Billboard or radio? How to plan a regional campaign

Not every business needs a national campaign. A developer selling flats in one town, a regional hospital recruiting staff, a tourist destination or a chain of shops in one region needs to reach people in a specific area — and every crown spent outside it is wasted.

A regional campaign therefore rests on different channels from a national one. Most often it is some combination of regional radio, out-of-home and regional press. But “billboard or radio?” is the wrong question. The right one is what the campaign has to achieve, and what part each channel plays in that.

What radio does well

Regional radio is one of the few channels that allow a precisely defined geographical campaign with high frequency on a sensible budget. Regional stations, and the regional splits of national networks, cover a specific area, and their listeners live and work in it.

Radio’s strength is frequency. Listeners often have a station on for hours a day — in the car, at work, at home — and hear a spot repeatedly. For messages that need repetition, such as a shop opening, a dated promotion or a recruitment drive, that is an advantage.

Its weakness is that radio has no picture. The message has to work in sound alone: short, clear, with the brand name and a clear call to action. A phone number or a complicated address in a radio spot rarely works. A web address or a place name the listener can remember does.

Radio listening is measured by Radioprojekt. When planning a regional campaign, what matters is the data for the specific region and target group, not the national station rankings.

What out-of-home does well

Billboards, bigboards, citylights and transit advertising have a different strength: they are visible in a specific place, continuously, for the whole rental period. A 510 × 240 cm billboard on the main road into town, or a 118.5 × 175 cm citylight at a bus stop in the centre, reaches people who actually move around the area.

Out-of-home is rented by period, typically a month or a fortnight. Reach builds as people pass the site again and again, so the campaign needs enough duration and enough sites. One site for a month is more of a calling card than a campaign.

Location choice is everything. A site on a busy main road reaches many people, but from a car, quickly and only with a short message. A citylight at a busy stop reaches fewer people, but for longer and up close. For a property development, a site right by the building may make sense; for recruitment, sites along the routes people take in from surrounding villages.

A billboard message has to be legible in a couple of seconds: one image, a few words, the brand. Anything more will not fit, and if it does, nobody will read it.

What regional press does well

Regional and local press — regional dailies, weeklies, municipal newsletters — plays a particular role in a regional campaign. Readers are interested in what is happening around them and read it with more attention than content they just happen to come across.

Print can carry a longer message. An ad or an advertorial can explain what is being built in the area, which jobs a company is offering, or why a particular place is worth visiting. For topics that need context, that is an advantage over both radio and billboards.

Readership is measured by Media projekt and circulation is audited by ABC ČR. For smaller local titles, though, data is often unavailable, and the choice comes down to knowing the region and what people there actually read.

Frequency: how much is enough

Regional campaigns often skimp on frequency. The budget is split across so many channels that each gets only a token volume, and the result is a campaign nobody notices.

A useful rule: fewer channels with enough frequency beat more channels without it. A radio campaign with several spots a day for one or two weeks will usually do more than the same budget spread over two months. Out-of-home needs enough sites for the target group to pass them repeatedly in an ordinary week.

The frequency actually required depends on how well known the brand is and how complex its message. A new brand with a new message needs more contacts than a reminder of something people already know.

How to combine the channels

A combination makes sense when each channel does something the others do not:

1. Out-of-home provides on-the-ground visibility and visual brand recognition.
2. Radio adds frequency and a concrete call to action — a date, an offer, an address.
3. Regional press explains the context to those who want to know more.

The channels should run in the same period with the same visual and verbal message so that they reinforce each other. A billboard seen in the morning and a radio spot heard in the afternoon only work as one campaign if they are recognisably the same.

Where to start

A regional campaign starts by defining the area: where the people you want to reach live, work and travel. Only then does it make sense to choose stations, sites and titles. The result should be a plan showing how many people in the region the campaign will reach, how often and at what cost — followed, after the campaign, by an evaluation confirming that it really happened.

If the campaign is also to include online targeting of the same region, that part is run within OMNIA GROUP by OMNIA MEDIA and planned alongside the offline channels.