Why is that? People aren’t silly. They know that if I make an offer, and ask them to make a phone call or study some information, it’s going to take them away from whatever they are doing for at least 15 minutes. If they are watching their favourite show, they’re just not going to get up and leave their show at its most exciting point , and do what you tell  them !

Prime time is what we describe ‘appointment viewing’ – it’s active, high involvement viewing. If you really like a particular show, you make an appointment to watch it – and no matter how compelling my offer is, you don’t want to leave that program to respond.

On the other hand, viewers generally watch daytime TV to relax between other tasks or activities. It’s low involvement – therefore, it is the best time to talk to someone, and it’s the best chance for your offer to stand out as more exciting than what they’re doing at the time.

The economics of daytime are also in your favour for DRTV. In prime time, there might be ten times more viewers but you also have to pay ten times more for that viewership. Because of that high level of involvement, prime time viewers will probably only respond at the same rate as daytime viewers.

When choosing daytime programs in which to screen your ads, you should think about the demographic of the people you are targeting with your offer. For instance, if you have an offer that appeals to people aged 60 plus, such as coin collectors, you need to target TV shows that draw the largest audience those people.

If you are really committed to running advertisements in prime time because you want to reach a large number of people, you should also place your ad on the same channel during the morning after your prime time slot. Those morning spots will generate twice or sometimes three times the amount of response, because viewers will recognise your offer and respond.

So while it might seem counterintuitive, remember – the least engaging TV programs will generally give you the best result in terms of generating leads.

Here’s hoping that your phone is ringing off the hook !

SMS is becoming a revelation for direct marketers, generating up to ten times the response we get from direct phone calls. Why? Because people love the anonymity and the control of sending a text message. It’s also a great, low-commitment method of response from the viewer. People understand that if they phone a number provided in an offer, they are going to speak to a consultant straight away. With an SMS, they can make a more discreet enquiry, and they don’t have to wait in a queue for a call centre.

This convenience factor is why SMS works particularly well for any offer where more detail might be required – such as a quote for insurance – and for anyone who feels time-poor. You can use this to your advantage through your offer: “Why don’t you have us call you back at a time convenient to you? Just SMS your name and a time to call.”

Keeping the response as simple as possible is key to maximising the number of leads you get from SMS, so people who are not comfortable with texting, as well as those who are, can respond.

If you can get a viewer to send an SMS in response to an offer, then you’ve got the three most powerful things on the planet right now: you’ve got the person’s name, you’ve got their number and you’ve also got permission to call it.

Because SMS is so low-commitment, you will inevitably get some time-wasters – people who are interested in the technology and won’t seriously consider the offer you are making. But if you use a double opt-in method of lead qualification, these leads can prove to be quite sticky.

For instance, if you are offering a quote on insurance, you might respond to SMSs with an automated email, providing a generalised quote and asking permission to call to ask more questions to generate a customised quote. If the enquirer says yes, you have a double opt-in, and those leads are very good. Using this method for our clients, in some cases we have generated up to ten times the response we generate using the phone.

Ultimately SMS can provide a low-commitment method of response from the viewer, but still delivers you all the power of a phone call.

All this means that consumers are still feeling financial pressure. So what types of offers will push their buttons in times like these?

In fact, it’s not too different to the things they worry about the rest of the time – but these concerns are magnified.

With direct response TV, to encourage viewers to respond to your advertisement, you have to solve a problem – and in these tougher economic times, people are thinking most about money: how to save it and how to make it.

So you need to show people how they can save money or make some extra cash in areas such as:

• Credit cards: to help people get on top of their debts, for example, 0% balance transfer offers are popular, or rebate offers, where for $500 spent on a particular card, $50 will be rebated.
• Mortgages: bundling debts from credit cards or personal loans with a mortgage for debt consolidation and getting them paid off quicker.
• Essential services such as telecommunications: bundling multiple services such as broadband and mobile plans for cost savings.
• Business opportunities: for example, offering viewers a free report on how to convert unwanted items into $2000 cash on eBay. For an company advertising a system to make money from eBay, this recently received a huge response.

Basically, by thinking about what might be keeping your customers up at night at the moment, you can find the right buttons to push to get the best possible response to your commercial.

So what types of offers might provide enough motivation for potential customers to do just that?

You need one of three types of offer:

• A low commitment offer: for example, offering viewers a free report or a no-obligation quote. One of our clients, Craftmatic Adjustable Beds, was targeting people with back pain, so they offered viewers a free report on ‘The Top 8 Tips on Relieving Pain from Chronic Back Problems’. This required low commitment from viewers to respond, but put Craftmatic in touch with a whole range of people with back problems.
• A high value offer: for example, “Find out how you can save $600 in interest a year on your credit card”. If you consider that the average person probably keeps a credit card for 3 years and may spend $5000 to $6000 per year, this could result in the advertiser getting a high lifetime value customer.
• An offer that will create curiosity: for example, a real estate agency may be able to offer viewers information about house sale prices in their area – “If you’re thinking about downsizing or relocating, wouldn’t you like to know how much houses in your street have sold for?”. This may prompt the viewer to take action, and again, provides the advertiser with a set of targeted leads.
• We have found that these types of offers work particularly well when the viewer can respond by SMS, because again, there is low commitment, and they feel in control of the interaction.

