Welcome to summer! Vacations, theme parks, beaches, sand, barbecues, and lazy days. This is the time to test your infomercial and direct response strategy for a fourth quarter — as seen on TV success story.
Stay away from media buys in the first two weeks of July, but make sure you have thoroughly tested, tweaked and discovered the strongest creative approach by September 1, 2009. You will be ahead of the curve and in position to make lots of money on your offer in the 4th quarter of the year.
Let’s talk about infomercial production. Let’s talk about the latest affordable TV production techniques. Let’s talk about using 21st century computer technology to make your long form TV infomercial look like it cost a million bucks!
Green screen or Chromakey technology allows you to shoot against a green screen background and drop in any environment you wish. Well …. when you combine the latest Chromakey magic using an Orad system combined with top notch virtual sets by the leading Hollywood virtual set designer, your direct response TV infomercial will look like it was shot on a million dollar set.
Think of an infomercial shot ten years ago against a black curtain and no set and now for the same low infomercial budget, you can have a top quality 3D virtual set customized with your product identity. Lately you see green screen infomercials and direct response commercials often with testimonials shot against green screen backgrounds. We’ve had several short form infomercial rollouts recently like SnorEnz, Memacin, and Cinergy Health. Infomercial production costs are coming down in 2009, and the cost to produce great long form infomercials and test them has been driven down considerably from just a few years ago.
Back in the day, it was easier to succeed with Direct Response television. Nationwide cable media costs were much lower, general advertisers did not use Direct Response TV as a branding medium, and there was much less competition for direct sales to the consumer on television. Now, AS SEEN ON TV SUCCESS requires a compelling media strategy, a bull dog of a media buyer, and infomercial television production that captures the audience’s attention. But one thing that will never change is that DRTV and infomercials work based on the concept of a pre determined cost per acquisition. It is the concept of an advertising allowable or media cost per order. Great media buyers buy nationwide airtime to a media cost allowable, and know if an offer is working from the first direct response media tests. Customer acquisition costs and great DRTV media buying go hand in hand.
In the last post of this series we talked about avoiding production delays. Please be mindful of those points. Today let’s talk about some of the TV Infomercial production values. After all, a TV Infomercial is a TV show! Keep in mind that we are talking half hour long form TV infomercials for broadcast.
Now remember, you start the project with a product that has been fully evaluated by professionals who have determined that it is best suited to be presented in an infomercial format. Your TV infomercial production company should have a budget with specific production values. For instance, at InfoWorx, the cost of half hour infomercials ranges from $31,500.00 to $80,000.00. And there is wide difference in the production values.
None of these budgets includes celebrities or even C list “has been” celebrities. This question always comes up, so let me address it now. If the celebrity is well known enough to be a channel stopper, it can help. If the celebrity “fame” is congruent with the product it can help. If your celebrity does not possess one or both qualities for your product, then use non union talent and make sure you have full permission to use the infomercial production any way you see fit. There are advantages to this approach such as: affordable infomercial budgets, no restrictions on the use or distribution of the TV infomercial, and no back end royalties or residuals.
TV infomercial budgets can vary widely and some products lend themselves to lower budget productions. Many supplements, business opportunities and intellectual property can be well presented in a talk show environment. If you have a kitchen product, say a counter top oven, you should have a full kitchen set, food stylist, and more for the production values. When doing your do diligence in the selection process of an infomercial company, make sure you compare apples to apples when evaluation budgets and look for samples of the company’s work at those budgets.
In the next post, we will discuss TV infomercial scripts, infomercial rundowns, and changes in the scripts.
I hope some of you are following along because you will find tips and secrets to TV Infomercial success that have taken me over 16 years to learn. We explained in “How To Produce an Infomercial – Part I” a little bit of the planning, research and thinking that went into our first steps.
Now, today, I want to talk about time lines, point person, and the best way to effectively produce a winning infomercial hit show. Our client, with a business opportunity perfect for the New Year wants to create the show and the intellectual property product in just several weeks. Yes, we can do it….but it takes a concerted effort by both sides of the team to achieve it. I have seen scenario fall apart time and time again.
So how can you produce an infomercial and the related intellectual property in 4 weeks or so? It can be done. First, the client must select a point person. He or she should be the main point of contact, and when there are times that all parties need to make decisions, a simple conference call can settle these sticking points. But be decisive, make a decision and stick to it! Please see our article, written and also published in DM News several years ago on production delays,”Production Delays That Cost Money…..”
The five keys to keeping a production schedule are as follows:
1. Write up a timeline that is feasible.
2. Designate a point person so that all questions filter through he or she.
3. If your team has several members all of you can work independently with the offer strategy and outline, then come together and gain consensus before presenting your suggestions to our creative team.
