What to Look for In an Infomercial Media Buying Agency

By admin | October 1, 2007

Infomercial media buying is a highly specialized type of media-buying. General advertising agencies do not have the expertise to buy infomercial time. They are familiar with buying general advertising that is designed to build awareness. In researching an infomercial media buying agency, look for a firm with the following capabilities:
 

  • Make sure you align yourself with an infomercial media-buying expert that has a proven track record buying for other infomercial products in your category of business or for products targeting a similar audience. An infomercial media buyer with this type of knowledge and expertise will end up saving you money and increasing the chances of your infomercial campaign becoming a success.
     
  • An infomercial media buying team that is trained to buy the best infomercial time for each campaign.
     
  • Specialized software and reporting systems that monitor and track results and links with the telemarketing firm, so that results can be imported daily.
     
  • An analytics team that reviews and analyzes the infomercial results in real time and works with the infomercial media buyers to optimize the infomercial campaign based on those results.
     
  • Utilizes competitive research that allows them to monitor where competitors are airing their infomercials with the highest level of frequency. Oftentimes infomercial time periods that are being purchased by a competitor with a high level of frequency are paying out and might be places your infomercial media buying agency would consider running your infomercial.
     
  • An account service staff that knows how to manage an infomercial campaign from initial testing through roll-out, to taking an infomercial product to retail.
     
  • Try to find an infomercial agency that has experience managing infomercial campaigns through both good and bad times.
     
  • Look for an infomercial media agency that has connections with the best vendors for key services such as infomercial production, infomercial telemarketing, infomercial fulfillment, infomercial card-processing, infomercial media funding and taking infomercial products to retail.
     

    • Assembling a seasoned team of infomercial industry veterans is critical to an infomercial campaign’s success.

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    More Accountability for Offline Advertising

    By admin | September 4, 2007

    Google has demonstrated their expertise at delivering online advertising where performance can be tracked, adjusted and measured. They are now trying to bring more accountability to offline advertising through their auction platform that incorporates targeting and tracking systems. Direct marketers and their media buying partners already have embraced the principles of direct response advertising that provide these types of measurements offline. If Google can help us to further improve performance, by delivering increased efficiency through better targeting and lower rates, I’m confident our industry will be among the first to adopt Google’s new media offerings.  

     

    Disrupting the Media World 

    I believe that rather than taking over the media world, Google is going to disrupt it. Some in the traditional media business may view this as a threat, but I see this as a positive.  Anyone that can bring more efficiency to the media buying and tracking process will only help improve results, which will ultimately benefit everyone involved in the marketing of products and services in today’s more challenging media landscape.

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    Direct Response Print Advertising

    By admin | June 9, 2007

    Next to word of mouth, direct response print advertisements are perhaps the oldest means of marketing a business. They used to be the most effective, too. Not anymore, though.
     
    “I am an avid newspaper reader — three papers every morning with my coffee,” Bailey says. “Yet, I believe the historic form of newspapers are d-e-a-d.”
     
    Denise Patrick, senior marketing counsel for Houston-based Pierpont Communications, agrees. A former small business owner herself, she says that many entrepreneurs chase advertisements in major daily newspapers, which are expensive and seldom read in their entirety. Instead, she says, try buying ads in community newspapers.
     
    “People read their community newspaper cover to cover,” Patrick says. “The grandkid that won the softball game, that’s where his name is. That’s where the church news is and that’s where the pictures of the ladies in the garden club are.”
     
    The key is reaching your target audience — and only your target audience. That’s why community papers are better than city papers, she says — because the readership is more targeted — and why advertisements in BtoB publications or trade magazines are often more effective than those in national consumer titles.
     
    Even more effective, however, is another tool entirely, according to Patrick — public relations. That’s because the modern equivalent to a printed ad is printed news coverage. The former costs money, but the latter is free, and only one benefits from the credibility of a legitimate journalist’s byline. Before buying an ad in your favorite publication, therefore, consider doing something newsworthy — organizing an event, donating to a charity or launching a notable new service — and sending it a press release, instead.

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    Buying Media Time

    By admin | May 4, 2007

    When buying media time it’s important to work with a media buying agency that has extensive experience buying media for other products or services in your category of business. Buying media effectively for a branded advertising campaign involves knowing how to reach the target audience cost efficiently. Buying media for a direct response advertising program requires employing a media buying agency that has the knowledge and systems to track and optimize their media buys in real time.

     

    Buying media has become more complicated over the last several years due to media fragmentation, including a proliferation of cable and satellite TV and radio networks, growth in gaming and use of iPods, more time being spent by consumers surfing the Internet and the increasing use of DVR’s to skip TV commercials and to view programming when the consumer wants to view it.

