Streaming Audio Boosts Brand Awareness: Here's How

Shouting your brand name into the void à la traditional AM/FM advertising has long been an outdated practice. If you haven’t shelved this strategy yet, it’s time to modernize your campaigns. To do this, there’s no better medium than streaming audio—which continues to dominate in reach and engagement. Meanwhile, consumers are increasingly looking for unique and personalized experiences. To stay competitive, you need strategic ad placement, authentic messaging, and an understanding of all the right moments. 

Here’s a tip: When listeners are locked into their favorite music, they're receptive to the brands that show up alongside them. With streaming audio offering fewer ad interruptions than other media, this channel poses less competition for your audience’s attention. 

Before you can convince your consumer to buy your product or service, the crucial first step is driving brand awareness. Here’s everything to know about how streaming audio drives upper-funnel goals. 

Adopt These Best Practices for Boosting Brand Awareness

To effectively drive brand awareness, follow these best practices to cover all your bases and set your campaign up for success.  

Understand Your Target Audience

One of the many benefits of streaming audio advertising is its advanced targeting capabilities. As you prepare any campaign, you need a good idea of who you want to reach to know how to market to them. Are they high-earning parents? Or maybe they’re West Coast-based women who enjoy playing video games? 

To find your ideal consumer, start by looking at your existing data. Your current loyal customers could already be exactly who you’re looking for. Consider distributing surveys and analyzing purchasing trends. Next, conduct competitive analysis to see who the rest of the market is targeting and which channels they use. 

And finally, use the process of elimination to narrow down who does and doesn’t qualify. These will be the hyper-specific audiences you will use to target (or exclude) in your campaign. 

Decide Your Campaign Goals

Before you launch your campaign, start by figuring out your purpose and definition of success. Are you introducing a new product? Revamping your brand with a new look? Repositioning your brand in the market? Driving brand awareness among a specific demographic? 

Your campaign goals should inform every creative decision that follows. Ad length. Messaging approach. Targeting strategy. Clear objectives help build a better campaign, and you’ll have more streamlined benchmarks for measuring performance and improving the strategy as you go. 

Tailor Your Ad Length to Your KPIs

As you get started on your creative, match your ad length to your campaign goals. When building awareness for a new brand, long-form audio formats work particularly well and give you enough space to introduce yourself. Reinforcing an existing campaign to drive upper-funnel lifts? Shorter ad spots deliver frequent touchpoints that keep you top of mind.

And here’s a tip: Using a mix of short- and long-form ad lengths in a single campaign can also drive strong lifts and refresh your messaging. 

Create a Memorable Sonic Identity

What do Netflix, McDonald’s, and Burger King all have in common? Each brand is equipped with an instantly recognizable sonic jingle. But before a sonic jingle can come to life, a sonic identity needs to be formed. Think of your sonic identity like a logo for your ears made up of music, voiceovers, or sound design—making it just as important as a visual identity.

Your sonic choices should align with your brand values and personality. Whether your brand is playful or serious, or luxurious or practical, think about how your sonic identity can complement your brand. 

Mention Your Brand Name Early and Often

One of the many reasons listeners turn to audio is because it’s portable and a companion for their daily activities. They can listen while they're cooking, commuting, working out, or winding down for the evening. To ensure your brand avoids being background noise, weave your brand name into your messaging—especially when you’re opting for audio-only ads where there aren’t on-screen logos and visual cues. 

As a rule of thumb, try to say your brand or product name at least three times in a 30-second ad spot. For instance, establish who is talking in the beginning, remind them who you are in the middle, and then close with a final mention to help listeners remember who delivered the message.

Highlight the Benefits

Any successful ad shows instead of tells. Instead of rattling off benefits of your product, focus on how it improves your audience's life. Does it save them time? Give them peace of mind? Help them connect with loved ones? While the features are about you, the benefits are about your audience.

For example, a product doesn’t just work fast; it gives customers valuable time back. And a savings program doesn’t just provide 5% cash back, it helps consumers put their hard-earned money to work.

Add a Personalized Touch with Contextual Targeting 

Generic ads blend into the background. Meanwhile, personalized messages stand out. With the amount of first-party and audience data available today, it’s easier than ever to attain the information you need to create custom ad experiences. After all, reaching the right audience at the right moment amplifies your message.

Start by leveraging advanced targeting. Contextual targeting aligns your ads with what listeners are doing or how they're feeling. For example, activity targeting connects you to listeners based on their activities—from cooking, to working out, to entertaining at home, to winding down for the evening. Serving ads that are appropriate for those activities, or even better, that naturally accompany those activities, increases the chances of the ad breaking through to the listener. 

 Mood targeting, another example of contextual targeting, takes ad personalization further. When you pair your messaging with the right mood (calm and centered, upbeat and positive, or emotional and reflective), you create experiences that resonate more powerfully. 

Minimize Ad Fatigue

Ad fatigue can occur when listeners hear the same message too many times, it loses its power at best and promotes negative brand associations at worst. Avoid this by creating a campaign with better spacing and more than one version of your ad. 

Sequential audio naturally reduces redundancy by delivering new information with each spot as a form of long-form storytelling. Meanwhile, diversifying your campaign with a mix of audio-only and display ads creates multi-sensory experiences that keep your messaging fresh.

To drive brand awareness further home, consider offering value exchanges like rewarded ads. For example, sponsored listening allows listeners to enjoy uninterrupted listening after engaging with your ad. This approach builds goodwill while keeping your brand top of mind.

Driving Lifts in Brand Awareness with Streaming Audio Advertising

When a subscription streaming service advertiser wanted to generate lifts in brand awareness and consideration, they turned to us. Leveraging placements on the SiriusXM Streaming Network and our 100% share of voice (SOV), the campaign used a mix of mobile display ads and interstitial takeover banners on both Android and iPhone. The product mix was used to generate high-impact awareness while targeting audio streamers between the ages of 25 and 54, entertainment enthusiasts, and cable TV viewers. 

The campaign pulled off key upper- and middle-funnel metrics:

• +11 pts lift in brand favorability

• +11 pts lift in brand-specific attribute about innovation

• +10 pts lift in brand-specific attribute about the advertiser's capabilities

• +9 pts lift in online ad awareness

Get Started with SiriusXM Media

Engaged listeners. Fewer interruptions. Advanced targeting capabilities. Streaming audio gives your brand all of these benefits and more. When the right message hits the right audience in the right moments, they do more than deliver—they stick around, translating into better brand awareness. 

Ready to boost your brand awareness with streaming audio advertising? Let's talk.

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