There are 296,500 adult women in the Wilmington, Delaware area. Based on research from the Harvard Business Review, as a consumer group, females account for 70-80 percent of all consumer purchasing through a combination of their buying power and influence.  According to Nielsen, this will amount to between $10.7 billion and $12.2 billion this year.

Overall, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Census Bureau:

• Single women across all income brackets spend, on average, $34,817 on goods and service
• Working married women contribute over a third of their families’ incomes
• Over a quarter (29.4%) of wives earned more than their husbands in 2018, an increase from 15.9% in 1981.

Furthermore, according to research published by Forbes:

• The top homebuyers after married couples are single women (18%, double the percentage for single men at 9%).
• Women are 50% more likely than men to regularly watch online how-to videos.
• 94% of women between the ages of 15-35 spend over an hour per day shopping online.
• 70% of travel consumers are women.
• 85% of women say that if they like a brand, they will remain loyal to it.

For Tri-State small business owners to successfully capture a meaningful share of the local female economy requires advertising.

Wilmington's first radio station, WDEL-AM, began broadcasting on July 22, 1922.  The process of getting the station's programming from the studio into the home of local listeners required tall-transmitting towers with miles of underground copper wire in the middle of massive fields.

For the next 71 years, this massive investment in real estate, steel, and cooper was the only method of delivering a radio advertiser's message into the ears of Wilmington consumers.

In 1993, however, new technology permitted Wilmington radio stations to augment the reach of their tall towers by simultaneously streaming its over-the-air programming via the internet. This provided local consumers with the choice of listening to their favorite stations on their car radios, clock radios, and boom boxes or on an internet connected devices like computers, smartphones, or tablets.

Today, based on estimates from Edison Research, 11% of listening to local radio stations occurs on a streaming media device.  The ability for AM/FM to migrate from their tall towers to internet streaming allows Wilmington radio to reach more local consumers every week than all other media.

Radio came to Delaware on July 22, 1922 when WDEL signed-on. The station was put on the air by Willard S. Wilson. The station operated from Mr. Wilson's home until it moved to the Industrial Trust Building on Orange Street.

From that day, many predicted radio's success would succumb to advances from new technologies. In 1927, the challenge came from talking movies. In the 1940s, the predators were 13-inch TV sets. In the 1970s, it was 8-track and cassette tapes. In the past 20 years, there was a multi-flank attack from iPods, Zunes, YouTube, Sirius, XM, Pandora, Spotify,

So far, all of these challengers have failed. Not even a pandemic has been able to remove radio as a vital force in the life of Wilmington consumers.

Every week, according to Nielsen, more adults tune-in to Wilmington radio than watch TV or cable. Use social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Read newspapers. Or, stream music from Pandora or Spotify.

How important is Twitter to Delaware consumers? Yesterday, for instance, the social media platform was mentioned in at least ten articles published by the Wilmington News Journal yesterday.  Almost every local TV newscast included references to the site as well.

Twitter's outsized presence in the news, however, is enormously disproportional to the importance of the micro-blogging app in the life of Wilmington's consumers.

According to Nielsen, only about 17% of adults in Wilmington use Twitter during the course of a month. This is minuscule compared to other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

Twitter offers 20 different options that Wilmington small business owners can utilize to market their goods and services to local consumers.  The platform's minimal reach, however, can hamper the success of any advertising campaign.

Advertising is critical to the success of every Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey small business owner.  One of the most powerful elements of any advertising campaign is how many people it reaches.

Nielsen, the world's largest consumer insights company, found that advertising reach has a more significant effect on sales than branding, recency, and context.

There are many ways a local business owner can advertise. This includes traditional media like Wilmington radio, local TV, and newspaper. It also includes online advertising options such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pandora.

They type of customer an individual business needs to reach depends on the goods and services the company sells. For instance, a daycare operator might want to reach households with young children. On the other hand, a real estate agent could be looking for consumers in the market to purchase a new home.

On July 22, 1922, WDEL signed-on as the first radio station serving Wilmington, Delaware

For almost 100 years, small business owners have depended on local radio stations to successfully market their goods and services through depressions, recessions, wars, and natural disasters. Even now, during a pandemic, advertising on Wilmington radio remains a dependable way to make cash registers ring.

Here are five facts every Tri-State area small business owner needs to know about local radio in 2020.

Suppose you woke up one morning and found a 100-year-old machine in your basement. You soon discovered that every time you put a dime in the machine, one dollar came out.  How many dimes would you drop in that machine?

Good news for Tri-State area small business owners: such a machine exists and you probably have one in your car, at work, at home, even on your phone. It's called Wilmington radio.

Over the past few years, Nielsen has conducted over 20 studies to determine what type of return-on-investment (ROI) a business can expect from radio advertising.  Although the results varied by industry, the average company generated $100 in sales for ever $10 invested.  Turning dimes into dollars.

Advertising on Wilmington television and cable is becoming less attractive to local business owners as viewers rapidly defect to alternative video entertainment sources including, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and Disney+.

Collectively these streaming services are referred to as Over-The-Top Television (OTT) and Connected-TV (CTV). Viewers can only access this OTT and CTV content via smartphone, tablets, computers, smart-TVs, Amazon Fire Sticks, and Roku Sticks, Nielsen reports that 92.1% of Delaware Valley adults own at least one these devices. Furthermore, they are using them.

According to Nielsen, OTT and CTV networks now reach 42.8% of all Wilmington area consumers every week.

It is not a gimmick. Many Tri-State area small  business owners qualify for free local advertising on Wilmington radio. They pay nothing. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Bupkis. Free.

Henry Ford understood that the continual investment in advertising was necessary for a business to be successful. “Stopping advertising to save money," he said, "is like stopping your watch to save time.”

Sometimes, though, when daily expenses challenge their cash flow,  small business owners must prioritize spending.

When that happens, unfortunately, Mr. Ford’s advice is ignored and buying commercials on Wilmington radio will move down the list behind making payroll, maintaining delivery vehicles, and replenishing stock.

Many times advertising doesn’t make a list at all.

Some Tri-State business owners have discovered that their radio advertising doesn’t have to be sacrificed at all when belts need to be tightened. It turns out there’s a deep pool of “free money” that can be dipped into for the singular purpose of advertising. These funds are called cooperative funds, or co-op for short.