News & insights

Key things you need to get right for your first TV campaign

25 January 2022

It’s a big decision to venture into the TV world for the first time and if you don’t have all your data points joined up, you might feel like you’ve failed at the beginning. However, if all the right pieces are in place at the outset, TV can help take your brand to a whole new level…

We’ve outlined the methods and online tools the Join the Dots team suggests using in order to make your first TV campaign a success.

Step 1: Understanding your focus

For many clients, their experience of an agency planning and buying a performance TV campaign for them will involve agreeing a top line demographic audience, signing off an airtime schedule, and getting a delivery report. That’s it.

As so much response from broadcast channels now goes online (74% of adults dual screen weekly, Touchpoints 2017 IPA), you need to make sure you measure response holistically in order to understand the real ROI of a TV campaign.

More than any other channel, TV has the reach and scalability to transform your business, so calculating the real ROI is essential for growth.

Before you can even think about the schedule, your start point is to set the objective of the campaign and work out what the measurable KPIs are and how you are measuring them. These will vary from business to business, but the process and tools remain the same.

Step 2: Measuring activity

Activity that your campaign has generated can be measured in two ways: direct attribution and uplift during the campaign.

Measuring direct attribution

The first way to measure activity is to look at the response directly attributed to TV within an attribution window. For this, we recommend Adalyser, which helps measure attributed site visits and attributed on-site conversion. You can also upload client telephony and SMS data to Adalyser to get a complete view of directly attributable response.

Measuring uplift during the campaign

The second way to measure activity is by looking at the uplift during the campaign, compared to the periods directly before and after. It’s also worth looking at year-on-year, to make sure there aren’t any seasonal factors affecting the data.

For this, your start point should be to make sure your site is properly tagged and your GA goals are set up correctly. We then recommend using a variety of tools and data points to get as full a picture as possible. These would include (but are not restricted to):

  • Customer acquisition data,
  • CPA and AOV from your CRM platform
  • Tracking data from other offline channels such as call volumes
  • And any changes in brand awareness scores from brand tracking surveys

When a brand is on TV, they invariably see a surge in search for brand terms, so we recommend you look at what happens in:

Combining both steps

Many clients have different agencies rostered for TV buying and search requirements, which often makes it difficult to fuse different types and formats of results data to get the holistic view of the campaign.

We suggest using bespoke reporting tools in order to join up all the data points and provide an all-encompassing view. This will allow you to determine the real ROI of TV campaign and help build the business case for scaling TV activity in order to drive growth.

At Join the Dots, we are passionate advocates of the power of TV to transform your business. If you would like to discuss this further please drop me an email.

Share on social

Related articles

The giving generation: How charities can connect with Gen Z

The giving generation: How charities can connect with Gen Z

For most charities, a key part of their ongoing income generation strategy will be the recruitment of new donors. And as part of that, the recruitment of younger donors is also high on most charities’ agendas in order to counteract the natural attrition inherent in an...

To discount, or not to discount: Time to jack in Black Friday?

To discount, or not to discount: Time to jack in Black Friday?

It started as Black Friday, extended to Cyber Monday, grew to Cyber Weekend and now has its own Cyber Week – has the annual sales campaign lost its meaning?  Apparently not.  Seasonal sales are on their way Soaring sales Soaring sales  59% of Brits are...

Data-driven marketing for charities in the era of budget cuts

Data-driven marketing for charities in the era of budget cuts

Join the Dots and Herdify webinar – register now In today's challenging landscape, where charity budgets are shrinking and traditional marketing methods are becoming increasingly costly, standing out is more critical than ever. With all charities vying for the same...

State of the charity sector January-June 2024, our thoughts 

State of the charity sector January-June 2024, our thoughts 

You may have seen Wood for Trees, part of Salocin Group, recently released its six-monthly update on the state of the charity sector report (January-June 2024). We’ve had a good look through it, digested it and here are our thoughts…   Lori Cridland – Media...

The Drum Live – roundup of key outtakes

The Drum Live – roundup of key outtakes

Our Senior Media Account Director, Jodie Hanrahan, was invited to speak at The Drum Live (25 September 2024) alongside fellow Creative Futures team members Cathy Bittner from Canon Europe and Rob Flannery from Nutshell Creative. They spoke about the campaign they...

3 classic behavioural science techniques for marketers

3 classic behavioural science techniques for marketers

And 3 very cool nudges What is behavioural science?  Behavioural science is the study of how cultural, psychological and societal factors drive human behaviour. Within marketing, it’s used to influence attitudes and buying behaviour. The application of this...

State of the charity sector – our views 

State of the charity sector – our views 

You may have seen Wood for Trees, part of Salocin Group, recently released its annual state of the charity sector report. We’ve had a good look through it, digested it and here are our thoughts…  Clare Arndell – Head of Media Planning & Operations ...

Join the Dots awarded IPA People First Promise

Join the Dots awarded IPA People First Promise

We’re delighted to share we’ve been awarded the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA)’s People First Promise, just as Mental Health Awareness Week 2024 kicks off. This badge of honour represents everything the Salocin Group and its agency brands – Join the...

7 things that top global digital media companies have in common

7 things that top global digital media companies have in common

The number of people who go online every day is constantly increasing. In fact, it’s probably gone up since you finished reading that sentence.

Digital media is an integral part of our daily lives. Most people use some form of digital media every day, right from the moment they wake up – and with so many people consuming digital media, it’s no wonder digital media is one of the most powerful ways to build a connection with your audience.