Before you call your local TV or cable rep and just sign up, I’d like to give you a few tips that will help improve your success with a streaming TV campaign.
1): Know your customer and make sure it matches the streaming TV audience that you’ll be targeting.
Understanding your target audience in critically important. And since streaming TV allows you to target by both basic demographics as well as in-market audience targeting, you are going to need to know who that audience is before launching your campaign.
Think long and hard about what you’re really good at and what customer base you can serve exceptionally well. Target those consumers and forget about everyone else.
2): Mix up your ads.
Unlike cable or broadcast TV where ad formats were all pretty limited, streaming TV has the ability to provide multiple formats. Short, long, bumper ads. You could do hard cell, lifestyle ads, vignettes. Different audiences are going to respond to different ad styles and formats. And with streaming TV, it’s actually pretty easy to tell which format is performing the best. M
Most providers have campaign dashboards which allow you to track and monitor your campaign almost in real time. This will help remove that emotional factor from your decisions. If a particular ad isn’t working, you will know it.
3): Test different ads.
No matter what type of advertising you want to do, testing is one of the most important ways to know if you have a good ad. This rule applies to streaming TV as well. And while streaming offers you the ability to get really creative and have a lot of fun, finding the right ad for your ideal customer and market will come down to testing it on the streaming platforms.
Now, if you have never tested ads before, it’s a pretty simple concept that boils down to testing at least two different ads at the same time. What you do is you watch to see which one outperforms the other ad. And once you get enough data collected, the idea is just continue to serve ads and try to outperform the best ad. The result is a neverending cycle of wellperforming ads.
4): Include a clear and concise call to action.
While it is true that a streaming campaign will help build your brand and keep your dealership top of mind, the strength is its ability to reach lower funnel in market customers. For that reason alone, you need a clear and concise call to action.
Tell them what you want them to do next. Get approved now. Claim your rebate now. Schedule your vehicle pickup now.
Make it easy for your target audience to know what you want them to do next.
5): Stick with proven ads.
Video is a lot of fun. We can really let our personality shine, and the temptation is to constantly change the direction with our ads. Don’t do it.
Once you have found a proven winning ad and format, stick with that same style and format of ad. Keep testing other variations, but don’t get too far off track. You need to really focus your efforts and your budget on what works.
Need some help with your ads or ready to discuss a few ideas that might be a fit for you and your dealership?
Check out this 2 minute video that explains our test drive and let’s see if we can help you.