People often talk to us about running an online or TV ad campaign for their product or service. And the first thing some of them want to tell us is WHO they want as a presenter for their ads. This is a bit disconcerting because it’s putting the cart way before the horse. It’s much more vital to first know who we’re talking to, rather than who’s doing the talking.
In Part One, How Much Does A TV Commercial Cost? We covered why TV commercials can seem to be expensive, gave real-life cost examples, and showed which elements drive the cost of production up. In Part Two, How Much Should You Spend On A TV Commercial? we discuss the four major budgeting methods you can use to determine how much you should spend on your TV commercial.
How much does a TV commercial cost? This is the most frequent and the most difficult question we are asked. The short answer is between $2,000 and $2 million. We’re not being flippant. Every TV commercial has to be different from every other so that it stands out on TV. This means every commercial has a different script, different ingredients, and therefore, a totally different set of costs.
You’d be surprised how often we hear the same story: They’re a small or medium sized business. They’ve maxed out their online marketing channels. Their market segment is getting crowded as their competitors do the same. They need to: Grow revenue and profitability Drive more cost-effective sales Take a dominant position in a competitive market niche Add value to their business by building a branded presence in the market Does this sound […]
You can create a Direct Response TV commercial which makes people do exactly what you tell them to. But only if you meet some prerequisites. The key is to understand what makes people take action. Here it is: People will take action to move towards a goal, to remove a block to a goal, or to resolve a state of tension. A good DRTV commercial will introduce the product and its benefits. […]
Folks in the search business are very aware that TV advertising drives web traffic: via search and direct to websites. In fact, the quickest, easiest, and lowest-cost way of increasing leads and sales for your business from your TV advertising campaign is SEO and Google AdWords. This should be an essential ingredient in any TV advertising plan, because it not only delivers leads, sales enquiries and customers, it also provides accurate and […]
A 28% increase in the response to your TV commercial could mean the difference between failure and success. It’s too important to ignore. And the opportunity to grab hold of this advantage has been created by a fuzzy new vista called the ‘cross-media landscape’. For the last five years, the online and TV worlds have been converging. People are watching as much online video as they watch TV. ISPs offer streaming TV and […]
When planning your first TV campaign, the best thing you can do is test, test, and test. Test a number of different messages online as banner ads, and then use the top performing one or two as guides to the message in your TV commercial. If possible, produce two different versions of your commercial, each with a different message based on the two top performing banner ads. Select a small market for […]
While you’d expect brand, retail and direct response commercials to be different, it might surprise you to know how vastly different the media footprints must be for each type of campaign to do its job cost-effectively. With brand or retail campaigns, a narrower schedule with more frequency will return more sales than a campaign that tries to reach your total market with less frequency. With Direct Response, the opposite applies. You don’t […]
Smaller advertisers can’t afford to replicate the strategy of big advertisers. Instead, they have to be careful and use their budget judiciously. For example, prime-time TV is popular with big advertisers. It’s great for national brands that need to get a message out to their whole market simultaneously, for a national product launch or a sale, for example. But prime-time media has a number of disadvantages that will bite small and medium-size […]
As the other players in your market segment become proficient at online marketing, the fight for market share becomes tighter. And it’s increasingly hard to put distance between yourself and your competition. So instead of trying to outbid your competitors for online customers, wouldn’t it be better to step outside that arena and reach a vast, new, untapped market? TV gives you access to the millions of potential customers who you (and […]
As in most consumption-based systems, Pareto’s Law applies to media as well. While you can probably reach 60-70% of your target market cost-effectively, after that, the cost per additional percentage point climbs astronomically. And reaching the last 10% of your market can consume 90% of your budget. Over the years, working with clients who have smaller TV budgets, we have observed that by aiming at a smaller percentage of the total target […]
