Agency Owner Says Radio Is Still ‘Killing It’ But Faces Growing Bias Toward Digital.

Jessica Reyna is the owner of the Tampa marketing agency Kill Your Competition. And as the name of her company suggests, she isn’t one to mince words. So, her comments about radio on a new podcast are noteworthy. While much of her agency’s advice to marketers today is focused on how to use digital advertising, Reyna says radio remains the last traditional channel that she still recommends.

“You have all these different platforms to listen, yet people still go back to listening in their car, listening on the beach,” Reyna says. “I don’t know why people overlook it, but for whatever reason, radio is still killing it.”

Speaking on the latest episode of the “Local Marketing Trends” podcast from Borrell Associates, Reyna says ad buying fundamentals still hold. That includes the right message at the correct daypart, and on a station with a format that will work, in order to be successful. She also believes a client won’t perform as well when there are too many of their competitors running ads alongside them. But if those pieces fall into place, radio remains effective.

“That is where the magic happens,” Reyna says. “The way that the only way I see radio doing even better is when it’s paired with digital outdoor and it’s on the same routes that your customers are driving and it’s running the same time your radio ad is. That video reinforces it with a visual of what they’re hearing on-air.”

Kill Your Competition’s website says they don’t rely on Nielsen ratings to make buying decisions. Instead, the agency says it strategy is to research a brand’s customers, using their behaviors to craft the media plan. They then measure branded name recognition gains through Google's search volume tool, leads and sales traffic, as well as how the radio campaign impacted the performance of other media using Google Analytics.

As for other traditional media, Reyna — who once was a TV sales rep in Orlando and Colorado Springs — says the only one that gets much attention from her is outdoor advertising, and only if it is on digital displays. Yet in her view, marketer’s growing reliance on digital tactics isn’t always rooted in effectiveness — it’s often driven by bias. She thinks agency and marketers bring built-in preferences to the table that shape how ad dollars are spent. And those preferences, she says, frequently tilt toward digital channels for reasons that have little to do with client outcomes.

“The bias from a marketing standpoint is going to be one of three things — I know it works and I trust it, it’s easy for me to do, or I can make a lot of money doing this with low effort,” Reyna says.

That dynamic, she suggests, helps explain why so many local advertisers default to paid search, social media and other performance-driven digital tactics. While those channels can produce results, Reyna argues they are often over-recommended because they are familiar, scalable and easy to justify with surface-level metrics.

The problem is that those same characteristics can mask deeper issues. Campaigns may generate clicks or impressions, but fail to create meaningful differentiation for the business — leaving advertisers dependent on the very platforms they are buying from.

Her prescription is a more unified, holistic approach that evaluates marketing on a common playing field.

“Any marketer, agency or internal person worth their salt is willing to show you why they’re doing something, why it matters,” she says. Absent that, she warns, businesses risk mistaking activity for effectiveness — and allowing bias, rather than strategy, to dictate how their marketing dollars are spent.