Why I Used to Think Radio Advertising Was a Waste of Money (And Why I Was Completely Wrong)

If you've ever dismissed radio advertising as outdated, untargeted, and impossible to measure, this episode is going to challenge everything you think you know about it.

For years, I was a digital marketer through and through. I loved the precision of Meta ads, the trackability of email, the data behind every decision. Radio felt like something businesses did before the internet existed—expensive, vague, and impossible to optimise. Why would anyone spend money shouting into the void when you could target people on Facebook down to their postcode and their interests?

And then I moved to regional Tasmania. And everything I thought I knew got quietly, completely dismantled.

In this episode, I'm sharing the experience that genuinely shifted my thinking—not just about radio, but about the assumptions we carry into our marketing without ever questioning them. Because the biggest lesson from this story isn't really about radio at all. It's about context. And how the best marketing advice is always specific to your market, your audience, and your community—not a universal truth handed down from someone who's never set foot in your world.

The best marketing isn't the most sophisticated or the most digital. It's the most relevant to your market. This episode proves it.

Transcript

Hey. Welcome to the new School of Marketing podcast. I'm Bianca McKenzie, and this is the place where we break down marketing strategies that actually work without the overwhelm.

Before we dive in, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land I live and work on, the Palawa people of lutruwita. I pay my respects to elders past and present and acknowledge the deep connection they have to this land, culture and community.

Now let's dive in and make marketing work for you.

Okay, so today's episode is a little different.

It's more of a personal story, something that genuinely shifted my thinking and that I think has a really important lesson in it for anyone who's ever dismissed a marketing channel without really questioning why.

I know I'm going deep on this.

I'm talking about radio.

If you'd asked me five years ago whether radio advertising was worth the investment, I would have laughed.

I was a digital marketer through and through.

Why would anyone spend money on radio when you could target people on Facebook, down to their postcode, their interest, and basically what they had for breakfast radio.

It felt like something businesses did before the Internet existed.

Something, you know, your dad's hardware store did in 1987.

Not something a savvy modern business would invest in.

And then I moved to Regional Tasmania and everything I thought I knew got quietly and completely dismantled.

To understand the shift, you need to understand where I was coming from first.

So my background is digital marketing. I built my business around it. I've spent years helping businesses with their meta ads, their email marketing, their social media strategies.

I love the precision of digital.

I love that you can see exactly who clicked, exactly who, converted exactly what. Your return on ad spend was down to the cent.

That precision became my entire measuring stick for what air quotes good marketing like looked like.

If you could track it, optimise it, and report on it with data, it was worth doing. And if you couldn't, it felt like guesswork, like throwing money into the wind and hoping for the best.

So radio to me was like ultimate guesswork. No click tracking, no conversion pixels, no way to retarget someone who heard your ad. On the drive to work,

you'd spend your money, your ad would play and then.

And then what?

You just hope someone called.

It felt impossibly vague and old fashioned.

And that was my very firm, very confident opinion right up until it wasn't.

When we moved to northwest Tasmania, I had no idea it was going to challenge my marketing worldview. I was thinking about horses, open space, a slower pace of life. And I wasn't thinking about reassessing my entire professional perspective on advertising channels.

But here's what happened.

Kind of almost immediately I started noticing radio everywhere.

In the car on the way to town, radio in the local shops, radio on farms, in the tradies' utes parked outside the hardware store, in the waiting room at the vet.

Radio, radio, radio.

And not just this background noise, like people are actually listening, like genuinely tuned in.

And I started paying attention to the ads and I noticed something that really surprised me.

I started recognising local business names just from hearing their ads on repeat.

A local removalist, a dental practice, a building company.

I hadn't googled them. I hadn't seen their Instagram. Some of them don't even have Instagram.

I hadn't been retargeted by their Facebook ads.

I just, I knew who they were because I kept hearing them.

And then I'd be like in a conversation with someone in town and those same businesses would come up. Oh, we use so and so and they're great.

And I think I've heard that name before.

Oh, that's the business from the radio.

And there was this immediate shortcut to trust that I hadn't expected at all.

And the more time I spent in this community, the more I started to understand that this wasn't the same media landscape that I've been operating in.

In a capital city, radio is like one of dozens of things competing for your attention. There are multiple stations, the audience is fragmented, the cost is high, and most people are like half listening while also scrolling their phone and like drinking their coffee.

The math rarely works for a small business because you are paying a lot to reach a lot of people who are not necessarily your customer. But in a regional area, it's a completely different equation.

There might be like one or two local stations like in our area that the whole community listens to and the reach within that community is disproportionately high.

And crucially, people feel connected to local radio in a way they simply don't feel connected to a Facebook ad.

The presenters are often people they know, or at least feel like they know.

