The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [70]
Let’s talk about TV advertising that’s affordable for almost anyone.
Cable Television
Cable television is also a great way to advertise to consumers. It has become so inexpensive that almost anyone can do it. In some areas, you can buy for just a specific neighborhood. In my area, the local cable company can break out your TV ad to only appear in the city where you might have a bike shop or bakery.
The power of TV advertising is amazing. I know an entrepreneur who offered the simple ser vice of installing all your entertainment components for you. For a busy person, this might be a godsend. Instead of trying to figure out how to make your DVD, DVR, CD players, and newfangled plasma screen TV all work together, it might be worth $85 per hour to have this person come in and do it all for you. He also shows you how to use them. The company was called Mr. Tim’s Home TV, Music and DVD Service.
He went on local cable stations with a fast-paced ad announcing his ser vices. He was running about 40 spots a week for only $200. It was dirt cheap because the ads were only reaching 20,000 homes. But they were the 20,000 homes in a very wealthy area, so it was perfect for him. He was on TV during reruns of Friends, right there with the spot ads purchased by national brands like Coke and Paramount.
As stated, the key to creating a great cable television ad is to make it as visual as possible. Remember to put the phone number on-screen as well as in your announcer’s script. You can even insert important copy points on-screen as well. Mr. Tim’s ad showed a man drowning in wires around his TV, VCR, and DVD player. The guy looks into the camera cross-eyed while the screen flashed the words “Let us figure out all this wiring for you.” So this visually told the story at the same time that the announcer was telling you what Mr. Tim could do for you.
Here’s another spot that worked well. Imagine this: you’re watching commercials, but you have the TV muted. A woman pulls up to a car and gets out of her own car with a baseball bat in hand. She then proceeds to totally trash the car she’s pulled up beside. Right there, you’re wondering what the heck is going on. Then a man in an identical car pulls up near her and says something to her. She looks over at the man in the identical car—realizing she has trashed the wrong car. Just then the owner of the trashed car comes out and sees what she’s done.
The logo comes up and it’s for a local body shop. Clever, visual, no sound required. But after seeing that spot several times, I had to turn on the sound to hear what the man says to her when he pulls up. So the ad worked on every level. Just for the record, the man in the identical car is obviously the boyfriend or husband, and she’s obviously enraged over something he did. He pulls up and sarcastically says, “Hon, what’re you doing?”
I didn’t need to hear that to know what the ad was about, but I just had to hear what the guy says to her.
Today, you can get your ads made for very little money. Mr. Tim paid $400 for his ad and the local cable company did every thing for him. I know several local companies that have had spots created that look pretty darn good for under $1,000.
Billboard Advertising
This is the final area of advertising. Obviously, every thing I’ve already covered applies here. Billboards must be remarkably distinctive or they are a waste of money. They are not practical for direct response. In an area I drive through frequently, there is a billboard ad for a local mortgage broker. When I called him to ask if he got response from it, he said that he did, but he wouldn’t say how much. This made me think the response wasn’t overwhelming, but he did say that it helped him close a lot of deals and to build his “brand” among real estate brokers he was trying to penetrate. So the billboard helped with folks who were already hearing from him. It was like they were dealing with a celebrity because he had this billboard along the highway right in their town.
A little further down the road, another mortgage