“How many properties should I buy?”  This is another very popular question we hear from new clients planning their first – or first in awhile – foray into radio.

The “Branding” answer is a simple one: As many as are needed to reach that segment of the population you wish to reach to influence their perceptions and behavior.  And, as you might imagine, that’s entirely driven by the size of your market (large market? small market? national?) and the breadth of your target demographic (Women 55-64? All air-breathing mammals?)

The “Direct Response” answer takes us to an area where I can suggest a clearer – and less of a smart-aleck – answer.  First, we acknowledge the underlying goal of any direct response campaign – to optimize the marketing spent to generate the largest volume of sales at the highest profit margin.

That said, it behooves us to quickly identify the greatest number of properties that can profitably sustain our direct response campaign and self-fund with profits so that we can pay for the media and continually grow sales.

So, for example, a marketer targeting Men 35-54 would probably want to test Sports programming, a format with very little media waste on female listenership.  But we’d also want to test some music formats.  Depending on the market, that could mean Rock.  Or Country.  Or Urban.  Or Alternative.  Or a handful of other formats that just happen to be especially popular in these markets.  We’d also want to test News/Talk programming, which could include All News, Conservative Political Talk, Liberal Political Talk, Comedy and Entertainment or alternative lifestyle programming ranging from sexual preference to open road trucking.

Beyond programming, we’d want to take into consideration what we’re asking our listeners to do (make a phone call? visit a website? go to a retail location?) and marry our media platforms to that call to action.   Driving to a website?  Online streaming radio and desktop radio services (like Pandora) might be a perfect fit, given that the listener is a mouse click away from visiting your site.  Driving to a call center?  AM/FM terrestrial might be your best bet, along with mobile platforms that enable a listener to simply tap their iPhone or Droid touch screen to call your call center without having to remember of type in 10 numbers.  Selling at retail?  POP Radio (Point of Purchase) may make sense, delivering your message in more than 17,000 supermarkets and drug stores, where your products sit an arm’s length away from consumers and their shopping carts.

Bottom line?  Every campaign and desired campaign outcome will lead you to a different number of media properties.  What we advise, during an initial test, is to test enough different formats and platforms so that you can determine what works best.  If you test a dozen different types of media – and only one works – congratulations, you now have a profitable, scalable radio campaign.  Whereas if six of them work, buckle up.  The difference is not “guessing wrong” on the test with a limited budget.  In the case just given, if we’d only tested one or three things instead of 12 – and none of them “worked” – we might conclude that radio doesn’t “work.”  But if we’d tested all 12 and found that one format or platform that proved profitable, we’d now have everything in place to scale and manage a 52-week-a-year campaign.

So while it’s impossible to offer a magic number of stations that will be right for everyone, it is safe to say that your odds for success increase with each different variable you can test, measure and manage on your first campaign.

This greatly improves the odds that you’ll be back for your second campaign.  And your third.  And your 545th.

Mark Lipsky is the President and CEO of The Radio Agency. Please follow The Radio Agency’s Blog “Sounding Board” by subscribing to the email or RSS links above. Visit our website TheRadioAgency.com