Radio Bite: How radio helps drive e-commerce

Radio is a powerful and often underused platform for advertisers. During these unprecedented times our Radio Bites series will give compelling reasons for brands to continue to be heard on the airwaves and why consumers will be listening.

New research from management consultants McKinsey & Company suggests that snacks, personal care products and non-food child products are the categories experiencing the greatest boost in European e-commerce during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. In the UK specifically, over-the-counter (OTC) medicine is the top online growth category, followed by accessories and tobacco, as people change their shopping habits.

Whatever your brand, as non-essential shops close their doors for a month, now may be the time to consider driving customers online instead. Radiocentre’s study The Online Multiplier found that radio is four times more cost-effective than other media at driving brand browsing online – helping your budget stretch further at a time when that’s important.

Listeners are 52% more likely to include a brand’s name in their internet browsing when they are exposed to radio advertising for it. And the effect is immediate – over half of browsing identified as having been stimulated by radio took place within 24 hours of exposure to ads.

Creativity is crucial in optimising radio’s online multiplier effect: the radio campaigns that delivered the highest effect on browsing clearly communicated a simple proposition and used strong brand linkage, especially if integrated with advertising in other media. The best performing ads clearly directed listeners to go online to a straightforward and self-evident brand web address, avoiding ‘forward-slashes’ or one-off message-related URLs.