Faster & cheaper to make.
Making an infomercial typically costs at least
$100,000 and takes 3 months or more of hard work.
But you could make a DRTV commercial for about
1/4th of that. Your spot marketing program could be up and running in 4
weeks, before you’d even start filming your half-hour.
Put fewer eggs in one basket.
If you had $100,000 to gamble with, would you sink it into one infomercial
or 4 DRTV spots?
A lot of shrewd marketers say that spots are the
better bet, since they can try 4 different products with spots for the price
of one single product in an infomercial.
Other marketers feel that a small investment in a
spot is a good way to test the waters for products they intend to later try
in the longer format.
Avoid “infomercial stigma”.
Say the word “infomercial” and a lot of people think of cheesy gadgets,
hard-sell pitchmen and has-been celebrities.
But tell your CEO you’re doing a commercial and,
well, you might just get invited for golf.
Some advertisers and brand managers would never
consider lowering their product to the level of the half-hour. But they
might consider a spot.
Shorter and sweeter.
Because a spot is so short compared to a show, it’s often a tighter,
stronger, better presentation of your sales message.
If a viewer is going to tune in at random to only a
minute or two of what you have to say, you’d rather they see your
commercial, not your show.
That way you know they’re getting your very best sales
presentation, instead of, say, that beautiful-but-obscure dance sequence in
your infomercial (which you never liked anyway).
Jim McNamara
is a proven writer-producer for DRTV, internet, print, and interactive projects. He can
be reached at mcdrtv.com or at 818-907-6212.
