A local web development company that I have occasionally done work for is running a radio show all week. It's weird-no one locally has heard of them yet they are doing two hours a day on a major regional station.

I have no idea how they got into it, or why. No one knows of them-none of them are famous. Does this give positive exposure or is it more of a 'who the bleep are they' reaction that they will get?

That's indeed very interesting.

What is the format of the show and what kind of content does it have? How do they promote themselves?

I would have thought that given the nature of the company they aren't going to pick up enough business to justify the cost.

You don't necessarily have to generate new business to justify these types of promotions. They could have reached a trade agreement. I suspect they're looking for brand awareness, followed by increased sales.

I agree for general brand awareness it is good, but then I think i would target that brand awareness towards other people.

I think maybe the thing from my perspective it may be different as in the UK radio stations are not that local, so you would be really scattergunning the situation.

Would a web development company in the UK really need to be localized?

Huh, interesting. Is it an entertaining show? Do you know how long the promotion is going to be running? We've done radio ads in the past with little luck, but I could see an opinion type show with a charismatic host doing really well for brand-awareness.

Agreed.

Yes, those are the questions I have as well.

By the way, readers who are interested in quality radio programming might check out cartalk.com. Imho, these guys are masters of the medium. I find cars really boring, but I listen to the show every week anyway. That's a good program, imho.

If a host has a radio personality, and good exposure for the show, I could see it working very well.

They could just be testing the waters with the local listeners, there is no better way to know if something will work than to try it. That seems like a large first step though, esp. if they are new.

I have to agree. Advertising on radio is very expensive. I would like to see their ROI to see if it actually works.

I would almost bet they've done work for the station or the company that owns the station etc. for a trade in services. Unless you are really charging some high prices you really couldn't justify the cost.

Perhaps someones cousin owns the radio station

There is a Web Design firm here in Brisbane, Australia which are running advertising campaigns on the radio. Might be a great idea as the general public don't really know how easy it is to get a website on the internet.

For radio ad campaigns, I think it depends on the type of program you advertise during, and the number of ads they already have running. When the ads are run in a block say, at the top of the hour, it's easy for them to get ignored, people just tune out. It's also not the best for web hosting and related fields-- it's much harder to get someone to hear a link and remember later to type it in than it is to present them with a link they just have to click.

The Radio commercials can be useful and great. At present a lot of companies like Web Root are using the options to promote their web services and hosts too could get promoted this way. It might be a bit costly but if done in the course of time some good results could be achieved.