Radio advertising can be a powerful tool for businesses to reach their target audience, build brand awareness, and drive sales. However, measuring the effectiveness of radio ads has been a challenge for marketers – many believe it’s difficult to track and attribute radio ad performance, relying on guesswork based on region or other traffic trends. But with the proper campaign setup, we can absolutely, and reliably, track and measure radio ad performance.

To maximize direct attribution, there are two tactics we use most frequently to track and attribute radio ad effectiveness properly.

Use a unique landing page

One of the most effective ways to track the success of a radio advertising campaign is by using a unique landing page. By creating a landing page that is specific to your radio ad campaign, you can track the number of visitors, conversions, user behavior, and revenue generated from that campaign. Additionally, you can use tools like Google Analytics to track user behavior and measure the ROI of your radio advertising campaigns accurately.

This information can help you determine which radio stations, geographic regions, and times of day, are driving the most traffic and sales. It also provides insights into which creative messaging performs best in each of these stations, times, and markets, allowing our creative and media teams to work together to quickly adjust and optimize ads to perform best.

We also work closely with BMG360’s Conversion Rate Optimization experts to identify, develop, and optimize the best landing pages to accomplish your goals (a major benefit of working with an omnichannel agency!). We use a mix of big swing and iterative tests to get as much lift and learnings as possible, and we can run custom landing page experimentation at any level with our proprietary testing platform, and our unique measurement pixel enables us to measure the results of our algorithmic experimentation.

In fact, check out our six top-converting landing page templates.

Text-based platform/text CTA

Another effective way to track and attribute radio ad performance is by using a text-based platform or text CTA. By including a call-to-action in your radio ad that asks listeners to text a specific keyword to a shortcode, we track the number of responses and measure the success of the campaign. Once a listener texts the designated shortcode, our automated response text has an embedded URL with UTM.

And because the listener initiated the conversation, they’ve opted in. This also allows us to send a follow-up message to those who haven’t taken the desired action – a tactic that we regularly see improve conversion rates by 20-40%.

We can also use this information to gather insight, segment the audience based on their interests and behavior, and then create more targeted campaigns.

With these tools and strategies, businesses can track and attribute radio ad performance accurately, make data-driven decisions to optimize their campaigns, and maximize the ROI of their ad budgets.