Audio Advertising for Franchises

Franchise Audio Advertising

Today's consumers are more digitally engaged than ever before. With franchises of every stripe needing innovative methods to reach customers, drive lead generation, and increase sales, it naturally follows that franchise audio advertising will be an effective form of digital marketing.

According to the Infinite Dial 2023 report, digital audio reaches an estimated 75% of the population each month. In addition, 42% of Americans age 12 and up listen to a podcast every month. The growth of digital streaming platforms and podcasts has paved the way for podcast ads to reach potential customers.

Franchise marketing can leverage streaming audio advertising to deliver national brand messaging with local advertising elements. Targeted audio advertising can connect franchisees with a highly engaged audience. In this article, we'll help you understand audio advertising, why it can help grow your business, and how to get started using the right platform and service.

Audio Advertising Overview

Let's review what we're talking about when we say audio advertising — specifically, the digital streaming variety. Digital audio reaches listeners through various streaming services for many types of content, such as:

• Music. Pandora, iHeart, Spotify
• Online radio. iHeart, local news stations
• Podcasts. NPR, The Daily, Serial, and many more
• Smart speakers. Alexa, Google Home, Sonos
• Connected vehicles. SiriusXM, TuneIn

What distinguishes digital audio ads from other types is how easily they can be targeted, personalized, and measured. Customers can be targeted specifically by zip code, age, gender, behaviors, and much more. Those messages can be personalized as well, and ads can be tracked and measured for accurate metrics for return on investment (ROI) calculations.

With a digital advertising platform like AudioGO, you can reach your target audience easily and cost-effectively. AudioGO lets you do things like:

• Advertise on Pandora, iHeart, TuneIn, Univision, and other premium streaming stations.
• Get started with a $250 minimum spend, and obtain professionally created audio ads for $10.
• Target your audience by age, location (ZIP, city, county, state), gender, time, language (English or Spanish), musical genre, etc.
• Quickly get a campaign up and running in only five minutes.
• Easily track progress with a real-time dashboard showing spend, uniques, impressions, listen-through-rate, and CTR.
• Take advantage of extra features: real-time insights into inventory across publishers, duplicate campaigns, save drafts, pause campaigns, and more.

Why is AudioGO Effective for Franchises?

There are many great reasons to take advantage of an AudioGO franchise advertising program. 

AudioGO allows you to reach national audiences with consistent brand messaging while still connecting to local consumers in your community. For example, 30-second franchise radio ads can start with 20 seconds tailored for the national market, followed by 10-second segments designed for different localities. Franchise advertising needs consistent messaging plus local targeting, and AudioGO can provide that.

Flexible billing makes it easy for franchisees to pay by credit card or agree to payment terms with franchisors. Local franchisees can pay for their portions of ads separately from the national messages.

What Franchises are Benefiting from Digital Ads?

Many national businesses have partnered with AudioGO to build a franchise marketing strategy benefiting both the brand and local franchises. Let's look at what success looks like for a few franchises.

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices promotes AudioGO's services to its roughly 50,000 representatives and 1,300 brokerages nationwide. AudioGO provides any franchisees who are interested with scripts for audio ads, which can be modified as needed to include local offers or discounts. Additionally, AudioGO offers live support for franchisees and a dedicated representative for the franchisor. The franchisees also gain access to an extensive soundtrack library to choose the tone for their ads — upbeat, light, energetic, etc.

Paul Mitchell Schools

More than 100 Paul Mitchell Schools train hair stylists in the U.S., and when the franchise decided to use local franchise advertising in the Salt Lake City area, it turned to AudioGO. They created an audio advertising program to promote a new tuition grant campaign with a focus on increasing enrollment. Paul Mitchell ran a $6,000 campaign for 30 days, resulting in great success.

The campaign drove awareness among their best prospects as more than 250,000 ad plays reached their target market of college-aged female listeners in the Salt Lake City area. The results? The campaign brought 147 new visitors to the school's website, and three new students enrolled. With a tuition rate of $17,500 for each student, the return on investment was a net gain of $46,500 — a 775% ROI for the AudioGO campaign!