     

    Buying media in an environment where the consumer is in control requires a different strategy than in the past when advertisers had more control. Buying media in today’s more challenging advertising market demands that you utilize a media buying firm that understands how to reach the consumer in broad range of ever changing mediums. Buying media effectively in today’s marketplace also involves staying on top of the latest trends and adjusting your media plans to capitalize on media buying opportunities as they arise.

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    Does Media Buying for online video actually pay off?

    By admin | April 23, 2007

    There is a lot of debate over whether online video actually pays off. Direct response media buying experts are wary of the cost associated with rich media video ads, which tend to occupy premium ad space on the major networks and have a costlier CPM than traditional banner ads. Despite the higher-than-average conversion ratio of video ads, many marketers prefer search engine text ads and email blasts to get the most out of their CPO. Are they leaving money on the table?

    Direct response media buyers also question whether streaming video on their Websites actually accomplishes anything. In the DRTV space, most streaming video is provided by third-party online marketers who claim that their mini-infomercial videos lead to more conversions. Who is right?

    The answer to this debate is that you need the right mixture of technology and creative to make online video pay - no matter what your CPM is or where you are advertising. Simply putting your video in a rich media ad unit, or streaming it in a simple player on your Website won’t necessarily generate more conversions.

    Video is most engaging when it is interactive. Video players that turn on the moment someone visits a Website can be distracting to consumers, and in some cases lower rather than lift conversion rates. Self-selected video, on the other hand, can make a Website more interactive and sticky. Video that consumers control with interactive hotspots (e.g. a button to select and buy a product within the video itself), can be powerful conversion tools.

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    Trends in Media Buying

    By admin | April 18, 2007

    Savvy marketers are increasingly looking for media buying firms that have the ability to buy all forms of media, whether its direct response television (DRTV) or traditional TV buys, print, online or radio. They are also seeking media buying firms that have the ability to track, measure and optimize results in real time.

    A multi-channel direct response media buying firm is best suited for handling this type of media buying. This type of media buying firm understands the mediums that have a history of performing for each category of product or service, which translates into greater profitability for clients’ direct response media campaigns.

    A reputable direct response media buying agency employs direct response media buyers that have a track record of buying media for successful DRTV campaigns, as well as for other types of direct response advertising, including online, radio and print media buys. It’s also important to work with a direct response media buying firm that has the research and analytic capabilities to help manage your media buying campaign through both good  and bad times.

    By aligning your firm with an experienced direct response media buying firm, it will help ensure that your DRTV, print, online or radio campaign will have the best chance of succeeding in today’s challenging media environment.

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    Maximizing the Return from Media Buying

    By admin | April 16, 2007

    Media buying is no longer a process where you can make media buys for the quarter and sit back and hope your media buying expertise delivers the results you are looking for. Media buying in today’s media environment is an ongoing process of monitoring, tracking, reporting and optimizing media buys based on performance.

    Marketers are now aligning themselves with savvy multi-channel media buyers, who understand all the media buying options available on TV, radio and in print and online. More and more marketers are looking for a return on investment from their media buyers. Direct response media buying can provide these marketers with a platform for accurately measuring response on a real time basis, which allows them to adjust their media plans rapidly, in response to changes in campaign performance.

    Make sure you do your research before hiring a media-buying firm. Experienced direct response media buyers have the tools to accurately track consumer response on a network and daypart level. This type of media buying system provides the media buyer with the type of information that is utilized to maximize results for each campaign. Improved results can be achieved by allocating more media spending to the networks and dayparts that are performing, dropping networks/dayparts that are not performing and buying other networks that are similar to the ones that are working.

    Experienced media buying firms understand that the media buying process is now an ongoing process that needs to be executed on a real time basis in order to maximize results for each campaign.

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    Build Brand Value through your Direct Marketing Media Buying

    By admin | April 13, 2007

    Direct response marketing provides media buyers with the opportunity to both sell and brand their products simultaneously. If you have a hot drtv brand, it allows you to branch into new product areas. It’s allowed OxiClean to launch a full line of products, Google to branch into radio and video, Apple to offer video and Motorola to come out with new products based on the success of the RAZR. Last year Google’s brand value increased by 46%, to over $12 billion, which represented the biggest gain of any brand. (BusinessWeek 8/1/06).
     
