In previous posts, we touched on a number of key steps for creating effective digital audio ad campaigns; like making a clear call to action, using the right tone, and utilizing powerful features like zip code targeting.
Now, for your convenience, we’ve organized all of these best practices into one complete guide that will walk you through the entire process of building streaming audio campaigns that strike the right note, with the right listeners, every single time.
Let's begin with your ad.
Creating the Right Audio Ad Script
Unless you already have an ad made, our in-app studio can have one recorded in less than 24 hours and for just $10. All that's required on your part is the submission of a script.
Here's what we suggest you include in it for making the best message.
Know Your Business
First, ask yourself: what is the goal of this ad? What are you trying to achieve?
More sales? General awareness? The debut of a new product? Asking people to come out to your next show? These are the sort of questions we encourage everybody to think about as they get started.
Know Your Target Audience
Targeted advertising works. This is also exactly how AudioGO works too: you get to decide the target audience for your ad based on choices of gender, age, location, language, device, time, interests, user profiles, and music and podcast genre.
You also get to decide the voice actor for your ad, how it gets read, and the background track this message is played to: so think about your listeners very carefully.
For example, maybe classical isn’t the best music genre to promote next month’s monster truck rally. Or, maybe it is. Either way, these are the sort of things you have to consider as well when prepping your script.
Get to the Point
Begin by introducing yourself, your business, and the purpose of your ad. Avoid using jokes or skits, it makes it a challenge for listeners to connect with your messaging.
Use a Clear Call to Action
Buy now! Call for your free consultation! Click your screen, before it’s too late! Mention this ad when you come to our store and get 25% off!
These are what we refer to as ‘calls to action.’ Just be mindful to tell the listener exactly what you want them to do and why. The goal is to be specific and direct.
Exclusives, sales, or promotional codes help.
Less is More
You don’t need a lot of words to make a big impact. K-I-S-S, as we like to say: keep it short and simple.
Our platform can only support ad spots of 30 seconds or less - so by extension, your script shall not exceed any more than 70 words in length. We recommend using every bit of this 70-word limit too.
Tone
When it comes to tone: be real. Be relatable. It’s not always what you say, rather, how you say it.
A conversational voice is always best. This is what listeners typically respond to.
Voiceover Direction
To that end, please remember to be as clear and as straightforward as possible with your voiceover direction. Especially when it comes to the pronunciation of names and places. Help your voice actor, help you.
Proofread
It’s always advisable to both double-check and read your script out loud before submission. This way you can avoid revisions and any unnecessary delays.
Submit
And once you're happy with your script, simply click the ‘Request Ad’ button in your AudioGO campaign setup page. Then give us a day, and you’ll have a custom audio ad ready to GO!
Setting Up the Right Campaign
Now that you’ve created the best audio ad script for your business, it’s time to set up the right campaign for it. So, here, we’ll discuss how to take advantage of some of our most powerful tools and features to ensure your message gets across to the right audience.
Set a Goal. ‘Reach’ vs ‘Awareness’ Campaigns
If your goal is to reach as many unique listeners as possible, then you’re going to want to choose a broad audience for your ad. This is a ‘Reach Campaign,’ and your impressions will go as far as your budget allows. Typically, each listener will hear your ad 1 or 2 times, but you’ll reach more people this way.
An ‘Awareness Campaign,’ on the other hand, is meant for a narrow, specific audience to hear your ad more frequently within a short period of time, increasing the chances that they remember your brand. This lends to a sort of stickiness that encourages listeners to take action.
To achieve this, use our Audience Guide in the top right corner of your campaign set up page, and continue refining your targets or increasing your budget until the ‘Estimated Ads Played’ is roughly 3-4X your ‘Estimated Unique Listeners.’ This will ensure your ad gets heard 3-4 times.
But whatever your goal may be, it’s always best to keep your targeting not too narrow and not too broad. Again, let our Audience Guide show you the way. The best ad campaigns find the right balance in budget and market size. Yours should too.
Include 3 Display Banners, and the Right Call-to-Action
Beyond just making your ads audible, our platform was designed to even make them clickable to your website with the use of display banners. We can host up to 3 per campaign in the following formats for listeners on their desktops, tablets, and mobile phones.
We strongly recommend using one in each size - 300 x 250 (wide), 500 x 500 (square), 300 x 600 (tall). The best ad campaigns also include custom tracking URLs for added visibility on Google Analytics or their respective CRMs.
When using display banners, let’s also not forget to include a call-to-action like ‘tap your screen’ in the audio portion of your ad as well. Direct call-to-actions like these typically see click-through-rates 3x greater than those without one.