If you’re really lucky, you might have the ‘kitchen sink offer’ – a combination of all three.

Charles Weiser, former chief executive of RAMS Group and head of customer relations at British Airways, once spoke about the 10/24 rule. He said you have to call the customer or potential customer back within 10 minutes, once you have fielded the call, and you must solve their problem within 24 hours, or it’s over.
That’s a great illustration of how you need to respond to leads generated through DRTV. But if you have a call centre staffed by ten people, and you have 60 calls in two minutes, you’re going to drop 50 calls. So how can you manage this?

One of the techniques used in call centres is to divide your call centre team in half. While the first half service the calls they get straight away – because there is nothing more powerful than being able to respond to that caller without delay – the other call centre staff members take names and numbers, and promise to come straight back to the caller. As the number of calls dissipates, more of the call centre team can begin servicing those calls and getting stuck into the sales task.

Electronic phone systems such as Avalanche also help to stagger the calls coming into the call centre, and after callers have been waiting a couple of minutes, can record their number for a callback. This is then converted to an email, which is sent to the call centre manager, so they can manage the flow of calls and ensure operators follow up all the leads received as soon as possible. The only drawback with this is that the caller’s name is not recorded – meaning a quick response is required so you can catch the person before they go on with their day and the lead goes cold.
Perhaps surprisingly, with SMS, the best way to respond is slightly different – our early learning is that you should delay at least a couple of hours, even up to a day. This is because if you ring the person straight back, they assume it will be the call centre and may not accept the call. By leaving it for a period of time, they are more likely to take the call, and the operator can deliver the information offered.

The key issue is making sure you have the right measures in place before your ad airs, to ensure your leads don’t slip through the net.

Generally speaking, DRTV in daytime works hardest for:

• Telecommunications: broadband, mobile phones;
• Finance: mortgages, credit cards, personal loans;
• Insurance: home and contents, motor vehicle, income protection;
• Health and beauty: for example, pain relief equipment, or beauty treatments such as Botox and collagen implants.

Other areas where we are beginning to see some traction are travel and offering test-drives for new cars.

What these categories have in common is that they typically rely on women as the core audience for the offers. When it comes to what you might call ‘home administration’, like making sure you have the right broadband plan or getting the best deal on your insurance, men are generally pretty lazy. Unless the information is put in front of them, they don’t do anything about it, and they can be really reluctant to actually make a decision.

On the other hand, women generally initiate the process of finding out what the options are around a product or service (although they might involve the man in the final decision). For example, if the kids are on the internet at home all the time and often running out of download allowance, the woman will be more motivated to act on an offer that promises double the downloads at half the price. So this is why we focus in on these types of offers at RiskFreeTV.

Within these broad categories, there are literally hundreds of possible offers, but what we’re looking for is an offer that requires low commitment to start with, but which can result in a high lifetime value customer. DRTV isn’t a cheap exercise, so we need to make sure your offer is going to produce the volume of leads you need to make it worthwhile.

Good question – Depending on which type of product or service our client is driving sales leads for, potential leads will often want to check out the details of an offer or the company. We have a solution!

Introducing Infobreak.com.au & TVoffer.com.au, Risk Free TV’s client portal.

Before a Risk Free TV commercial goes to air, we’ll create a customizable microsite with;

• Full details of your offer
• A voice over from the talent in the TVC with instructions
• A form which captures the information about the sales lead
• And which sends that information to your sales staff real time.

But what’s the best part of all this? It’s all included with Risk Free TV’s Pay Per Lead TV deal.

We’ll make you a TV commercial with your consumer offer, air it on Australia’s free to air TV networks and distribute the leads real time to your sales staff – at the end of the week, we tally up the leads at the pre-negotiated Cost Per Lead and send you a bill – That’s it!

Have a good weekend.

Michael
& The Risk Free TV Team

Check it out: http://twitter.com/RiskFreeTV

Also, we have made a  small update to the website;  a location page so now anyone interested in Cost Per Lead marketing and driving sales leads can now more easily find us; http://www.riskfreetv.com.au/Contact/Location.aspx

Cheers,

Michael & the Risk Free TV team

With Infobreak.com.au bursting at the seems, TVoffer will now also be used as a digital lead generator and landing page for Risk Free TV clients.

Michael
Risk Free TV

On one side, we are now generating leads for one of Australia’s biggest Telco’s – AAPT. Their 3 in 1 offer seems to be really resonating well with the TV audience at the moment as we’re generating plenty of sales leads for that offer. Stand by for a testimonial coming soon!

We’ve also been busy writing and producing Risk Free’s very own TV commercials. They feature Max discussing Risk Free TV, making call outs to current clients, potential clients and even Kevin Rudd! 

Max Compton shooting the Risk Free TV Commercial

 We’ve posted them on YouTube for all to see!  They’re set to go to air within the next week or so – Keep and eye out and let us know what you think!

Cheers,

Michael