When you watch television you see a wide range of tv ads, some national, some regional, and others for local companies regardless of what channel or provider you have.
Many small businesses don’t use broadcast or cable tv ads as a marketing channel, often not understanding how the process of creating ads works, understanding the budget requirements, or worried about the return on investment for the ad spend.
While these can certainly all be issues, if you strategically plan out the campaign and coordinate it within your greater marketing plan, these challenges can be mitigated and broadcast campaigns can quickly generate very real revenue.
Guide to Broadcast TV Advertising for Small business on Local and Cable Networks
The single most important aspect of planning a broadcast tv campaign occurs well before the cameras start rolling, and that’s knowing who buys from you and why they do it.
Understanding who your customers are and why they buy from you over competitors is a major cornerstone of any marketing campaign. The better you understand this, have data on it, and can chart it out, the better informed any of your marketing campaigns can be. As you create more targeted ads, whether on broadcast or not, you’ll be able to spend less money while converting more prospective customers because you are putting your ads in front of the right people and conveying the “right” message.
TV advertisements are really no different, knowing who your audience is gives you the power to better plan what schedule to buy – which is what time of day and in what shows your ads run, and of course the content of your ad.
Quality over Quantity
We’ve all seen “those” ads, that look like they were created in 5 minutes and scream local and low budget. How do those ads make you feel about that business? The answer generally isn’t great and they don’t lend themselves to a highly professional business or high-quality service.
Instead of creating a bunch of ads or running a bunch of time slots at 3 am on a Saturday, you are much better off creating an ad that can be used for several months, and more wisely concentrate your ad buys to more expensive time slots that better put your ad in front of the audience that will actively buy from you.
Proper audio and video editing should be a given, but unfortunately, this isn’t always the case, as more often than we should, have seen ads play on local tv or cable channels that have obvious technical issues. What do you think this says about your business?
Often asking a local tv network for a production company referral or working directly with an agency/production firm is the best bang for your buck in terms of product delivered vs cost.
Any marketing agency or local production firm should be able to consult with you on their recommendation of content, typical budget ranges and other options, then work with you step by step through the planning and production phases. This will result in you having an ad produced that looks good, that is usable over across multiple marketing channels and
Broadcast Tv Ad Formats
We’ve found that the common 30-second long ad is generally the best way to go. You can buy 15-second book end slots from tv stations or extended 60 second or even 120-second slots, but these are rarely as effective due to the limited attention span that most views have.
Often though, a 15 second version of an ad can be effectively created from a finished 30 second ad. These are sometimes used for bookend media buys or for digital ad placement.
Economies of Scale in Video Ad Production
While the production cost for video ads can be higher than other types of advertising, you can often use the ad you’ve created for broadcast across a range of other marketing channels and even for a prolonged period of time.
Many of the ads we’ve created primarily for broadcast have also been used on client’s websites, through their various social media channels, sometimes in email marketing and even radio. Video ads result in more engagement and a higher likelihood of action from the viewer due to the stronger engagement that video ads deliver.
Many times using A/B testing as a comparison between video and static ads will strongly point to the effectiveness of video ads vs static ads on the most paid channels or organic campaigns.
It’s important that marketers take the time to properly share the broadcast video ads on social media and make the posts in a way to encourages commenting and sharing. You’d be surprised at the level of engagement from posting most video ads.
There are also typically opportunities to shoot extra content during the production process that could be used for later ads, which would effectively somewhat lower the cost of the actual video ad. This can depend on some on the style of ad and complexity of the production, but often producing a batch of 3-5 30 second ads will be much more cost-efficient than producing a single ad.
Small Business Local and Regional TV media Buying
TV media buying doesn’t have to be as hard as it might seem. Working with an agency familiar with ad placements can be a great help and make the process straightforward.
While you might be tempted to spend more with one single network, typically it makes more sense to widen your traffic across multiple networks which will widen the band of the audience seeing the ads.
What budget is needed for local broadcast television advertising?
The answer is it depends heavily on your goals and the duration of the ad campaign.
Typically at the very low end, a low budget 30 second commercial will be $1500-2000 for production then from there commercials can range anywhere from $5000-20,000+ depending on the scope.
The low end of monthly media buy spend typically starts at $5000-8000 and from there, the sky is the limit beyond that depending on penetration and how wide of an audience you want.
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Volan Media is a top Knoxville, Tennessee video production and marketing agency with years of experience working on a range of projects, everything from 1800s steam railway locomotives to the most cutting edge cancer treatments. If you turn on the tv in East Tennessee, chances are you’ll see one of our ads! We are a top Knoxville, Tennessee video production firm, with projects commonly being used for explainer videos, broadcast/cable tv ads, digital ads, recruitment. Volan Media also is a top Knoxville Tennessee virtual Reality video production firm, having made a large number of 360 videos and VR productions across a range of industries, including various tradeshow VR 360 videos, treatment and branding VR videos, and VR experiences.