Additionally, a clear call to action - like, ‘call now’ with your phone number (which may be repeated more than once), or emphasizing your website URL, or highlighting your restaurant or retail name - is critical for any interested listener to act on your ad accordingly.
Display Retargeting
Speaking of clicks, if that's one of the goals of your audio campaign, then you're definitely going to want to use display retargeting. That's when we take your banner ads and display them on websites your listeners visit after they've heard your audio ad.
By combining the prevalence of display ads to support the stickiness of your audio messaging, retargeting has proven to increase recall, reach, brand awareness - and most importantly, clicks.
In fact, by pairing audio ads with display ads, you can even quadruple the number of clicks you would otherwise get from running display ads on their own!
Budget
You can get started for as little as $250 on AudioGO, which works out to 13,888 ad plays.
$250 may be okay for a small campaign on a short schedule, but it may not guarantee the results you were looking for. So when considering how much to dedicate to your audio campaign, please be realistic about what it can accomplish.
Music and Podcast Genre Targeting
Pick music and/or podcast genres that match your brand, your message, and your audience. Ads that are personalized to your listeners’ preferences are especially effective at driving up engagements. But if your product or service is universal, it's not all that necessary to pick a music/podcast genre. It’s really up to you.
Age is another important thing to think about here. So to help, we pulled this chart to show what music genres are most popular among various age groups. While this chart breaks down their preferences in podcasts.
Keep in mind your listeners will also be hearing your ad during scheduled breaks. So if you do choose to go with a background track for your ad, try to make it sound similar to the genres you’re targeting. Don't kill the vibe.
Geo-Targeting
Let’s just quickly review what they are first.
Zipcode: our most granular option of them all. With this, you can narrow your listeners down to their very neighborhood.
DMA: Designated Market Area, also known as a media market, is really just industry-speak for an area that gets the same radio stations.
MSA: Metropolitan Statistical Area, is a city and its surrounding suburbs.
Cities: for anyone streaming within a specified City's limit.
Counties: this, and either of the above four options are fine choices for awareness campaigns.
States: is an option best reserved for wide-ranging reach campaigns.
We like to tell folks to start narrow, and then gradually open things up until they find the right fit. The Audience Guide was purposefully designed for this. Use it.
And, again, the best ad campaigns always have some element of personalization to it. So the next time you find yourself targeting the San Francisco DMA, it might be smart to include a reference to the city.
Behavioral Targeting
But when it comes to personalization, nothing beats our behavioral targeting feature and the 60 different interests and user statuses you can reach listeners by.
Most advertisers will find this tool useful in targeting hyper-specific audiences, like, high-income listeners, married couples, or people with interest in live events, politics, and so forth.
But the trick is to fight the temptation to overuse behavioral targeting as things can get really narrow, really fast, with this one. So we always caution folks to, once again, keep their eye on the Audience Guide.
Language Targeting
Currently, we offer English-language and Spanish-Language targeting. And if you don’t select one or the other, your ad campaign will simply run over both.
Just make sure your ad is in Spanish if you do decide to target Spanish-language listeners. It can be a bad experience to hear a Spanish-language ad interrupt your normal English-language programming. Not to mention, it could be a wasted impression for you.
By the way, if you don’t have a Spanish-language ad, we can always take care of that for you.
Device Targeting
With three options to choose from, you can selectively engage listeners on either their mobile phones & tablets, PCs & laptops, or even their smart speakers.
Something to think about if you want to bring more context to your ad experiences, especially if you'll be targeting audiences on the go, while they work, or as they stream at home.
Viewing Results
Once your campaign goes live, you can see how your ad is performing in real-time by visiting your AudioGO dashboard.
There you’ll find a bunch of useful features, like a daily breakdown of key performance metrics and visual insights into your target audience.
These reports are there to help you optimize your campaign if needed too, because like most other ad tech platforms, AudioGO also allows you to make edits to live campaigns at any time along the way.
Underperforming Campaign
Don't freak out if your live campaign gets a prompt that reads 'low pace.' It happens every time within the first couple of hours of your campaign's launch as it integrates into our publisher network.
But if it still doesn't go away after that, it just means your campaign is behind its forecasted impressions. And more often than not, it's just a symptom of having a campaign with too narrow of an audience.
In which case, here's the fix for that: https://www.audiogo.com/how-to/optimize-audience-narrow
Otherwise, you might want to update your payment method, or add more hours to your run schedule, or just follow any of the other advice we spell out here in this FAQ link.
Getting Heard
Now that you’ve taken the time to understand what makes an effective audio ad campaign, the rest is simple.
With the right script and the right settings, all that's left for your business or organization is to get heard by clicking the link below.
For more information about requesting an audio ad, or anything AudioGO, make sure to check out our FAQ page: https://www.audiogo.com/faq
