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DR Advertising: Response Rates per Media Type

Last week DMG Solutions Marcelo Salup, explained the steps he takes when developing a DR campaign, Today he provides ranges for Response Rates per Media Type.

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Last week DMG Solutions Marcelo Salup, explained the steps he takes when developing a DR campaign, Today he provides ranges for Response Rates per Media Type. 

Response Rates

“Response rates are absolutely dependent on the creative execution, here are some ideas of the ranges.”  

TV: “Any national signal (TV and Cable) will have the highest response ratios you've ever seen; this is a direct result of the number of people reached.”

Local TV (Spot):  “Very high to mediocre.”

Radio: “The response itself is low; that is, you need a ton of spots (easily 5:1 compared to TV) to obtain calls. Nevertheless, the calls have good conversion ratios.”

Print (ROP and/or FSI): “Print, in our experience, in DR, has low response ratios and that is a function, of course, of the reach again. Nevertheless, the product has a huge influence. You take a product like Continucare, which is a supplementary health insurance sold to Medicare patients. Print has a superb response rate because people need to read about the product at length to make a decision and print is great for that. For DTV, print has not been that great but this is also a function of what we are selling which is the top of the line television experience, so any medium with visual components works well.”

Online: “Online is very dependent on two things: creative and site. When I worked on the launch of the Porsche Cayenne in Latin America we decided to try it without print at all and it worked really well. We used every tool we had available to us: flash, rich media, search, online video… you name it, we tried it. But, we also developed dozens of creative executions and had to analyze the campaign continuously. However, the campaign was very very successful and we beat all sales objectives. That same year we also launched Kingston Technology on the web and it was very successful, but not as crushing as the Cayenne, which also has to be in part a reflection of the product. Other campaigns I've been involved in have not been that amazing. With DIRECTV we are looking at how to incorporate tools like call-back buttons, etc.”

Events: “For high ticket items, events can work successfully if implemented correctly (for example, investment products). For small ticket items the ROI is just not there at all. In all honesty, I've seen distributors insist on participating in events for some clients that I won't name, but, when you look at the cold numbers, the programs were not successful. Nevertheless, events are not media, they are a hybrid and the ROI calculations need to incorporate other variables such as influence over buying, etc. For example, an event for mid-sized distributors should not take the number of distributors in the ROI calculation but rather, the influence that these distributors will have in pushing the product into small stores.”4) Can you provide an example for advertising that works and for advertising that does not?  You mean brands? The world is littered with advertising that did not work at all. All Chrysler advertising –for example– didn't work. The spots, which were all about the rebates, didn't sell the car, so why would you invest your hard earned cash into a car if the only thing driving you to it is rebates? So that advertising didn't work. But there are tons and tons of examples. I'd like to comment, however, on something. Many times, so-called experts will make artificial differences between branding advertising and direct-response advertising. There are differences ONLY on the timeframe of the results, but good advertising, whether "branding" or "DR" is always geared at results. In DR we would like the result to be here and now and, because the advertising is more product oriented, we might not care to build a brand. In "branding" we still want results, but might want them next week instead of right now. I can't conceive anyone building a brand without wanting to use the brand to build a business selling premium priced products. When we speak about Performance Advertising (as opposed to only DR) we consider results both, from the branding side and from the "results right here and now" perspectives.”

Asked on what the main differences in Direct Response Advertising to the Hispanic market vs. the General Market are, Salup concludes “The creative. Everything else is the same.”

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