Should a Small business advertise on streaming audio platforms
Should your small business advertise on streaming audio platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, etc…? In short, yes. However, there are some key components as a business owner you must know before you do.
CREATIVE
Let’s begin with something that should be obvious, but I am going to say it anyway. Your offer cannot suck. The cost of living today is high and grows by the day. Therefore, if you are going to advertise your business, you need to give the customer a reason to buy from you then your competitor. Ten percent off at checkout is not going to cut it. Simply being a small business that is local to your potential customer is not going to cut it either. So before you place your marketing dollars into any platform, make sure your offer is going to be worth it for them to buy from you rather than from your competition.
DEMOGRAPHICS
The number of clients we work with that make the statement “I want to market to everyone” is endless. Knowing your target audience will save you time, and money. It is imperative to know the demographics of your business, as well as the time of year they shop for your products and services, which will make all the difference in the world.
The primary demographics of any solid marketing plan are Age, Gender, Location, and Household Income. In the first example, I am going to use a trendy, brick-and-mortar, clothing store in a metropolitan area, with an average ticket price of $100, during peak shopping season.
AGE & GENDER
In a study conducted by ZIPPIA, 84% of fashion shoppers are female. In a similar study by Quick Frame, 48.8% of those individuals are in the 18-34 age group. Those two figures are going to be key as we tighten down to our storefront.
LOCATION
As previously stated, location is one of the key factors in any advertising campaign. The reason behind this is that the economy of each city can be drastically different, even if it is in the same state. So please keep that in mind as we move forward.
For this example, we are going to use Fresno, CA as our location. According to the U.S. Census Fresno, CA has the following demographics:
Population: 545,567
Female Population: 50.1%
Target Age Group: 18-34: 51.4% (the largest population of females is 25-29)
Average Household Income: $63,001
Total Target Audience: 140,491
Now that we have our target audience of 140,491 Females, between the ages of 18 and 34, in the Fresno, CA area, we can progress with the task at hand, advertising our business on streaming audio platforms. To provide a better example, we are going to use two different streaming audio advertising platforms to get the best results with a $500 budget.
PLATFORMS
The first streaming audio advertising platform we are going to use is AudioGo by Pandora. AudioGo is a self-serving advertising platform that allows business owners who do not have large budgets to place ads with streaming music or podcasts. The second advertising platform we are using is Spotify’s self-serving advertising platform. The reason behind using these two is to give you an idea of the difference between the platforms and their audiences.
We are going to start with Audio Go. After you create your login profile you can start creating your ad campaign. As you can see in the picture above I have entered a custom amount of $500 for our budget, start and end run dates of April 1, 2024 – April 30, 2024. The next part is where your first real decision must be made with AudioGo. You have to choose which type of campaign you are going to use; Podcast or Streaming. So let’s match up the numbers.
The target audience will not change, but in the podcast section, it will ask if you want pre-, mid-, or post-roll ads. Now here’s the thing. Typically, podcast ads are skippable. This means you may reach your target audience, but the end-user can skip right past them unless they are not on a subscription tier that allows them to skip ads. For this demonstration, we are going to use all three.
With all of our information placed in the AudioGo system, it tells us we have an estimated 19,200 available impressions with an estimated audience of 6,800. This gives us about a frequency of three, but what happens when we switch to Streaming Music?
When we switched our platforms to streaming music, we got an Estimated 21,700 impressions with an Estimated Audience of 3,700, giving us a frequency of around five to six. With these new numbers on AudioGo, you could say the larger podcast audience is better, or you could argue that the smaller audience with streaming music is better due to the higher frequency. Well, before we make any hard decisions, let’s wander over to Spotify and see what we come up with.
Just like AudioGo, you are going to have to create a Spotify Ads account, and once that is done, we can start creating our ad campaign. As you can see our target audience is the same, with a small exception. Instead of allowing us to select behaviors, Spotify asks us what type of business we are.
Another note to take in from Spotify is that the platform asks you if you want a mixture of podcasts and streaming music or if you want music only. For this demonstration we are going to leave it on the default setting on automatic which is the mixture of music and podcasting.
The last setting is the budget section. Again we are using a $500 budget over the course of a month, but unlike AudioGo is it letting us bid on the CPM. Spotify does make a recommendation, but ultimately you have the option to bid as low or as high as you want, just keep in mind that you are bidding, and can be out bid.
Finally, we can see the estimates for our campaign. With a much high reach of 13.3k and 50.6k impressions, this campaign would give you an estimated frequency of 4, which is good for a $500 campaign.
Now that we have all of this information, should a small business using streaming audio to advertise their business? That question can only be answered by what you are offering, and the expectation of ROI. Streaming audio can be a great addition to any marketing plan, but should be supplemental in practice. If you want branding out of streaming audio, then set a reasonable budget, and stay top of mind with your target audience.
If you need any assistance with getting your streaming audio campaign off the ground or any part of your marketing campaign, feel free to contact us.
-Steven Kelly
Ad Edge Marketing Group, CEO
559-325-4084
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