Very few of my clients actually produce television commercials for their business, but for the ones that do, it represents a HUGE financial investment — often based solely on savvy salesmanship (on the part of the person selling air time) and crafty guess-manship on the part of the person creating the commercial.
The results? Ummm, for your first commercial, the results often look something like this:
INITIALLY: Excitement! I’m gonna be on T.V. How many millions of viewers did they say they had? Honey, do you think we should hire a new person to man the phones? You know, just to prepare for the rush? YES!! That’s brilliant! You’re right! Why don’t we put you and the kids in the commercial? They’ll love that! Big smiles.
NEXT: More excitement! Who knew how fun it’d be to be on tv? Kids and wife have told everyone they know. Tivo is set to record. This is gonna be great!
NEXT: Commercial airs. Man…. how’d I end up with THAT time slot? 3:35 AM? Seriously? Okay, it’s only X more dollars to move to a more reasonable hour. And, we already spent so much money on the commercial itself. The time must have been why no one called. No one SAW the darn thing. Tomorrow will be better.
Anxious hope. Dwindling excitement.
FINALLY: Dag… you would think a commercial would generate more calls than this. And — I mean, I LOVED the commercial. And, YES…. we got a lot more calls. Even some new business. But, I’m almost afraid to look at my numbers. Did we get ENOUGH business to justify the expense?
Now, can commercials be UBER profitable? YEP! But, their chance of success for YOU is severely limited by the following facts. Let’s say you sell cars. You get a commercial to air at a GREAT time slot and it’s exquisitely produced. So far, so good. Here’re three harsh realities facing your new marketing campaign:
- You’re gaining lots of exposure, but only 3% of those watching are actively looking to buy what you sell — in this case, cars. Your commercial is only REALLY speaking to that 3%. For anyone NOT looking to buy NOW, your commercial is lost on deaf ears. (A proper call-to-action AND creative messaging CAN HELP YOU reach an additional 17% of those watching your commercial, but the person selling you airtime and even the marketing firm crafting your commercial are –typically– WOEFULLY unaware of these “antiquated” messaging techniques.)
- You have an enemy growing WILDLY in popularity: DTV, TIVO and other tools that allow those “millions” of viewers your station is tempting you with to skip your commercial. After all, THAT is the #1 cited reason we love TIVO. It allows us to skip commercials. (YOUR commercials.) Gulp.
- Your sales staff may not be adequately equipped to mine the new leads your commercial DOES generate. Good news: THIS is a simple fix. We can rescue the dollars you invested in your commercial by giving YOUR SALES PEOPLE the tools and skills they need to properly harvest the calls that do come in.
