Cable TV Advertising During Local Sports Games

lawndart

Anyone ever done anything like this? I've seen alot of national companies advertising during the baseball games last season. I'm thinking of getting a 30 second slot produced here for $800 through the cable company, and advertising once during every Yankee, and Met's baseball game for the entire upcoming season.

I've already started lettering my vehicles (06 Mustang GT and 05 Ford econoline 350). My car is very noticeable. People stop and look all the time. I've had quite a few people already ask me for cards while at a red light here. My van is being painted over the holiday weekend. It will look like my car, with my logo added. I'm hoping by driving around in these noticeable vehicles while I'm working this winter, that people will read my company name, and put it all together when they see my commercial. I'm shooting for a real catchy phone number out here like 718-Contractor. Add all of it together, and thats my big marketing plan for the Spring..

Costs about $800 a month X 6 months + 800 for producing the commercial = $5600 for the season. Around here a good add (1/2 page)in the yellow book goes for about the same for 12 months. I'm weighing my options between both.

Talking to some of my friends out here that have advertised in the local book, they have all said to me that if you dont run atleast a 1/2 page add, I'd be wasting my money buried behind all the other competition.

Good marketing plan, or not?

lawndart

Some Pictures of my car

lawndart

lawndart

lawndart

Mike Finley

Hey, any plan is better than none! Besides I don't think anyone can really tell you what works and won't work for you, you really have to spend some money and try it out. Two guys can do the same advertising and one guy can get no calls and the other can get calls, alot depends on all the details of the message, that and the type of work you do.

I think good marketing plans are plans that are measurable. If you can measure your return on investment, keep track of the calls and where they came from, do the math, run the numbers, those numbers won't lie. Then just compare them to the numbers from whatever you did before. Spend more money on what you find works better and most important keep spending a certain amount experimenting.

By the way, how do you carry your tools and materials in a Mustang?

lawndart

Thanks for the input Mike, You're one of the posters here who I look forward to reading . My Mustang is my Daily Driver, and appointment Vehicle. I have a Ford Econoline 350 that hauls the tools

DamionR

I COMPLETELY agree with Mike. Here's a good tip, regardless of what type of advertising you do. Use different toll-free numbers for each source of advertising. They can all still point to the same phone line, however.

With this, when you get your phone - you can tell which source of advertising is actually driving the calls. You may get 20 phone calls per month from the yellow pages - but how do you know if 18 are coming from one... and the remaining ads only drive 2 calls?

You can do the same thing with websites. Buying various domain names that point to your main website. Then, using a different domain name for each marketing source.

ruskent

You could just ask the customer where they heard/saw or ad instead of having a billion different numbers!!!

On another forum i heard local cable ads were very affordable. I heard something like 30 second commericals for around 25-30 bucks a run. You add to commit to 100 runs or something like that.

Matt

DamionR

Certainly make a point to ask where the customer found you. But that really doesn't help... unless you only one run yellow page ad... and one radio ad... and one mailer.

Suppose you have 10 yellow page ads. Ad #1 brings in 90% of the phone calls.. and is 10% of your yellow page budget. By assigning unique numbers, you could know this fact - and save a substantial amount without losing volume.