In their influential book, The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies, Les Binet and Peter Field draw attention to the fact that TV advertising has the double ability to combine the power of extensive reach with the engaging direct response advertising techniques.
This unique combination makes it the most effective medium for a successful brand response marketing campaign.
Branding And Direct Response Need To Combine For Maximum Effect
It is important in a marketing campaign to ensure that there is an equal focus on both brand marketing and direct response marketing. If marketers focus too heavily on brand marketing at the expense of direct response, Binet and Field advise, they ‘will not be exploiting the full sales potential of brand equity as it accumulates'.
Conversely, if there is not enough brand activity, then 'the brand equity needed to drive sales in future will not accumulate.' For maximum effect, they would recommend a 60% budget investment in the branding strand and a 40% investment in the direct response marketing strand of the brand response marketing campaign.
TV Is The Most Powerful Medium For Both Branding And Direct Response
The most critical element to long-term success is reach and TV is the most powerful medium in this respect. The second most important element of the branding strand that they recognise as being key to a successful marketing campaign is the power of emotion. They found that campaigns that are ‘highly creative and generate powerful fame/buzz effects, produce considerably more powerful long-term business effects than rational persuasion campaigns.’
Robert Heath provides a theory for this in his book, Seducing the Subconscious, in which he argues that this is due to the ability of emotion to resonate at a deep, subconscious level:
‘the emotive content itself, all of which will be processed (because emotive processing happens automatically and instantaneously and without any attention being paid), will likewise enter our consciousness without any challenge’.
He goes on to argue that people are most receptive to emotional advertising transmitted via TV as they already in a relaxed state when watching TV.
By supporting these branding elements with direct response tactics to gain instant sales, then the long-term brand reputation will continue to grow while sales are constantly boosting ROI along the way. It’s a win-win approach that covers all the bases.
While TV advertising really excels in building an effective brand reputation over a wide reach in the long term, direct response TV advertising is a cost-effective method of making a quick ROI. The direct nature of providing a limited-time offer together with a phone number and an urge to ‘Call now!’ enables quick surges in short-term revenue to support long-term business growth.
DRTV Has The Best Immediate Impact On Sales
Adding DRTV to a direct response schedule has a slightly greater impact on sales, market share and profit than adding TV to all schedules. Therefore, there needs to be a focus on DRTV as a key part of the TV advertising strategy to ensure positive ROI in the short-term. We particularly recommend it when businesses are seeking instant business growth.
Brand-building TV ads divert attention from a DRTV marketing campaign, as DRTV ads are specifically providing a means of contact to make instant purchases. Therefore, any TV advertising that attempts to build a brand’s reputation should also include a call to action within it to enable sales. The most impactful DRTV ads will contain emotive content plus a call to action.
This is an example of how branding and direct response can effectively combine to form a successful brand response strategy. You are capitalising on the instant sales potential of direct response while also ensuring that you speak to people on a deeper level so that they remember you in the future and this is a reputation that you can continue to build on with each successive TV ad in your brand response campaign.
TV Advertising Drives People To Make Online Purchases
In this digital era, TV is increasingly being supported by online to add even more power to its status. It is now common for people to watch TV while simultaneously engaging with their laptop, tablet or mobile device or to stream programs via these devices themselves. With the ability at their fingertips to click to a website and make an instant purchase, TV advertisements can give people a push to make a purchase while they are feeling the heightened emotion that the TV ad has just created. A strong call to action with a limited-time offer heightens that urgency.
TV advertisers no longer have to rely on people holding on to the memory of the ad until they are next out and about and ready to make a purchase decision. Binet and Field reveal that ‘searches, site visits and social media mentions often spike as a TV commercial goes on air.’ The IPA data shows that advertising campaigns that combine TV with online marketing proving to be almost four times as efficient as TV advertising campaigns alone.
Branding and direct response work in perfect harmony to boost effectiveness and efficiency. There is no risk to incorporating both into one marketing strategy. TV is by far the most powerful advertising medium to reap these rewards.
Get in touch to find out how Direct Response Media, Melbourne’s leading advertising agency, can help you to design the perfect mix of branding and direct response to form the most powerful brand response marketing strategy.