The content is about their community, their weather, their local events. It's not just media. It's like a community infrastructure.

And when a local business advertises on that station, there's a credibility transfer that happens. It's almost like an implicit endorsement,

you know, like this business is part of our community.

They're invested here. They're not just, you know, some faceless online thing that is something that no Facebook ad can replicate. I don't care how good your targeting is, you cannot buy that community credibility with a digital campaign.

But in regional areas, radio carries it naturally.

And the moment it really crystallized for me was through my work mentoring local businesses. I've had the privilege of working with some incredible Tasmanian businesses through various programs.

And I started noticing a pattern.

The businesses that had really strong name recognition in their community where people would say, oh, everyone knows them.

They often had radio as part of their marketing mix. And when I'd ask business owners where their inquiries were coming from, radio would come up quite often.

Not as like the only source, but as a consistent one.

And these were not sophisticated, high budget marketing campaigns. They were local businesses running relatively simple ads on their local station.

But because they'd been doing it consistently, because the community heard them regularly, they had this incredible asset that money can't buy. Feeling of being known.

I remember sitting with one client, a service based business, and they mentioned almost in passing that they ran radio ads. And my old instinct was to think we should probably shift that budget to something more measurable.

And then I stopped myself because they had more local name recognition than almost any other business that I worked with.

People refer to them by name and in a small town that is is gold.

And that was the moment I fully let go of my old opinion.

Now, I want to be really clear about something here because I don't want you to walk away from this episode thinking, bianca says I should advertise on radio.

That's not the lesson.

Radio isn't for every business.

In a major city, the numbers probably still don't work. For most small businesses, it's expensive, the audience is fragmented and your digital channels will likely outperform it.

If you're an online business selling to a national or a global audience, radio makes very little sense. But if you're a regional or rural business serving a local community, you need to have a serious look at radio advertising because you're operating in a completely different context and the rules are different.

And this is actually the bigger point I want to make because it applies way beyond radio.

The best marketing channel is not some universal truth handed down from a guru on the Internet. It's specific to your business, your audience, and your market.

What works brilliantly in one context can be completely irrelevant in another.

I spent years giving marketing advice based largely on what worked in digital first, like in a metro context. And a lot of that advice was just really good.

But some of it was limited by my own experience and my own assumptions.

Moving to regional Tasmania cracked that open in the best possible way.

I now work with businesses who reach their customers through local markets, community notice boards, sponsoring the local foodie club, and, yes, radio.

And for their context, those channels can outperform anything Instagram has to offer.

Because their customers, they're here, they are listening to those channels, they are looking at those signs, you know, along the local footy club oval.

That's where they are, and that's what matters.

So here's what I want you to take from this story. Regardless of whether radio is relevant to your business at all, question your assumptions about channels you've dismissed, especially if you dismiss them based on what you've read online, what a marketing podcast told you, maybe even what I've told you in a previous episode, rather than actual evidence from your specific market.

We all carry biases from our experience and our context.

If you've built your business knowledge in a particular world, you'll naturally assume that world is universal.

But it's not.

And some of the best marketing insights come from the moment you encounter a context where your assumptions stop working.

So think about your own audience.

Where are they actually spending time and attention?

Not where you wish they were, not where it would be convenient for your existing skills, but where are they actually?

For some audiences, that's Instagram. For others, it's local radio station, a community Facebook group, a monthly market, or the notice board at the rural supply store.

Meet them there, even if it's not where you'd expect it to be, even if it means learning something new or revisiting something you thought was irrelevant.

Because context is everything in marketing. And the businesses that figure that out, the ones that, you know, resist the one size fits all advice and really understand their specific market, they're the ones that build something genuinely connected, connected to the community.

And that connection is worth more than any conversion rate.

So there you have it.

The marketing channel that I used to dismiss entirely, and the experience that changed my mind about it. And more than that, the reminder that good marketing is always context specific and that the best thing you can do for your business is staying curious and keep questioning your assumptions.

So think about one marketing channel or tactic that you've maybe written off, maybe because someone told you it was outdated or because it doesn't fit the modern marketing narrative.

And ask yourself honestly, is that assumption based on evidence from your specific market or is it just bias you picked up somewhere along the way?

You might actually surprise yourself. And if you're a regional or local business owner who's been wondering whether traditional channels like radio or local sponsorships are worth it, I hope this episode gives you permission to take them seriously. Your market is not the same as a business selling online to the world,

and your marketing shouldn't be either.

Because remember, the best marketing isn't the most sophisticated or the most digital.

It's the most relevant.

Know your market.

Meet your people where they are.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the new School of Marketing podcast. Remember, the best marketing advice is always the advice that fits your context, not someone else's. I'm Bianca McKenzie and I'll catch you next week. Until then, keep making marketing work for you.