By Greg RS Kihlström and Eric A. Myers
You might have heard some of the classic ‘cons’ of advertising your business on cable television:
1) It’s expensive
2) It takes a long time to produce results
3) It’s difficult to track
It’s expensive.
There are two main expenses in order to advertise on TV. The first is the cost of producing the commercial. This includes either assembling the entire cast and crew yourself, or hiring an ad agency to take care of hiring the crew which might include a director, producer, script writer, actors, and crew (cameras, lights, and grips—those people that hold the microphones and carry stuff around).
The second expense is paying to get the finished advertisement played on television. Each time your spot is played, you are charged the rate that is charged for that area, time slot and channel.
While this might already seem too expensive for your company’s advertising budget, consider this: to run a full-page ad in the Yellow Pages in Manhattan, you’re going to be shelling out almost six figures. For this cost you could produce a television commercial and air it fifteen hundred to two thousand times across several television networks.(depending on your area).
Once you have your finished commercial, it really doesn’t cost much to air it on Cable. And if you structure it correctly, you can add in specials or a special phone number (for tracking purposes) very easily without incurring a lot of editing charges from your advertising agency.
Also, depending on your demographic, you might be paying only a few dollars (depending on your geographic location) per time that it airs. The pricing varies from network to network based on popularity, audience reach and advertising demand ie.. ESPN will usually be more expensive than Bravo or Sci-Fi.
It takes a long time to work.
It is true that print advertising is geared more towards those who want instant gratification. The benefit of television advertising is that not only is it proven to work better over longer periods of time, but it has a very positive psychological effect on consumers.
The average viewer in their living room doesn’t differentiate between a local commercial on ESPN and a National or Regional commercial on ESPN or between watching “Friends” on TBS versus watching “Friends” on FOX even though the ad on the local Fox affiliate might be as much as ten times more expensive to run.
And with the cost being so much less to advertise on cable channels, you can AFFORD to advertise for a longer period of time.
It’s difficult to track.
With a print ad, a customer can cut it out of a newspaper and bring it in to your store. This is pretty easy to track. While that obviously won’t work with a television ad, there are some pretty unique aspects of cable advertising that make it important.
For instance, with Cable television, you can target not only a specific geographic region, but also any demographic. Imagine this: You're trying to target Upper Income Pet Owners/Lovers that live within a 10 mile radius of your retail location. You could advertise in your local cable zone of 40,000 households on Discovery Network's Animal Planet.
Also, while most junk mail never even makes it out of its envelope, your television spot is going to make it into your audience’s living room at full volume. Television is the only medium to use sight, sound, motion and emotion to capture your audience’s attention.
Another easy way to do some tracking with cable advertising is to set up a special phone number or Web site address that is only given out in your television spots. As long as you keep in mind that people don’t always take immediate action when they’re watching television, you might be surprised at the amount of response that you DO get.
The bottom line.
The bottom line is this: there is no single medium that you should advertise in. The best campaigns are ones that span multiple media and use each one’s strong suits. Do a print ad that your customers can clip and bring into your store. Produce radio ads that support your print and television ads and increase your exposure by reaching consumers "one on one" In their cars. And advertise on cable television because of the image that it creates for you, its ability to target demographics by geography and psychology and its ability to work over long periods of time. The emotions that it can stir among a highly targeted demographic and the successful image of your company that it puts forth will benefit your sales and create a strong branding campaign that will reinforce every other medium that you advertise. It truly is advertising’s long distance runner.
So go ahead, give cable television a try. Give it a little time and you’ll be glad you did.
About the Authors
Greg RS Kihlstrom is an internationally-recognized Film Director and Interactive Designer who is currently creative director at Carousel30, a Film and Interactive agency in Washington, DC. You can view their work at: http://www.carousel30.com
Eric A. Myers is an advertising industry insider and veteran of TV, Radio and Agency business development . He is also the founder of the business advertising resource: http://www.freeadvertisingadvice.org
0 comments:
Post a Comment