ROI for a successful infomercial will increase over time.

ROI is more important than ever in today’s marketplace.  Businesses have streamlined their advertising budgets along with the rest of their processes, and those who are accountable for those budgets need to know that they are getting the best return on investment possible.  Here’s how to maximize the ROI on your infomercial campaign.

• Improve your website. Infomercials are usually structured as a half-hour of programming interrupted with “commercials” that are calls to action for the product or service airing every few minutes.  Many of today’s viewers will go to the website featured on the call to action instead of calling the toll-free number, so your website must be conducive to purchase.  Make sure this is done and that the infomercial and the website flow together seamlessly.
• Research your competitors. Don’t forget to include research from a viewer’s perspective.  Watch their infomercials, then use both the toll-free numbers and websites to order products.  Create a grid in Excel and record all of your experiences by company.  Distill the research down to a report and compare and contrast the results to make better decisions about your infomercial campaign.
• Ask for a trial week. This will help nail down the best days and times for air.  The infomercial company can help you narrow this down with quantitative data showing when products or services similar to yours have sold best historically, but a trial week provides you with the data you need on your particular product to substantiate media-buying decisions.  Your media buyer can also use this data to negotiate more favorable rates.
• Do a split test. As you make decisions about the look and feel of your infomercial, keep a record of your second choices so you can have a second program created for a split test.  This helps assuage niggling doubts about what will work best if you go through the process and will also help you support your final decision with quantitative data.
• Make a commitment. Once your trial period and split test are complete, evaluate the data with an eye towards making a firm commitment to your infomercial for at least 90 days.  It will take at least this long to evaluate the results, and if the testing was done properly, ROI will increase over time.  If you make changes to the program and/or media placement, you run the risk of diluting your message.  If a competitor takes a time slot you’ve abandoned, they will be the ones who benefit from your campaign.

Ensuring ROI on an infomercial campaign requires a little extra work and some creative thinking, but in today’s highly competitive marketplace, it’s worth it.

Tags: infomercial, infomercials

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Advertising, Infomercials, Television Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.