4. Make all of your payments on time to the producer according to your agreement. This is an ongoing pitfall that causes many production delays.
5. Be committed to your timeline and make it happen instead of finding alibis to force postponements.
Please keep checking this blog, as in the next installment, we will discuss talent selection, art direction and sets.
About two weeks ago, just before Thanksgiving, two wonderful women with a proven instant money making business opportunity contacted InfoWorx offices. On the telephone, we qualified the product….and their infomercial budget. You see, you cannot fly from New York to LA for $50.00, and you must have some funding in place to pull off an infomercial project. Remember, if your product screams for the long form half hour format, it’s a serious mistake to “settle” for short form simply because you do not have the funds yet. The good news is that new, innovative technology has empowered infomercial producers to create first class TV shows at a fraction of yesterday’s price. We have two shows in production now at the same cost of a basic direct response commercial. That’s right….you can make a half hour long form infomercial for less then the cost of many short form productions.
We set up a meeting, and they explained their product and we presented the benefits of InfoWorx. They needed a lot of work, strategic thinking, and an infomercial direct response agency that knew how to produce great low cost infomercials using the latest cost saving techniques. Oh, yeah….one more thing they needed our help developing the product DVD’s and manuals all within a limited budget. The project was a challenge, but we felt it has great promise for our current economic crisis. We worked out a deal that stayed within the client’s limited budget and will deliver all of the goods.
One we had a deal in place, we went to work. First our team studied all of the existing business opportunity shows currently airing. We studied the offers, price points and upsell strategies. Then, we had several lengthy pre-production brainstorming meetings with our great client. Here our team was able to distinguish the USP (unique selling proposition) necessary to communicate the benefits of their product. From those meetings we began to develop an offer strategy, backend revenue strategy, and a creative feel for the show we were about to begin writing.
Please check back soon for part 2 and learn how to build an infomercial, produce it in two to three weeks and how we save our clients tens of thousands on infomercial production.
Please follow this blog regularly over the next days and weeks because I will disclose and describe to you the step by step process involved in a real long form infomercial project. From the cost of a long form infomercial, to the development and writing of an infomercial, and other infomercial production issues such as infomercial hosts, infomercial sets, straight through to long form infomercial media planning and infomercial telemarketing, fulfillment and logistics.
The first part of the process starts when a new client contacts us to discuss their infomercial project. We must determine if the product has the attributes necessary for As Seen On TV Success. We usually ask the client to fully describe their product from the first call, and many are hesitant unless there is a NDA in place. At InfoWorx, we provide a standard NDA which you can download from our site.
At the time of the first contact, a discussion takes place as to the chances of success and which format: short form direct response commercials or a long form infomercial is best for your product. Often clients are hesitant to spend the extra dollars necessary for a long form production when that is the appropriate format. Do not make that mistake because it will set up a series of failures sure to derail the success of your infomercial project.
Short form infomercial production can run from as little as $5,000. Successful lead generating programs often generate substantial response with very simple production values and a great lead generating offer.
On the next blog in this series, we will discuss different long form infomercial production values and the costs of production for those types of shows. And I will continue to take you step by step through our current project which we will call “Business Opportunity 2009.”
Online video has certainly been a hot topic this year as marketers and businesses try to understand how to utilize this growing segment to reach better targeted customers. But Internet video’s real potential is not in watching your favorite show online…. It’s about giving consumers what they want in the most powerful medium available, namely TV or video with it’s compelling visual and audio capabilities.
We are still in the early stages of this shift from static text and graphics to a more dynamic, visually compelling Internet, but we are approaching a tipping point. For years infomercial, DRTV or direct response televsion marketers have put segments of their infomercials in a player on their site. Online user behavior continues to evolve, and businesses that don’t modernize their Websites will be left in the dusty wake of the ever changing wild ride we call the Internet.
Short form infomercials and long form infomercials can work together
As consumer behavior changes and selling evolves into a more information based process and exchange with the customer, savvy consumer product marketers can utilize short form infomercials on mainstream broadcast television and pre-roll 15 second direct response video ads (DROV) on the web to drive traffic to a video driven website with a long form segment that can fully explain and demonstrate your product benefits.
Tell Your Whole Story
Picture this marketing strategy. With one video production you create a series of 15 second pre-roll and broadcast TV lead generators, and one and two minute short form infomercials that make your offer with a strong call to action to the website. On your web landing page a three to five minute infomercial appears with full demonstration, testimonials…all of the elements that have made the infomercial a cash cow on linear television for the last 25 years.
Answer this question….how can I as a consumer product marketer communicate my full selling message to my target customer? Answer: An infomercial or in this case a webmercial or web based long form infomercial. And the cost of this type of video production is coming down. With a single day shoot in a greenscreen production environment, all of these video components could be created for a fraction of yesterday’s cost.
