Know-How Exchange : Customer Behavior

How many viewers in the segment will call your 800 number will depend on multiple factors:

1. The relevance of the offer to them.
   Do they need whatever it is you are selling?
   


2. The relative attractiveness of the offer to them in their circumstances.
   Is it affordable?
   


3. Their level of involvement in the TV program in which the advert appears.
   Do they want to stop watching, get up, go to the phone, right now?
   


4. Whether the number they have to call is easily memorable.
   How many 65+ sit watching TV with pen and paper at hand?
   

It is much better to assume a low rate of response and base the decision to invest in TV advertising on that, than it is to over-estimate the response level.

If it's still a good deal at 0.1% response, fine, go ahead.

If it needs to be 1.5% or the business is going to be filing Chapter 11 over the cost of the ad campaign, pick another promotional tactic that is less risky.

Perhaps it's worthwhile to research the market segment a bit more.

The media buying agency you are using to price and place the TV advertising will be able to give you more detail than just the age demographics of the audience for each program.

Push them for as much info as you need.

If they don't have enough data to convince you, get them to subsidise the cost of doing some quantitative as well as qualitative research on intended behaviour in the target market segment.

Hope that helps.

ChrisB

There is one big piece of the puzzle you left out - is this going to be a basic TV spot with the 800# thrown up at the end? Or is this going to be a TRUE direct response TV spot, where there is a constant call to action throughout (e.g., the 800# might stay on the screen the whole time and/or be narrated three different times)?

The latter is called DRTV, and response rates are tracked but rarely published because they are so low. The DMA studies typically show rates way less than 0.1%, more like 0.05% (read that as 5 one-hundredths of ONE percent). That might seem absurdly low, but remember the base could be a very large viewership, perhaps in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

Keep in mind, again, because these response rates are so low (given the huge denominator) people don't like to talk about them. But what they WILL talk about are conversion rates - they tend to be much higher via DRTV.

The reason the call center may not know the answer is because (a) they don't know the base (how many viewers nor how many times the ad ran); and (b) they may not be able to track it if you didn't set up a SPECIAL 800# just for this campaign - they would have no way to know if the caller saw the ad or just happened to see your number in the phone book.

Now for the really bad news. If you are doing the first option - simply putting up the 800# for the last 5 seconds of a "normal" spot - you might as well put down a number like 0.01% and be happy if you achieve half of that.

Hope this was clear, and halfway helpful.