Introduction to Television Advertising
Of all of the major advertising media available to small businesses, television is the most powerful. This section is to give you a general overview of television advertising that will help you understand how it all works.Television is often thought of as the giant of all advertising media. People spend more time with TV per day (4 hours per day) than they spend with any other media. (Television Advertising Bureau) Television is powerful and has become the major medium to shape public perceptions, attitudes, and buying decisions. Television uses more of the human senses than any other medium. The combination of color, sight, sounds, and motion all work together to create a synergy of powerful influence.Advantages of Television Advertising: Television advertising can give a product or service instant credibility and status. If a business can afford to advertise on TV, it must be a solid, successful business. You can easily reach any audience you have targeted using television advertising. Stay at home Moms can be reached using afternoon soap operas, and talk shows such as The View or Dr. Phil. Business people can be effectively reached by advertising in programs like the local and network news, financial programs, or political programs like Meet the Press.Children can be reached by advertising on cartoons and programs like Nickelodeon, while teens and young adults can be found watching the O.C. or Friends. While television can reach a specific target market, it is also very effective reaching large numbers of viewers in a very broad market. An example of this is advertising milk, cars, or televisions. Everyone uses them. The creative power of television surpasses all other media. With camera, light, sound, CGI, (computer generated images) and on air talent, the audience can be taken anywhere they can imagine. In most metro areas, television adverting reaches more potential consumers than does newspaper advertising ( 99% of all households in the U.S. own a TV). Less than half of all the adult population in any major market in the U.S. is reached by news newspapers.Disadvantages of Television Advertising:Like all advertising media, television not only has advantages to the advertiser, but it has disadvantages as well. The high cost of advertising on television is usually considered the biggest disadvantage to using television advertising. Anytime a medium delivers a very large quantity of viewers, its cost will be very high. Because TV reaches such a large audience, the stations can charge more money per spot. The high cost of using TV advertising often puts that medium out of reach of most small businesses. The cost of television commercial time is based on three variables:
1. The number of viewers who watch a program and see your spot.
2. The time during the day a spot airs such as prime time, mornings or afternoons.
3. The number of times (frequency) a spot is aired and seen by viewers.
For example, because a TV spot will reach a very large audience during prime viewing time which is 7 pm to 11 pm. Stations can charge much more per spot because it delivers a larger number of viewers.
Television Production:
              One of the costs most small business owners are not aware of when doing television advertising for the first time is the cost of producing the advertising announcement or spot. These costs are in addition to the price of the air time you purchase. Producing a commercial is an important variable to consider. Most of the locally produced TV spots seen on local TV are not very creative, and are usually pretty bad. The reason for this is the high cost of producing quality spots. As a result, small businesses produce spots with low production value that look pretty average. That is not necessarily bad because in many cases, local spots do not need to be slick to produce sales.
              Many businesses use the station's commercial production facilities for creating local commercials. Often the station will produce the spot for a discount if you advertise with them. Remember, when it comes to making a TV commercial, you get what you pay for. And when you're buying commercial time for one 30-second TV spot costing from $600 to $1,200, it makes sense to have the best sales presentation you can afford.
There are advertising agencies that will write and produce quality commercials with high production values, but again, this raises the costs even more.
Breaking Through the Clutter         Â
              Will viewers remember your commercial and your message? In many cases no. We live in an over communicated world and are bombarded by hundreds, even thousands of commercials every day from TV, radio, newspaper, magazines, billboards, direct mail and much more. How will you get viewers to remember your ad and your business?
Your commercial must be creative, but it also must positions your business as different from the competition. For example, When you advertise on TV, your commercial is not only competing with other commercials, it's also competing with the other elements in the viewer's environment as well.
       The viewer may choose to get a snack during the commercial break, go to the bathroom or have a conversation about what they just saw on the show they were viewing. Even if your commercial is being aired, viewers may never see it unless it is creative enough to capture their attention. That's why it's so important to consider the kind of commercial you are going to create, and how you want your audience to be affected. Spending money on a good commercial in the beginning will pay dividends in the end. Attempting to use TV advertising by using a poorly-produced commercial, by buying inexpensive late night commercial time that few people watch, or just playing your commercial a couple times on the air will guarantee disappointing results. To obtain
positive results from TV advertising, you must have enough money
in your budget to:
  1. Pay for the cost of producing a good TV commercial (today
     costs range from $2,500 to $20,000, and above).
  2. Pay for effective commercial time that will reach your
     target market at least 5-7 times.
Properly done, television advertising is the most effective medium there is. But it is big league advertising and you shouldn't attempt it unless you have enough money in your budget to do it right.
Buying Television Advertising Time
              There are many things to know and consider before buying a TV
advertising schedule. When you are creating your advertising schedule, remember that repetition (or frequency) is a very important ingredient for success. Â Not running your spot enough times during the campaign, will insure wasting your money.
Other Considerations
              For an effective and inexpensive way to get your message on the TV screen, consider using pre-prepared TV commercials that may be available to you through a manufacture or distributor you deal with. For example, if you sell Toro lawn mowers, Toro has spots already produced and ready for you to use. You can add your name and logo to the end of the commercial for little or no cost. Look at cooperative advertising too. Many companies offer prepared advertising materials you can use and at the same time will pay for a portion of the advertising schedule.
Who is your target audience?
The key is matching up your target customers with the kind of media they use. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is they don’t really know who their target customer is. The owner of the business may think he knows who his target customer is but does he really? You must know everything about your target customer if you want to choose the right advertising media to use. Is you target customer male, female, or do you sell to both? What is the average age range of your customers? What geographical area do your customer live? What media do they use? If it is radio, which are their top three stations? If it’s newspaper, which one is it and what sections do they read? Do they read the paper more on one day than the others? What TV shows do they watch? etc. This kind of information is called demographic information. It will give you a pretty clear picture of who your customers are. Does it sound like a lot of extra work to gather this kind of information? Well it’s really not.
Gathering Customer Information
If your customs come into your place of business to buy from you, get some small forms printed that have the questions you want to ask them. Get a box, decorate it up and have a contest. Customers fill out the forms and put them in the box in order to win a price. Make the prize a good one! It will be well worth the expense. ( maybe a DVD recorder, or an I-pod ). Be sure to transfer all this customer data onto some kind of spread sheet like Excel. As customers pay with checks, be sure to gather the names, phone numbers, and addresses. Put this information onto the spreadsheet also. After two months or so, you will have a great customer list with a pretty accurate profile. If you think about it, you can find other, more creative ways to gather information. I know the owner of a retail tire store who while the car was being worked on, turns on the car radio and records which stations were set on the buttons. This was a valuable guide to determine which radio stations on which to advertise. This overview is not designed to make you an expert in television advertising, but it does give you good information which will help you market your business.
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