How can direct response marketers balance TV and online video?
Direct response television (DRTV) marketers not only know the significance of the symbiotic relationship between television and the Internet, they largely help to define and enhance it. They recognize that while television continues to serve as the dominant media engine for sales and leads, as well as a driver that directs consumers to their product microsites, up to 70% of consumers watching short- or long-form DRTV head for the Web to learn more.
Today’s most effective 30-, 60-, and 120-second DRTV spots are designed expressly for television as attention-getting devices, while microsites are created to further the consumer experience. Consequently, direct marketers work to ensure that their websites are rich with information to cater to the online shopper, and specially produced video content becomes a primary component in their microsite’s arsenal.
Product microsites that greet consumers with only a replay of the television spot miss the opportunity to further the relationship with the consumer who has already seen the spot; after all, it’s what drove them to the site in the first place. However, microsites that leverage the power of video communications can deliver a deeper understanding of the product, its solution to a problem, its benefits, and the value proposition behind the compelling offer.
Correctly balancing the marketing engine of DRTV spots with strategically integrated online video advertising will help generate optimal performance and maximal returns for today’s DRTV marketer. Video has the power to emotionally engage a viewer, and envelop the consumer with reasons to respond to the product offering.
There are two basic types of online video: via social media, or on websites or microsites. According to a recent report in Inc. magazine, “On Facebook’s top brand pages, videos are shared 12 times more often than text and links.” Microsites especially can be an effective channel for customer conversion through the incorporation of video storytelling—the use of opt-in video elements that provide an array of content elements that cannot effectively be contained within short-form DRTV spots.
Video storytelling is a technique DRTV marketers use that includes:
- A video welcome introduction from the DRTV host
- A compelling overview of the information contained on the site
- Deeper demonstrations of the product
- Testimonials from a wide and diverse range of product users
- A short video “brand story” on the attributes of the brand
It’s within the ecosystem of the website where video theater can unfold, set up by the customer’s experience of the television spots that drove them to the site. Because DRTV is an accountability model, it follows that the first focus for a marketer is to ensure that a DRTV campaign is strategically aligned in lockstep with a video-enhanced website conversion environment.
An example of this model is a new campaign for La Roche-Posay, a dermatology brand, and its Effaclar Dermatological Acne System. One- and two-minute spots were designed to create sales, and also drive customers to geteffaclar.com for deeper information. Once on this microsite, visitors have the option to view several video assets, including endorsements from a number of dermatologists, a dozen diverse user testimonials, and a video brand story on the scientists and dermatologists who developed the acne solution.
Marketers who use the 28.5-minute long-form show have more online usage options to select from. There are 1,710 seconds of beautifully produced video assets that can be carefully edited and strategically crafted for a conversion website, and for deployment throughout the social media universe, including YouTube, Facebook, and Vimeo. Creative producers should consider this important application as they build the strategy and the video assets for the show—knowing that five to 10 minutes of carefully chosen video segments will be housed on the website and posted on social media.
DRTV and video-enhanced websites act like an integrated closed circuit for selling a product, driving retail, generating leads, and acquiring customers. They’re heads and tails of the same coin. DRTV will drive pre-enthused traffic to the website and once there, customers will be greeted with a comprehensive combination of informational text plus graphics plus video content.
Close the loop—and close the sale.
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Barbara L. Kerry, Script to Screen
Barbara L. Kerry serves as CEO of Script to Screen, a DRTV company she founded with her husband, Ken, in 1986 as a way to market their own products. Under Kerry’s tutelage Script to Screen has been honored with more than 60 awards for excellence from the Clio Awards, Electronic Retailing Association, and more, and has generated in excess of $4 billion in sales for its clients. A pioneer in the industry, she was named as one of the top 25 most influential people in DRTV by Response magazine. Kerry, who boasts a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications from the University of Colorado and a master’s in psychology from Pepperdine University, began her career in television producing programs for Southern California sports teams such as the Angels, Dodgers, Lakers, Raiders, and Rams.