Live Nation

Live Nation is a global live entertainment promotion company with over 40 representatives across the U.S. promoting events. Although they had a centralized national advertising program, their local reps needed smaller, local campaigns to better attract local attendees.

AudioGO created a system to allow any rep to create targeted, local audio ad campaigns. Targeting an audience that matches the genre of the performer being promoted was a breeze. In addition, ads could be set geographically at the zip code level, with real-time reporting available in the dashboard to monitor responses. AudioGO billed Live Nation centrally, allowing local reps to focus on small, pertinent, time-sensitive campaigns to boost sales.

Live Nation reps responded: If it wasn't this easy, we couldn't do it.

H&R Block

When the world leader in tax preparation service worked with AudioGO, the results were more welcome than an IRS refund check. In 2023, AudioGO ran more than 1,600 franchise audio advertising campaigns for H&R Block. Through those campaigns, more than 24 million ads were delivered, reaching 5.9 million unique listeners. The outcome: 97.1% average long-term relationships (LTR) and 20,222 generated clicks.

ROI Results

Return on investment (ROI) for franchise audio advertising depends on a number of factors. Ad effectiveness, target audience, market conditions, and overall marketing strategy all play a part. It's essential to track key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the success of audio advertising campaigns. Here are some factors to consider when assessing advertising ROI:

• Audience targeting. Make sure audio ads are reaching the intended audience. Effective targeting improves the chances for positive ROI.
• Ad content. Quality and relevance of ad content play a significant role. Engaging and compelling audio ads are more likely to resonate with audiences — and drive results.
• Call-to-action (CTA). Include a clear CTA in the audio ad. Prompt listeners to take specific actions, such as visiting a franchise location, making a purchase, or using a promotional code.
• Measurement metrics. Track relevant metrics such as website visits, foot traffic, sales, or leads generated. Then, assess the impact of the campaign.
• Ad placement. Consider where audio ads are played. Align them with the target audience's preferences and behaviors.
• Budget allocation. Allocate budgets wisely across different marketing channels, which would allow for display retargeting, for example. Ensure a balanced approach that maximizes reach and impact.
• Testing and optimization. Conduct "A/B" testing to identify the ads' most effective elements. Continuously optimize campaigns based on performance data.
• Long-term brand building. While immediate results are important, consider long-term impacts on brand awareness and loyalty.

Keep in mind that ROI may not always be immediate — assessing long-term impacts is crucial for a comprehensive evaluation.

How It Works

It's an easy process to start a franchise audio advertising campaign:

1. Set up an account on AudioGO to create campaigns on top streaming platforms — it only takes a minute. This gives you access to 150 million unique listeners and over 500 targeting options.
2. Set a budget and schedule. Campaigns can start with as little as $250 — no contracts, no thousand-dollar commitments. Schedule ads for any hour of the day and any day of the week.
3. You can directly upload an audio file of your ad if you've already created one. Or, submit a script for your ad. (Sample scripts are available, too.) Then, let AudioGO create an audio ad for you using a team of professional voice actors. It takes 24 hours or less and only costs $10.
4. Choose your audience with AudioGO's audience guide feature. Target listeners by age, gender, location, language, music/podcast genre, and up to 221 different interests and user statuses. A real-time view reveals how many unique listeners and ad plays your budget can reach.
5. Monitor ad performance. Up-to-the-minute data and live analytics show how your audio campaign is performing. Use that data to make adjustments to your campaign as needed.

Get Started With Franchise Audio Advertising

The time has never been better to get into franchise audio advertising. And it's never been so affordable. AudioGO's mission is to make the power of audio accessible and simple for everyone to use, not just large ad buyers.

That's why AudioGO takes the driver’s seat in digital audio advertising. As a self-serve advertising platform, AudioGO streamlines the process of crafting, scheduling, and launching audio advertisements. In today’s cluttered ad market, we can see to it that listeners will actually hear your messages. Contact AudioGO today to get started.