If press advertising in newspapers and magazines is the main channel you use for sales and acquisition of new customers, and you previously optimised your media schedule based on comparative call volumes or outcomes from a range of press titles, you may be struggling to understand what is actually working for you these days.
You may also have the head of the call centre or the board on your case, wanting to know why call volumes are so low.
We are seeing more and more clients experiencing declining call volumes from press ads because the reality is the way people now respond to “traditional” direct response ads has changed.
And this is not just the case for press ads, but for most offline channels too. 74% of UK adults dual screen weekly whilst watching TV , so we have also seen the vast majority of response to TV ads going online.
In a recent piece of research we commissioned looking into how people who are 65+ respond to advertising, the insight that came out if was that the most likely way for them to respond to an ad, no matter what medium it appeared in, nor what product the ad was for, was to use the URL in the ad or to search on the internet for the brand’s URL and then visit their website, with very few people filling in coupons or calling the telephone number in the ad.
If this is the case for the 65+ audience, then it is inevitably the case for younger demographics too.
Time and again, we hear prospective clients asking us what to do about their attribution “black hole” where overall sales are fine, but they don’t know what is really driving them, nor which levers they can pull to accelerate growth.
So, what can you do?
The solution is to use media where you can track what is working and therefore optimise your spend. The best example of this is performance TV using an attribution platform such as Adalyser.
By using this tool, you can understand what the baseline of web traffic/conversion is on your site and then attribute the uplift within a fixed attribution window after a spot airs to that spot. You can therefore understand which are the best performing programmes, channels, dayparts and days.
Once you have this insight, you can do more of what is working well and less of what is not working so well – your optimisation problem solved.
It is important to also look at overall uplift too, as not everyone will respond within the attribution window (indirect response), but Adalyser gives you a really clear indication of what is driving the direct response in the first place.
The benefits of performance TV
There are also lots of other benefits of using TV which make it worth considering if it is not already part of your marketing mix:
- More affordable than you might think – the cost of the airtime and the cost of producing an ad will vary depending on your objectives, but an individual spot can start form as little a few hundred pounds. An initial test budget can normally be budgeted for by shaving off a percentage of your regular monthly spend across the year.
- Cost-Efficient – the cost of reaching 1,000 people via TV can be much lower than the equivalent cost for press, inserts or door drop, making it one of the most cost-efficient channels available.
- Drives Profit – numerous studies have proved that TV drives more profit than any other channel in both the short-term and the long-term
If you are a new-to-TV advertiser and considering using it as a channel, we have created a series of new-to-TV guides for you to read:
At Join the Dots, we are passionate advocates of the power of TV to transform your business. If you would like to discuss trialling performance TV, please get in touch with our head of broadcast Clare Arndell
