Making the Direct Response Decision

Considering DR? Consider this first:

You've got a great product. You know its going to sell a million units. But now you have to get the word out. Your best bet is Direct Response Television. Read on to find out why.

Why DRTV?

From the sellers' point of view, Direct Response enables you to reach the greatest amount of consumers in the shortest amount of time and measure that response immediately.

From the consumers' point of view, DRTV has beome a highly accepted way to buy quality products in a convenient manner. It is now easy to buy trusted, recognized brands from the comfort of your living room and have them delivered to you within days. All you need is a phone and a credit card.

Who buys from television? Everyone! According to recent demographic studies, infomercials are most watched by a middle-income audience: primarily the married white female homeowner with an income in the 56k range. All in all, not a bad market to have at your disposal.

A Brief History of DR

Direct Response Television has been around since the 1950's in various forms. The real renaissance for the medium began in the early eighties with the debut of the Home Shopping channel out of Florida and QVC based in Pennsylvania. There are three basic formats:

Direct pitch to camera where a host or hostess explains the product then implores you to buy, buy buy.

Short commercials from thirty seconds to two minutes in length. From cellulite cream to car wax, this format has been used to sell everything. You tend to find these either on late night TV or in the early morning where broadcast time can be bought cheaply.

The thirty minute infomercial. These programs are perfect if you are trying to sell a more complex product with several features and benefits. Do you remember the Blu Blocker ads? Originally broadcast in the mid-eighties, it became the template for the infomercial over the past twenty years. Though there have been many variation on the theme, the main goal is to educate and entertain. A well informed customer is a happy customer. Infomercial's for the most part have (3) segments or pods punctuated by a call to action at the end of each pod.

Traditionally it is best to go "long" rather than "short", especially if you are trying to educate the consumer about a more complex product. It gives you plenty of time to overcome objections while you keep on selling.

The Evolution of DRTV

Although the prime market for DR is still vanity products (diet plans, exercise machines, and cellulite reduction creams), DRTV has been used to sell everything form cooking gadgets to timeshares to dating services.

DRTV has evolved to an extremely legitimate phase. Brand advertising has been blended with Direct Response technique to create a more powerful selling tool. Today there are many ads by Fortune 500 companies that prominently display 1-800# or website addresses throughout the commercial. From All State to CIBC, financial companies and insurance companies have embraced DRTV as well. One of the best examples of this is the TD Waterhouse campaign with Sam Waterston as the spokesperson.

What products and services do well on DRTV?

DRTV traditionally has targeted the consumer with products that promise well being (e.g. health, beauty, exercise and diet). Direct Response is now being used for lead generation in the financial and insurance industry, promoting products from credit cards to estate planning.

In Canada the Sympatico ads that appear on TSTV have done extremely well in generating leads and sales for Bell Canada.

The DRTV Production Process

This is a representative timeline for the DR process from idea to broadcast.

• Creative brain storming. Determine the best format (long or short) for your campaign. What will the commercial achieve? Is it intended for lead generation or product sale?

• Contract of call centre/fulfillment house. There are several in the Toronto area that handle both the call and distribution of the product.

• The client approves the creative, budget and timeline are prepared. At this point you would have your legal department involved to evaluate content.
  

• Pre production begins At this point we start writing the script, choosing the talent, arrange for locations or sets

• Production - anywhere from two weeks to a month depending on what creative is involved.

• Off line edit, two to three weeks from rough cut to final approval

• Approval of program by the broadcaster. In the states it is the FCC in Canada. This is a Canadian body formed by the cable companies that makes sure an ad is suitable for air.
  

• Approval of media test plan

• Purchase of media
  

• Final approval of master - versioning or completion 1-800 masters for various TV markets

• Your commercial is broadcast, (this is the test phase) you wait for the phones to ring. And as Tom Petty has said, "the waiting is the hardest part." The fulfillment agency provides you with daily reports on how well the spot is doing.
  

• Media test review - Hard stats that reveal who is responding and at what time. At this time (and if the budget allows) creative revision to iron out any obvious flaws in the program

Budget

With a short form production, budget can be in the 100k* range. The thirty-minute infomercial can cost upwards of 250k*. The variance is based on any number of factors including:

The quality of the medium - for broadcast quality, your choices are varied. From 35mm film to HD, Betacam, DV

Talent - Are you going to seek an endorsement from a recognized personality? Will your production be union or non union.

Location - personally I think we should shoot everything in California

Animation, graphics, music.

*This is your production budget only and does not include purchase of airtime, versioning or fulfillment.

Summary

DRTV is trusted by retailers and consumers alike as an extremely effective means of selling your product. From beauty, to fitness, to financial services, DRTV can be used to inform and educate your target audience and create a strong source of sales revenue for the vendor.

About James McGee Productions

I have been writing, producing and directing video for twenty years and have done everything from motivational and informational programs to commercials. My corporate clients have included Bell Canada, Baxter Medical, Royal Bank, and TD Canada Trust.

For the past five years I have been plying my trade as a freelance writer/producer/director in the DR marketplace here in Toronto. From cellulite creams to health insurance, I have produced a wide variety of spots for both the American and Canadian market.

My clients have included:

Liberty Health, Emerson Direct, Smoke Away, Sprint, Reel Smart, and The Shopping Channel.

My specialty is production. This includes writing the creative, arranging for the crews - directing, and managing the post production process. I do everything that gets your spot to the point of broadcast. Depending on your needs I can coordinate the back end (i.e. fulfillment, call centre), or oversee projects as a consultant- lending my expertise to work with internal and external teams during all phases of the project.

