Infomercial
Definition: A program-length TV commercial that’s very similar in appearance
to a news program, talk show or other non-advertising format that provides
consumers with in-depth information on a product or service
You could probably never afford to run a 30-minute commercial for your business.
But on internet television, you can almost certainly put on a 30-minute infomercial
promoting yourself and your business. For instance, the owner of an antique shop could
host a weekly show on finding, restoring and pricing antiques. Or a car repair specialist
could host a weekly car care show. The possibilities are endless.
There’s a lot to be said for being able to give a live demonstration of your product
so that consumers can actually see how it works–how easy or difficult it is, how
large or small, how sharp or dull, or how effective. This is a form of advertising
you don’t want to attempt yourself. Hire a professional to guide you through this
multi-faceted process. Even television stations aren’t set up to handle the making
of an infomercial from beginning to end. They don’t have the capability to provide
the set design, scripts, show format, celebrity acquisition and testimonials,
just to name a few of the elements that go into the process. They can shoot the footage
in the beginning and edit the whole thing together at the end, but everything in-between
is out of their realm.
Most advertising agencies can help you with the production of your infomercial.
They can be responsible for such pre-production details as budgeting, scouting
locations, promotion and public relations, research, any construction needed,
and much more. One solution is to hire an advertising agency to create the “pieces,”
such as the testimonials, the set designs, the scripts and the talent, and then bring
everything to the TV station to put it all together. Your television sales reps may
also be able to recommend companies, such as Hawthorne Direct or Producers Direct
in your vicinity that can handle your project from start to finish. To find a company
in your area, run a Google search for “DRTV production companies.”
Your infomercial will seldom be watched by anyone from beginning to end, so you must
break up the half-hour show into separate, interesting segments with a “closer” or “call to action”
at the end of each segment. While your toll-free phone number, website URL and/or P.O. box address
should stay on the screen at all times, a “closing” segment should take place every ten minutes
or so to encourage people to buy immediately or to offer a list of store locations where
the product can be found. Then move right on to a new segment.
Keep your messages moving. For instance, a car dealership may showcase its used cars in
one segment, then move on to its service department, then present its new cars, then show
testimonials. The idea is to keep the audiences interested without boring them to death
and to keep the half-hour fluid.
Businesses with products that don’t change much over time can more easily recover the cost
of making an infomercial because they can produce just one and use it for years. But the infomercials
for some businesses have a much shorter shelf-life because the footage is constantly becoming
outdated (the car dealership, for example). Owners of these type of businesses need to
continually bear the cost of revising or creating entirely new productions year after year.
Infomercials take time to produce. For instance, if you want to include testimonials, you have to
find the right people and, depending on the product, you may even have to travel to shoot
footage of them. Multiply your travel costs by the number of testimonials you want to use in your infomercial, and you can see that just that portion can take a week or more. When all is said and done, you can probably add another week or more for selecting your music, editing the footage, and getting the copies (dubs) made for whatever stations you’ll be running it on.
When it comes to televising your infomercials, you’ll spend anywhere from $100 to $3,000 per spot, on
average, to buy actual air time. Since most of these ads run overnight and on the weekends,
the per-spot cost isn’t quite as high as it would be during any other time of the day or evening.
It all ads up–it’s not territory for the faint of heart or the small of budget to explore.
And because you won’t know if your infomercial is a good one–meaning one that works–until
it actually airs, it only makes sense that you start with professionals who know the ins
and outs of creating infomercials to give yourself the best chance of success.
And for this reason, you’ll want to test your long commercial in a small market and not
cast a wide net until you know if it’s working for you!
Although the industry’s reputation is improving, there are still infomercials that may make
this form of advertising difficult to be associated with. Psychic readers, get-rich-quick schemes,
and all those too-good-to-be-true infomercials where they say you can lose weight without any
effort make it hard for others to be taken seriously. So be sure that if you use infomercials,
you follow through with your fulfillment and return policies–and that your product or service
lives up to what you promise your audience.
