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.
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:
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:
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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:
Keep in mind that ROI may not always be immediate — assessing long-term impacts is crucial for a comprehensive evaluation.
It's an easy process to start a franchise audio advertising campaign:
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.