Should You Consider Television Ads For Your Business?

For many businesses, the idea of seeing their brand being advertised on TV is something to truly marvel at. After all, we all grew up watching the box with those iconic adverts we still remember to this day. 

Of course, the world has now changed and TV advertising isn’t the only option anymore. Now, you can get the word out about your business on social media platforms, YouTube and even digital streaming services. 

In some instances, TV remains the best format for an advertising campaign. Whether this is on mainstream channels or those endless cable channels that appear in our TV guides. 

To help you decide whether television advertising is the right option for your business, here are our top factors to consider. 

Cost

We can’t start anywhere else other than cost, since the price of getting a TV advertisement made and shown will be the biggest determiner in whether TV advertising is even possible for your business. 

Beyond production costs, the main cost of getting an advert on TV depends on the channel and the time of day. Simply put, all channels and programs have different audience figures. The higher the audience figures, the more an advertising slot will cost. 

Some quick research on the aptly named TV Advertising website reveals how much typical ad slots cost in the UK. 

For main channels (i.e. ITV and Channel 4), the cost of advertising ranges from £500 to £35,000 depending on whether it’s a nighttime or peak slot. However, for large events such as the World Cup, advertising slots cost upwards of £400,000 according to our research. 

On the lower end of the scale, most other channels have a slot price starting at just £5 with a minimum campaign spend of £15,000. While the audience reach will be less than the main channels, if the demographics align with your target customers, branching out to the cable channels can be something to consider. 

Audience Reach

The big draw of TV advertising was always its audience reach, especially in the days before cable. These days, some TV slots can still command millions of viewers, though as we’ve just discussed the most lucrative slots come at a premium. 

Therefore, if you don’t have a huge budget (i.e. £35,000 per slot + production costs), TV advertising might not be ideal for your business if campaign reach is your aim. 

The only exception here is if you’re able to advertise your local business with a specific geographic reach. For example, if you have a furniture showroom in Nottingham and your advert will be shown to viewers across the East Midlands. 

Keep in mind that many people now watch TV whilst also browsing other screens such as their laptop, tablet or phone. Therefore, even when you technically have the audience, their attention may be elsewhere. Unlike social media marketing, there is no way to track campaign engagement (including duration of engagement) with TV advertising either.

Format

Another question you need to ask before investing in TV advertising is whether it’s the best format for your business or not. 

This isn’t a trick question, as in some cases TV remains incredibly effective. But, it’s also worth considering whether the campaign budget could be put to better use by investing in your web design, SEO, PPC or social media marketing instead—coincidentally, we can offer your business everything on this list here at Imaginaire! 

The thing to factor in with TV advertising is once the budget has gone, it’s gone. In contrast, a well designed and maintained website will continue to work hard to drive conversions for your business for many years. Or, the likes of PPC campaigns can easily be paused or optimised if they aren’t quite hitting the mark. 

Overall, all digital marketing techniques can be data-driven, whereas TV advertising doesn’t always give you the same benefits. That’s why you need to think carefully about which advertising formats will offer the best ROI. 

Measuring Campaign Impact

In digital marketing, it’s easy to track a broad range of metrics such as engagement rate, clicks, click-through rates and conversions. But in TV advertising, it can be difficult to connect the dots. 

Sure, you can see if spikes in web traffic align with your campaigns, and some TV advertising platforms have also developed their own analytics tools. 

But overall, it remains easy to access, analyse and interpret your digital marketing data, especially when you can connect so many tools to your website and social media platforms. 

Even if you opted to market your business on YouTube instead, you would benefit from the format of video in a way that is fully trackable. Furthermore, YouTube videos index on search engines and can also be embedded into your website or easily shared on social media. 

So if you decide that TV advertising definitely is something you want to try, just be sure you will have a way of tracing the campaign performance down to a granular level of detail. 

Want To Get The Word Out About Your Business?—We’re Not On The Box But We Are In Nottingham! 

Growing your business isn’t always easy, especially if you are struggling to reach your target audience effectively. 

Digital marketing might be newer than TV advertising, but in recent years has become an extremely powerful tool to connect businesses with customers. 

Imaginaire is a leading digital marketing agency based in Nottingham, and we work with businesses from across the UK and beyond. 

To find out about our broad range of digital marketing services, take a look around our website or check out our case studies page. 

If you’re ready to get started, get your free quote today by leaving us a message. You can also call us on 0115 697 1158.