On Saturday and Sunday I went with the entire day.
The next step was to specify the demographics of the listeners we wanted to reach. The choices were pretty comprehensive with options for sex and age. Having done some research in Microsoft Adcenter (a topic I'll cover at a later time), I had a good idea of what I wanted to specify here.
Finally, after making all these selections (and believe me it took me longer to write this than it did to build the campaign), I was able to estimate the number of plays the ad would receive, adjust my criteria and set a budget.
So far so good and I'm impressed with the process.
Friday, August, 1st 9:00 PM
OK, now comes the part that I'm really interested in. We have no radio commercial so how do I get one? This is probably the part of the process that impressed me the most and cemented my interest in audio campaigns. If you've ever seen or tried the Lending Tree approach to looking for a mortgage rate, you'll love this next part. In order to create a commercial, there is an established Google Marketplace that you’re able to post your requirements to and receive bids from qualified audio designers. The nice part about this is the process. First, you have an opportunity to sample the work of the designers. At the same time, each designer has a star based rating and reviews --very similar to the way you see products rated at Amazon.com. So, I looked for designers with the highest ratings (I choose only those with 4 or 5 stars), then listened to their samples and read all of their reviews. I narrowed my choice down to five designers.
With my list of designers narrowed down to five, I then filled out my audio marketplace bid worksheet. This gave me the opportunity to specify my detailed requirements and expectations. The more detail you can provide the easier it is for the designer to build the commercial. In this case, not only did I want them to create the script, but also read it, and put sound effects and music behind it.
Having completed the worksheet, I submitted my request, called it a day and waited to see what would happen next.
Saturday August 2nd, 2:00 PM
Yard work day. Yes, I'm a bit of a lawn freak and a perfectionist so I tend to block out Saturdays for work in the yard. After a good day in the sun and air I decided to check in on the bidding process and to my surprise found a bid waiting for me. One of the five designers had responded with their price and comments and indicated that I'd provided them with enough material to create a script and produce the commercial. All this for $150. Wow, what a great price, but would I get quality work for just $150? Well, the ratings for this designer were sky high and they responded really fast so what the heck, let’s do it! I accepted their bid and used the Google Checkout button for their account to pay the $150.
Monday, August 4th, 3:00 PM
Busy day at the office and frankly I'd forgotten about the audio ad. Logged on to Google late in the day and found that a script was waiting for me. It was pretty good. The designer really boiled down a lot of information into what would become a 30 second spot. I did have one suggested change so I responded with the change and waited to see how long that would take.
Monday, August 4th, 5:00 PM
The change is confirmed and we're set to go. I authorize this as the final script and off we go to production.
Wednesday, August 6th, 10:00 AM
The commercial is complete and ready for me to pick up. OK, here is the moment of truth, will we like it? I click the play button and WOW it’s an awesome job. Let me walk around the office and play it for the team and see what they think. Everyone is in agreement that it sounds good. And for $150 it’s a bargain. The last step is to add this commercial to my audio library in Google, associate it with the campaign I created and have Google approve the ad for distribution to the radio stations in our metro market that will air the commercial.
Thursday, August 7th, 2:00 PM
After logging in to Google Adwords I see the commercial has been approved. The campaign is scheduled to begin running this Sunday and will run through the end of the month.
Summary and Observations
Wednesday, August 27th
I'll admit --I was skeptical going into this. Having done it, I'm a fan. In less than a week we created an audio campaign, had a commercial developed and playing on 4 stations in our local market. I did it all on-line and quickly received a quality product.
The commercial has been playing for several weeks and we have family, customers and friends tell us all the time that they heard our commercial on the radio. It’s very cool how it all worked out --you just have to love this if you’re a gadget person like me.
The real test for me was what I did next. I called a local radio station and indicated my interest in having a commercial played and asked for information about price. After a day or two I received a quote. Having requested the same time slots as the Google audio campaign, the quote came back with a price that was considerably higher and offered less play time. For example, in one nine day period through the Google audio campaign, we received 185 ad plays over 4 stations. The quote I received when calling a station would have resulted in only 400 ad plays over a three month period. To get an even comparison I determined the cost per play. What I found was that the direct price (calling a station) was 300% higher than using Google Audio Campaigns. And, my plays went over 4 stations rather than just one. And, I can easily move my ad into a different market at any time.
My conclusion was that the Google Audio Campaign was a much better investment than getting ad plays in the traditional way. Not only was it less expensive, but my real time options were more flexible and controlled by me through my Adwords account. The reporting of ad plays ties directly into my Google Analytics account and Google even offers free telephone number tagging to really get specific with how you track your results.
Google Audio Ad Campaigns get my InfoQuest 5 STAR Rating.