    In this age of blogging and instant information on the Internet, a brand can also be undermined faster than ever. For example, Dell’s “service and quality were denounced by bloggers” on a popular website and this publicity negatively impacted their brand. (NY Times 12/17/06). I’m certain the publicity surrounding the recent FTC fines for some of the leading diet supplements has created a great deal of negative buzz among consumers, which has likely impacted their sales and brand value. On the other hand, “positive word of mouth magnified by the Internet can be a boon, as Toyota discovered with its hybrid Prius sedan, which has been praised on sites created just for that purpose.” (NY Times).
     
    No matter what type of direct response product or service you are buying media for, nowadays it’s more important than ever to build brand value through your direct marketing efforts and to understand how the power of the Internet and its bloggers, online communities, message boards, etc. can affect those efforts.

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    Direct Response Media Buying and Wal-Mart

    By admin | March 29, 2007

    A CHANGE OF COURSE
     
    Wal-Mart is looking to simultaneously target “low-price loyalists and high-income customers,” as reported in the WSJ. It wants to appeal to higher income customers without losing the customers who shop at Wal-Mart because of the low prices. By utilizing a targeted direct media buying approach, Wal-Mart will be able to selectively reach these two diverse audiences with customized messages for each group.
     
    The bottom line is that Wal-Mart’s marketing approach was not working. The retailer decided it needed to generate measurable results from its advertising and that direct marketing could help the company achieve that goal. Most traditional ad agencies are still more interested in winning awards than generating results. This creates a big opportunity for DR media buying agencies to step in and demonstrate how their approach to marketing can help marketers to become more profitable and accountable.
     
    For years, brand agencies and Fortune 500 companies considered direct response marketing beneath them. However, the selection of a direct media buying agency as a marketing partner for Wal-Mart might help traditional agencies realize that all those awards are useless if they can’t deliver a measurable ROI for their clients. Now is a great time for our industry to capitalize on the growing acceptance of direct marketing among Fortune 1000 companies.

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    Neuromarketing allows media buyers to get inside the heads of their consumers

    By admin | March 14, 2007

    Even though neuromarketing allows media buyers and marketers to get inside the heads of their consumers, it’s not always easy to understand what’s going on in there. Figuring out exactly what people are thinking based on scanning results remains a challenge, says Carolyn Yoon, associate professor of marketing at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business.
     
    Yoon says that although scanners do enable researchers to see whether certain well-defined regions of the brain activate when a test subject encounters something like an ad, a product, or a spokesperson, it’s still difficult to interpret exactly what that activity means. “If your visual cortex lights up, it can mean that you’re picturing something, but what?” says Yoon. “If your activation pattern shows a strong emotional reaction, is it love, hate, envy, ardent appreciation, anger, or one of many other strong feelings?” In her own research, Yoon typically collects behavioral responses (e.g. emotion ratings) at the same time as the brain scan images, and this can be useful for drawing inferences about neural activation patterns.
     
    Although some observers are concerned that neuromarketing research smacks of Big Brother, others see great potential. “I am optimistic about what science can do to an area of marketing,” says Christophe Morin, co-author of the book Neuromarketing: Is There A Buy Button Inside The Brain? and co-founder of SalesBrain, the marketing company that worked with Vistage on its revamped campaign. Morin doesn’t see this field as a chance to invasively manipulate, but rather an opportunity for businesses to communicate more clearly with their customers. “I truly believe that neuromarketing will improve the work that we see done in advertising and communications,” says Morin.
     
    According to Morin, focusing efforts on communicating with the decision-making center in the brain will yield more effective marketing. “The primitive area of the brain, also known as the “old brain,” is critical for all marketers [to be aware of],” he says, “because it would guide their creative efforts to trigger maximum attention, generate higher retention and ultimately increase the response.”
     
    And there are plenty of campaigns out there that could use some help. “Many ads, especially print ads, violate neurological principles,” says Caroline Winnett, vice president of marketing for NeuroFocus, Inc., which provides in-depth research on commercial advertising and political messaging. But there are some very simple things you can do to make your ad more effective, she says. For example, images on a direct mail piece should be on the left, with the text on the right, because the left brain processes information and the right brain processes images.
     
    Instead of using fMRI imaging, NeuroFocus uses electroencephalograms (EEGs), eye-tracking, and galvanic skin response (GSR) tests to conduct its research. Scanning the brain with an EEG differs from using an fMRI in that the EEG measures electrical signals produced by the brain, through sensors in a cap worn by the subject, and the results are displayed as bumpy lines on graph paper.
     
    Winnett says these methods are more practical, affordable, and portable than using an fMRI scanner. Winnett says a typical NeuroFocus study costs about the same as a focus group, but yields what she considers more reliable results. “Since we measure brain waves directly, we are language-neutral and free of the cognitive biases inherent in surveys and focus groups,” says Winnett.

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