Why it’s cheaper to have a custom audio logo

If your business is already advertising on local radio, you have an investment to protect.

Whether you have an audio logo or not, you’re going to invest thousands of dollars in radio airtime this year.  In a medium-size market that could be tens of thousands. In a large market it could easily be hundreds of thousands per year.

Let’s say it’s a conservative medium-market average of $1700 per month total on local radio or TV stations.  That’s $20,000 a year… $100,000 over 5 years… $200,000 over 10 years.

And that’s assuming your budget doesn’t increase over that time.

So what are you going to do to make sure your hard-earned $200,000 advertising investment will pay back the maximum return?

The answer is by putting on the best 30 seconds you can get.  And it almost doesn’t matter how much extra you have to pay to get it, it’s still so small compared to the $200,000 in airtime.

In order to be successful, commercials have to be a lot of things – creative, interesting, involving, informing, etc.  But the most important thing they have to be is REMEMBERED.  At that critical moment when your customer is about to make a buying decision, if your name isn’t one of the 2 or 3 they consider before making their purchase, it’s all been a total waste of money.

Scientific studies have consistently proven that adding a memorable musical ‘hook’ in the form of a jingle makes the advertiser’s message much easier to recall.  Sometimes by a factor of 200-300% easier to recall.  Many research studies into music and memory have confirmed this link.

The scientists have proven that it works – now you just have to evaluate the cost as a percentage of your airtime investment.

At Imagine, an average audio logo budget for a typical local client is around $4000-5000.

Most of our clients expect to use their jingle for at least 10 years before they even think about making any changes.  We have lots of clients who are over 15, 20, some even 25 years with the same jingle.

When you compare the cost of a $5000 jingle with the $200,000 you are already investing for 10 years of airtime, it represents an additional 2.5% of your airtime budget.

So if the jingle is able to increase the effectiveness of that airtime investment by more than 2.5%, you get all your money back.

The research studies consistently show a jingle will increase the recall rate of your commercials by anywhere from 50% to over 300%, depending of course on how catchy your jingle is (that’s why you’ve come to us).

But all you need is a 2.5 % improvement to get all your money back.  Once!

So from a strictly dollars-and-cents point of view, there’s no question… in the long run it’s far less expensive to have a jingle than NOT to have one.

There are only two ways to get better results from your advertising – run more ads… or run better ads.  Guess which one is cheaper?