Radio advertising is processed by the brain five-times faster than visual advertising. This is awesome news for Fayetteville business owners who depend on radio to market their goods and services.
Fayetteville consumers will recognize the first few notes of Jingle Bells five times faster than they can identify a picture of Santa Claus. That's because it takes the human brain 5/100th of a second to process sound. On the other hand, it takes a full quarter of a second to process visual stimuli.
This difference in processing time may seem inconsequential. But, for a Fayetteville small business owner who is fighting to inject their advertising message into the mind of consumers, that .20-second gap can be the difference between success and failure.
During that chasm between sound and sight processing, consumers will be inundated with by 2,200,000 other pieces of data that will compete for the brain's attention. Because brains are only capable of dealing with about ten pieces of data every quarter second, the last one is, as they say, a rotten egg.
For a small business owner to win the battle of the brain, then, it must first seize a consumer's ear. By any, measure, advertising on Fayetteville radio dominates the ear.
Last week, according to Nielsen, significantly more consumers tuned-in to Fayetteville radio stations than watched local TV, read a local newspaper, or logged-on to a streaming audio site like Pandora or Spotify.
Most impressively, among audio-only platforms, radio, by far, command the largest share of a consumer's ear.
There's another scientific reason for Fayetteville small business owners to put their money where the ears are. It's called encoding.
Last year, Brainsights, a research company that uses neurological, bio-metric and non-conscious data to learn how consumers make decisions, set out to compare the advertising efficacy of different media. The study was commissioned by Canadian Broadcast Sales.
Researchers used EEG technology, that records the electrical activity of the brain, to track individual reactions to radio content. Respondents were exposed to 32 commercials across various categories ranging from automotive and finance to entertainment and personal care. The electrodes measured subconscious engagement across three key variables: awareness, connection, and encoding.
These three areas of engagement measured are the states of mind that influence advertising results.
The study found that radio, TV, and digital ads performed comparably in awareness and connection. When it comes to encoding, however, radio commercials proved far more effective than other media.
What is encoding? It's the process our brains use to store and recall information. For the information in ads to influence a sale, it must be properly encoded.
Advertising on Fayetteville Radio Rules The Brain
According to the study, radio's ability to affect encoding was 8% greater than all general advertising; 21% greater than television advertising; and 4% greater than digital advertising.
Radio's encoding advantage is even more evident when individual product categories are considered.
For financial services, for instance, radio produced 30% more encoding than the general advertising benchmark for the study. For e-commerce categories, radio's encoding results were 35% higher.
Local Ad Recall, a research company that measures the effectiveness of advertising, found that brand recall was five times higher for companies that advertised on radio versus the companies that did not.
Consequently, Fayetteville small business owners who advertise on radio have a much better chance of being recalled and, therefore, frequented by prospective customers than companies that do not advertise on radio.
Hundreds of local business owners understand the power of putting their marketing messages directly into the ears of consumers by advertising on Fayetteville radio stations.
James Grafstrom manages Fayetteville's Crown Complex. He depends on radio advertising to build the facility's brand as an asset to the community.
“Although the media landscape has changed, no matter how you look at it,” he says, “radio is still in the forefront. People are in their cars every day whether they are going to work or coming home. During that time, they are listening to Fayetteville radio. They might be listen
ing to a rock station; a pop station; a rap station; a talk station; or a county station. But the bottom line is they are listening.”
“They might not have a chance to look at the newspaper that day, or check Facebook,” Mr. Grafstrom continues, “but because they are captive in their cars, we can reach them with our message, even if it just for 15 or 30 seconds. I see this as a real value to keep The Crown Complex top-of-mind in our community.”
Radio Advertising Creates Lifetime Customers
“I can testify,” says Carolyn Barbour, a Fayetteville small business owner, “our radio advertising has created lifetime customers for our company. “We’ve tried other forms of advertising, but they have all failed us.”
Ms. Barbour and her husband Tommy own Budget Rooter, a local plumbing company with a long list of commercial, residential, and industrial customers. They have been advertising on Fayetteville radio stations non-stop since 2007.
The Barbour's have seen first hand how radio advertising keeps their business at the tops of consumers' minds when it comes time to make a purchase.
