Small Business Audio Marketing Ideas Made Simple

Audio advertising isn’t just a highly effective marketing tool—it’s one that can be used by businesses of all shapes and sizes. Even if you’re a florist going solo or managing a small family-owned bistro, you can use it to your advantage. When done right, it can be cost-effective and incredibly easy to implement. 

In this introductory guide to digital audio advertising for small businesses (SMB), we’ll share the different types of audio ads, the ways to buy them, how to use them to reach your overall marketing goals, and more.

Build Better Campaigns for Your SMB

Audio ads are a great way to reinforce your marketing efforts. Here’s why brands and advertisers in the know love audio and how it can take your brand to new heights.

Why Audio Is Powerful

Omnipresence is one of audio’s main superpowers. Listeners often reach for their headphones (or listen out loud) throughout the day while running errands, commuting, or working out. It comes in different forms—you might switch from your favorite podcast straight to an instrumental playlist for some deep focus time. And across platforms, you can go from your car speakers, to your smartphone, to your smart speakers over the course of a day. Americans spend more than four hours each day with audio, which makes it a perfect medium if you’re looking for your brand to be heard.

Why Advertising on Audio Is Effective

Digital audio advertising holds many benefits for advertisers. It allows for creative freedom with a variety of ad types and precise targeting capabilities to ensure your campaign hits the right notes (or, in this case, the right target audience). Also, audio advertising is very small business budget-friendly in that it does not require a large marketing budget to create a memorable and effective campaign. 

Extensive reach: check. High engagement: check. Cost-effectiveness: check. That's certainly a recipe for success, is it not?

Types of Audio for Better SMB Marketing

Small businesses have two powerful audio advertising options, each offering unique advantages to connect with their audience (or you can skip the difficult decision and use both—more on that later).

Streaming Audio

Over three in four of Americans turn to streaming audio regularly, so this medium has incredible reach. No matter who your perfect customer is—young professionals, busy parents, or well-established pre-retirees—you can be sure they’re tuning in to their favorite playlists.

Types of Streaming Audio Ads

Streaming audio ads come in all shapes and sizes. Depending on your goals and campaign strategy, you can strategically combine various types to ensure you grab your intended listeners’ attention.

• Audio: A traditional ad spot that runs before or during a streaming music session.

• Display: A display creative that appears alongside audio content.

• Video: A short-form video that runs when a listener actively engages with a platform.

• Sponsored Access: Branded listening experiences, sponsored playlists, and other ways of encouraging audiences to interact with your ads in exchange for perks.

• Custom Solution: A unique take on an audio advertising campaign developed just for your brand by our team.

Podcasts

In the digital advertising world, podcasts have an incredible superpower—the ability to connect with an audience in a genuine way. People admit that they consider podcasts 23x more trustworthy and authentic than social media, and nine times more than traditional TV. So, podcast advertising could be a great option if you’re looking to build a loyal fan base for your small business.

Types of Podcast Ads

Much like streaming audio, you can mix and match different types of podcast ads to create a campaign that works the best for your brand:

• Announcer read: A publisher-produced ad that uses a hired voice actor.

• Brand read: Your own ad that you recorded yourself or with the help of another studio.

As your business and budget grows, you can consider incorporating additional podcast advertising formats.

• Host read: An ad delivered by podcast hosts, incorporating their personal experiences and style in a seamless way.

• Video host read: A visual element is added to the ad, for instance an on-camera video or an audiogram with animation.

How to Plan Your Audio Campaign

Preparation is the key to success, and that’s especially true for audio advertising campaigns. So take some time to consider your budget, overall campaign goals, and how you want to reach your audience. These factors will affect your buying choices, which in turn will define how you’ll run your campaign and how hands-on you’ll have to be.

Ways to Buy Audio Ads

At SiriusXM Media, we offer three main ways to buy ads, ranging from simplified, budget-friendly solutions to entirely customizable large-scale campaigns and everything in between.

• Direct IO: The traditional way of buying ads. This approach allows great control over the process and plenty of customization options.

• Programmatic audio: The power of audio advertising meets automated buying. This approach streamlines the process while offering all the benefits we love, such as creative flexibility, enhanced reach, and advanced targeting capabilities.

• AudioGO: Our in-house self-serve platform. This is the perfect solution for small businesses, offering an accessible entry point to the world of audio ads with real-time reporting, comprehensive targeting options, and easy campaign setup—without requiring a hefty sum to get going.

How to Reach Your SMB Marketing Goals with Audio

Audio advertising can help your small business achieve its biggest goals and connect with your customers in a more intimate, trusted manner. Let’s look at some examples of using digital audio ads to your advantage, depending on your campaign objective.

Get Attention

If you want to increase brand awareness and get people talking about you, advertising on a larger scale might be a good place to start. For example, if you want to try podcast advertising, you can leverage the power of an entire podcast network and scale across various genres and shows to maximize your impact.

Extend Reach

If you’re already running ad campaigns through other channels, audio advertising is a fantastic way to extend your incremental reach and reinforce your brand message. If you advertise on Instagram, using SiriusXM Media will add 19% to your incremental reach, or a whopping 34% if you also advertise on X/Twitter.

Motivate Target Audiences

Thanks to its top-notch targeting capabilities, audio advertising excels at reaching the right people at the right time. Businesses can target listeners based on their demographics, behavior, and content categories, just to name a few. Or, you can expand the pool thanks to lookalike modeling, which will identify groups similar to an existing target audience.

How to Build a Successful SMB Campaign

Rolling up your sleeves and working on a campaign resonates with your target audience might sound overwhelming at first. Here are some pointers to get your juices flowing.

Audio Creative Tips

1. Act quickly—you only have a few seconds to capture the listener’s attention, so make it count.

2. Change up your creatives to avoid listener fatigue.

3. Use sound effects and music—according to our research, 69% of listeners prefer to hear ads with sound effects.

4. Keep it authentic, from casting the right voice talent to using a conversational tone.

5. Don't forget to incorporate a clear call-to-action.

Find the Right Frequency

Balancing frequency is a crucial part of the campaign—if it’s too low, your message may go unnoticed; if it’s too high, you risk causing ad fatigue and annoyance with your campaign. According to our research, high frequency works better for introducing new brands or products and for shorter campaigns. However, there’s no magic number, and it takes some trial and error, close monitoring and measuring, and an experienced advertising partner by your side to hit the sweet spot for your particular brand.

Ready to Build the First Audio Ad Campaign for Your Small Business?

Digital audio advertising is a powerful tool in your small business marketing mix. It can help you reach new audiences, build customer trust, and drive brand growth. Want to see how audio ads can benefit your specific brand? Let’s chat.

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