Common DRTV Mistakes

NOT DEVELOPING A COMPETITIVE PRICING STRATEGY AND A COMPELLING OFFER

Make sure your product has a competitive price and that the offer will capture the target audience's attention. If your product is priced at $29.95 or under it can generally be sold through a short form commercial (:120, :60). Products priced over $29.95 are usually sold most effectively through an infomercial (28:30). Lead generation DRTV campaigns can be marketed through both short form and long form direct response TV campaigns. Develop and test several offers, in order to determine the offer that will generate the best results. The offer consists of the product, pricing, number of payments, etc. By offering the consumer an incentive to call now, through a discount or a free, related item can be an effective method of generating more calls and additional revenue.

AVOID PRODUCTS THAT DON'T SOLVE A PROBLEM AND AREN'T DEMONSTRABLE

Products that allow consumers to quickly solve a problem work best on TV. Television provides the marketer with an ideal environment to demonstrate how a product works and how it can benefit the consumer. Products that are highly demonstrable work particularly well in DRTV advertising, since the format provides the marketer with ample time to show the consumer why their product is worth purchasing.

We buy media and do the campaign management for the leading ladder infomercial product. The ladder turns into 25 different ladders. Their infomercial does a terrific job of demonstrating all the ways you can use it around the home and how it can make your life easier, so it's a perfect product for an infomercial format.

NOT UNDERSTANDING A DRTV MEDIA TEST

A direct response television media test is designed to provide the marketer with a read on the viability of successfully selling their product on TV. The media test usually runs over one to two weeks and $10-$20,000 is typically budgeted. A short form media test is often run on national cable and satellite networks, since they deliver the best CPM's (Cost Per Thousand Viewers reached). An infomercial media test typically consists of airings on smaller national cable and satellite networks and local broadcast stations. The larger national cable networks are usually too expensive for a media test. There are 1700 local broadcast stations, so there are some excellent infomercial media deals in local markets.

The media buying agency will provide you with daily and weekly reports that will show how each network/station performed during the test. By analyzing these results, the media buyer will be able to buy more of what's working and to drop the networks/ stations/dayparts that are not working, in order to optimize performance.

During the rollout phase of the campaign, the idea is to build up the media budgets, while maintaining a profitable ROI. For example, if you are spending $100,000/week in media and bringing in $200,000 in revenue, you are going to make more profit than buying $10,000/week in media and bringing in $20,000 in revenue.

Peter Koeppel is Founder and President of Koeppel Direct