Direct Response: TV, radio and billboards
Some newspapers are increasingly using other media to reach out to potential subscribers. Often the costs can be offset by using trade agreements with the other media outlets. It’s important to think of broadcast advertising not just as branding, but as direct-response selling. In other words, each ad should have the same elements that a direct-mail package would have: a clear offer and an expiration date. Your direct-mail campaigns can probably help guide your choice of which offers to make in your broadcast advertising. Include your telephone number in the ad several times. And be sure that you have a mechanism for tracking the responses from these. For example, you may want to have calls directed to a specific extension. Or you can advertise in broadcast an offer that is only used in broadcast. This way when people call in asking for the 27 percent offer, you will know that it had to come from your broadcast efforts.
Broadcast and billboard advertising can be very costly relative to other sales channels. Its use should be considered as an adjunct to your telemarketing and direct mail and door-to-door efforts. Billboards, TV and radio spots will create a more receptive market for your other efforts. If you are promoting EZ Pay, for example, and you have a heavy radio campaign indicating the advantages of EZ Pay, it will make it easier for door-to-door sales reps to get paid in advance because the customers will have heard the concept on the radio and will have a higher comfort level with giving up their money for an advance order. This is probably the greatest way to use broadcast advertising, is to make people aware that your sales representatives may be calling or knocking on their door with a special offer this month that they will want to take advantage of. That way when a person knocks on a prospect's door, that prospect will have a lower threshold of resistance, and it may be more likely to open the door and listen for a moment and more receptive to saying yes. It is unlikely that a direct-response TV or radio ad will become a huge seller in isolation, but can become the foundation for all of your other sales channels by educating your market on the offers that your newspaper is making at a particular point in time.
Direct response can be used as part of a branding campaign for your product. For example in North Carolina, The Fayetteville Observer used a billboard campaign with the slogan "Knowledge Changes Everything" and used a montage of photos ranging from military men folding the flag to a close-up of a senior smiling. Here are some billboard examples.
