Customer Marketing: Classic TV Ads
Basic Techniques of Marketing Products & Services via TV Advertising
Apr 23, 2008
Creating customer marketing messages that sell, along with understanding ratings and knowing how to buy ads efficiently, are the keys to effective advertising on TV. Special effects, catchy jingles and clever slogans, contrary to popular opinion, aren’t the main ingredients in a successful TV ad. Advertisers who want increased sales focus on three main techniques for producing effective marketing messages.
Use a Spokesperson
Athletes, actors and entertainers frequently lend their celebrity – for a price, of course – to products and services by acting as their spokesperson. In the marketing business, this is known as a third-party endorsement. A person of note endorses the product and confers their celebrity status upon it, adding extra cachet to its intangible appeal.
This works especially well by applying something called aspirational reference grouping. In this technique, a person who is a likely prospect for the product or service aspires to emulate or otherwise identify with a celebrity. By associating the celebrity with the prospect’s aspirations, marketers create powerful messaging around their products.
But to be most effective, their celebrity has to have some tangible connection with the product they’re promoting. This takes significant market research, typically in the form of focus groups, to identify which spokesperson resonates with the target segment, and why. The results are then fed back into the creative platform that forms the basis of the ad’s message.
The spokesperson need not be a celebrity. Any person who enjoys a level of admiration, trust and respect among the target segment can be effective. The more perceived expertise they have in subjects related to the product, the more powerful they can be in this role. These attributes are referred to as source credibility. Physicians, dentists and other medical professionals are prime examples.
Provide a Demonstration
When a new product is introduced, prospects may need a demonstration. This is particularly true if the product is new technology or even if it uses a different approach to accomplish something in a new way. Often, new products take off slowly simply because potential customers don’t know how to use them.
Because it is visual, television is a perfect medium for this technique. A straightforward physical demonstration can be staged for everything from appliances to tools and food products. Even personal care and medical products, as well as intangibles, can be readily demonstrated through animation that illustrates how they work.
Offer a Testimonial
This can be the most effective technique of all, primarily because of a marketing concept known as the AIDA audience response model. This refers to the stages a prospect goes through when considering whether to buy a product and, if so, which one.
It consists of four stages – awareness, interest, desire and action. It’s a logical progression that leads a consumer from their realization that they may want or need a product through their evaluation of potential options for fulling that need and, finally, to identifying the product that is the right fit for their personal desires.
By the time the prospect reaches the desire and action stages, they’re looking for someone who has experience with the particular products they’ve zeroed in on. Ideally, that will be a friend or other person who they trust and who they view as something of an expert in that particular area.
A testimonial can shorten some of that evaluation process by providing a ready assessment of that person’s experience with the product and how well it fulfilled their need. The closer that person is to the prospect in terms of socioeconomic status and product usage, the more weight the prospect is likely to assign to the testimonial.
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