I have coaches asking me continually how they can make advertising work for their client’s small businesses. All business owners eventually face a serious dilemma—how to advertise their business… which advertising medium will get them the most exposure… and which advertising venue will provide the biggest bang for the buck.

Over my next few articles, let’s explore the pros and cons of each advertising medium. Knowing these can help you decide which medium is right for advertising your client’s product or service. In my last article, we discussed radio advertising.

Now let’s investigate the pros and cons of TV… and let’s start with the pros. TV is usually in vivid and exciting color, and color is a prime motivator of the human mind. TV uses the elements of sight, sound and movement all at once to form a powerful package that hits on several levels of the human senses. It can deliver your message to everyone in a room simultaneously. It’s fast, but not as fast as newspaper or radio because it tends to require more production time and effort.

Like radio it’s intrusive. The customer doesn’t have to physically seek out the ad like they must do in order to find a movie listing or a rummage sale. The ad literally comes to the viewer. TV is available nationally, regionally, or locally… and ads can be purchased to focus on concentrated geographical areas, demographic profiles and specific niche markets… especially when advertising on cable.

Several years ago, I spearheaded a consortium of Chiropractors in a large metropolitan area. I wanted these doctors to take advantage of the super-low cable TV rates bring offered in their city. The cable company in that area had divided the metropolitan area into 5 “zones” so local business owners could target their ideal clients in their geographic area.

After all, most patients aren’t going to drive 20 miles each way to visit a chiropractor, so what good is it to advertise to the ENTIRE metro area – it’s just a waste of advertising dollars. But by tapping into the geographic breakdown for each cable zone, I was able to perform lead generation for 10 chiropractors… with 2 of them gaining proprietary access within each of the 5 zones.

We then used the combined financial power of all 10 chiropractors marketing budgets ($2,000 per month each) to purchase more than 5,000 TV ads per month PER ZONE! These 10 chiropractors went on to totally dominate their markets.

But there are still more pros to TV advertising. TV has a wide variety of programming to match the nature or subject matter of your ad. If you want to sell rock-n-roll CDs… then buy ads on MTV. Want to sell cookware… then advertise on the Food Network.

TV has more reach than any other medium in terms of all segments of society. Just about everyone watches TV, but not everyone reads newspapers or magazines. In fact, newspapers are basically a dying breed headed for extinction within 5 years. TV is good for ad repetition… and it can deliver your ad at any time of the day, 24 hours a day… 7 days a week.

You can request an exclusive, meaning that your TV ad won’t be competing with a clutter of other ads—but you may have to pay dearly for that privilege. And finally, TV tends to be more cost efficient in terms of number of responses it produces compared to dollars invested.

But consider the bad side of TV. It’s often cluttered. Your ad may be sandwiched deep within a string of other ads which have long since convinced the viewer to head to the fridge. TV also weakens long-term memory of your product message… and it’s sometimes hard to get specific ad spots. There are usually a limited number of TV spots available, and you may not get the program you want.

Overall, TV is perhaps the most expensive of the mediums. There are typically a lot of production costs related to TV advertising… although honestly, you can easily eliminate most production costs with current technology. Even low cost video cameras today are high definition, and you can shoot your own commercial and then send it to the TV station in the format they require… all but eliminating the majority of production costs.

It may be less demographically selective as some other media forms, although cable TV has helped dramatically in this category. You don’t really believe that TV executives created 100 plus cable channels just to kill time do you? They did it so they could offer pinpoint marketing to a hungry sea of advertisers looking for a specific and targeted group of potential buyers.

With TV, your audience can fluctuate wildly. If 10,000 people see your ad one night, a mere 100 might see it the next if a high-interest program airs on another channel. TV is cost-inefficient when you’re after highly focused target markets. The new DVR’s are helping TV ads get noticed by a wider audience who can now record any program weeks in advance and then view it at their leisure. A taped program may be viewed again and again… but on the other hand, your commercial may be fast forwarded.

As a coach, you have to use your skill and judgment to determine if any form of TV advertising will produce a positive ROI for your clients. And in most cases, the ONLY way to determine that is to try it… but start SMALL!!! Do a sample test run and track your results. Just make sure your offer is of tremendous value to your target market. This will help to ensure the success your clients are looking for from you.

Next time, let’s look at ways we can help our client’s tap into the unquestioned power of magazine advertising.

So until next time