My website - www.jamesmcgee.ca

If you need more info, I can be contacted here james@jamesmcgee.ca

My Adventures in SEO Land or The Trouble with Ad Words

It's been a year now since I started working on an SEO project with one of my regular clients, an electrical contractor that provides a variety of services (both residential and commercial) to the Toronto market.

Over the years I have handled a variety of tasks for his company and have grown to be their marketing supplier of choice. My client saw the light last June and wants to make a concerted effort at garnering more exposure and business from the web.

A step back...

I put up a site for my client a couple of years ago...and believe me it is extremely bare bones. A placeholder to be re-visited at a later time.

My client approached me in June of 2009 to see what we could do to generate more traffic and leads on the internet. He knows that he should be on the first page of search engine listings and wants me to help him get there. My client's marketing style of choice up to this point has been the publishing of ads in the Yellow Pages. The costs are phenomenal - more than 500.00 a month for a 2x3 ad. The end result of this expenditure? Two or three calls every four weeks.

And now the Yellow Pages wants to charge him separately for ads in each neighbourhood that he wants to target. To say that he was angry (and feeling a bit ripped off) by Yellow Pages is an understatement. When he ponders the return on his investment ($167.00 per call) the economical costs of an Internet campaign is an easy sell.

The Pitch

When he calms down, I suggest a concerted Internet based marketing strategy that utilizes SEO technique on the site and a concerted Google AdWords campaign. He questions me about getting high rankings on other browsers (i.e. Yahoo, Microsoft, Bing) but I say we should focus on Google because it is the search engine of choice (Alexa consistently ranks it at #1).

When I tell him he will only pay for the hits on his site (from the Google Ad Words) he is overjoyed.

In the beginning

I review the site to make sure it is in its best state as far as SEO is concerned. I address a few "tag" issues, include a sitemap, and even start writing some pertinent keyword oriented articles to appease the Google Bot.

My first steps are to establish the Adwords account, write several Haikuesque ads and then put in a minimum bid for keywords. The results are almost immediate. Within a couple of hours of putting up the ad we get our first hits.

I proudly send my client an email to tell him of the progress.

The First Roadblock

Uh oh.

He wants to know why we are on the side of the screen and not in the regular results listing. I explain to him patiently (as I had done when proposing the campaign) that this is the way AdWords works. He is disappointed but agrees to continue with the campaign.

The Second Roadblock

My client is not a big fan of the computer age. He sees it as most in business these days as a necessary evil.

He is old school and does most of his business on the phone. He does not want to spend time answering emails. This sort of defeats the purpose of a Google AdWords campaign (i.e, an email of enquiry which creates a lead - I don't even want to talk to him about conversions) I suggest a unique 1-800 number so that we can track the conversions. My client nixes this suggestion.

I do however make sure that his phone number is featured prominently on each page along with the info@ link.

The campaign has been a moderate success. Since establishing it in June of 2009 we have had 900 unique clicks on our ads. Though it probably doesn't compare "clickwise" with other campaigns, in a business where a limited amount of customers can generate a lot of profit, I consider this a major success.

Here's what I have learned so far:

1. Make sure the client knows the difference between "paid for" listing and "Adwords" listings.

The key to understanding Google is that they do not accept payment for main page listings. The process is allegedly scientific, and democratic. If you can figure out how Google determines consistent first page landings, let me know.

Google AdWords, quite simply is a way of paying to make sure your ad appears on the first page (albeit on the side column) by paying for it.

3. Pick the right words

Know what you're selling, make sure you have chosen keywords that truthfully advertise what you are selling. The keywords must appear in the content of the website. Stuck for a words? Utilize the Google interface that allows you to find the best keywords for your particular business.

Delete the non-performing words and find new ones.

And most of all, change those ads. If you have created a few ads for your campaign, find out which ones are generating the clicks, eliminate the other ones.

4. Try to convince your client that daily monitoring is absolutely essential.

After his Yellow Pages experience, my client has a love hate relationship with marketing campaigns. He'd rather spend his money elsewhere. If you leave it for more than a couple of days you get outbid and have to go back to the drawing boards.

5. Don't cry for help...

As Google gets bigger and commands such a captive audience, they feel less and less need to allow human contact. i.e their customer service sucks. I had a live operator once, but could never find the link again. You must navigate Google's "Illusion of Help" interface to try and find answers to your questions.

6. If you can try to keep your client away from the Google interface

The interface is dense, and daunting. My client, a slightly reformed luddite doesn't let a computer run his life. In other words, he does not enjoy the complications of the computer age...

But that being said...

7. Sit them down one day and show them what you have to do to maintain the Ad Words account.

Nothing is more impressive than showing a client how much time it takes to maintain the bids on the Ad Words interface. Since showing him how much effort it takes to maintain the account, he no longer thinks it is done by magic.

8. Paper em' to death

It's an old adage, but a proven one. I provide my client with weekly updates showing them an executive summary of the Google interface. That way I am disseminating information that they might otherwise find overwhelming.

9. Time to redesign

We still live in a world of appearances. Try and convince them to upgrade the site. If the site isn't compelling or hold enough info, the user will not stay around. You also have to make sure that your content conforms with the SEO/Search Word game.

10. Utilize another web tracker

Though Google has an excellent keyword performance tracker, for the sake of comparison I use Statcounter to track visits to the site. It is simple and affordable. You can use it to find new words to add to your keywords list.

A few months later...

My client (in an austerity move) has eliminated the need for me to maintain a daily/weekly or monthly maintenance of the account.

However, before he eliminated my services, I convinced him to add his second company, a fire supply company, to the Ad Words campaign. My belief is that the fire supply company (goods) will do much better on the internet than his electrical (services).

The account seems be generating about 180-220.00 worth of revenue for Google.

Stay tuned for our next episode - writing the meta tag.