5 Reasons Your Business Needs TV Advertising

Date Published: 23/10/2023

5 Reasons Your Business Needs TV Advertising

In today’s digital age, online advertising dominates the fast-paced, ever-changing marketing scene, so it’s easy to overlook the incredible potential of TV advertising. While the digital realm offers its own set of advantages, TV advertising remains a dynamic and influential medium. It’s been a staple of marketing campaigns for decades, but there are still some common misconceptions surrounding cost and effectiveness, which we’ll be debunking in this article.

In our upcoming TV Advertising Masterclass with Sky TV and Tank Top Media, taking place on 26 October 2023 in Birmingham, we’ll be delving into the many benefits TV advertising can bring to your brand or business. We’ll provide a clear roadmap for how to incorporate this powerful tool into your marketing strategy. You can register for the event here. It’s free to sign up and tickets include 2 delicious free drinks.

But for now, here are a few key reasons your business should embrace TV advertising.

1. Powerful storytelling

Think of your favourite video advert. I bet the first that comes to mind is a TV ad. This popularity translates into effectiveness.

Great adverts stay with you. From heartwarming or chill-inducing stories which connect with your customers emotionally, to humorous skits and quirky dances which leave you questioning what you’ve just witnessed, there’s a huge variety of styles you can use to convey your key messages.

Maybe it’s an impactful storyline which stays with people, or maybe it’s a catchy jingle which is starting to drive people a little crazy. Either way, it gets people talking about your brand and lingers in their memories. This is invaluable for building brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Through powerful storytelling, and by collaborating with the right video production company, you can promote your brand in a way which is guaranteed to leave a lasting impression on viewers, whether it’s through live action, animation or a mix of both.

At Spark, we understand the significance of storytelling in TV advertising. Our motto is ‘Idea is everything’, reflecting our belief that exceptional ideas have the power to move people, challenge perceptions, and bring people together.

We specialise in producing TV adverts, combining high-quality production and creative ideas that will resonate with your target audience. As a full-service, in-house production agency we can take care of the whole process form idea creation to pre-production, production, post-production, clearcast & advert distribution. Checkout our TV advertising showreel here.

Check out our recent TV ad campaign for Merry Hill shopping centre, which went live on Sky TV using the AdSmart platform. This video has just been nominated for an RTS Midlands Award in the category ‘Craft – Production’!

2. Audience Targeting

Mass marketing in a targeted way? It sounds contradictory, but it’s possible with TV advertising.

One of the primary advantages of TV advertising is its expansive reach, enabling you to quickly connect with millions of households all over the country. With the huge rise in on-demand platforms, this reach goes even further. You can target customers through both traditional TV and streaming services whenever they’re watching their favourite shows. Ads are no longer bound to the living room TV.

Modern TV advertising is far from one-size-fits-all. It has vastly evolved over the years, with advancements in data analytics and audience segmentation tools, enabling brands to tailor their adverts to specific demographics and ensuring maximum impact. It’s all about reaching the right people in the right place at the right time.

We are a preferred supplier for Sky TV who developed AdSmart – a unique platform and powerful marketing tool which has a revolutionary approach to TV advertising. This platform helps you build audience profiles and allows you to target viewers based on location, age, lifestyle, and more.

Let’s say you’re looking to target families during weekend mornings or young working professionals during prime time. That’s all possible. The targeting technology allows different ads to be shown to different people watching the same programme at the same time. You can maintain meticulous control while casting a wide reach.

You can then monitor and measure your advert’s success and refine your targeting strategy for your next campaign. Targeting the right audience means customers are more likely to respond to your TV ad and this will help to increase conversion rate.

3. Trustworthy

Which type of advertising do you trust the most? 34% of adults in the UK trust TV adverts over any other medium, followed by cinema and radio, with social media regarded as the least reliable.

TV has had a long history of being a trusted source of information and entertainment. It’s held to the highest standards by viewers. Both its shows and the adverts on it are subject to stringent regulation, pre-vetted by independent organisations like Clearcast who check and approve all ads against the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising before they reach your screen, ensuring they do not mislead, cause harm or offend. That’s why TV advertising is the most trusted form of advertising there is, as it gives brands a stamp of quality and credibility.

So when your brand appears on TV, it inherently gains a level of trustworthiness that can be challenging to achieve through other advertising channels. This credibility can boost consumer confidence in your product or service, establishing your brand as a reliable and reputable choice in your industry. It’s a great way to start a lasting relationship with your customers.

4. Affordable

One of the most persistent myths about TV advertising is that it’s too expensive, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. Despite popular belief, TV advertising is not exclusively for big and well-established brands with deep pockets. It’s much more affordable than you might think.

Sky AdSmart has made TV advertising much more accessible. You can get your brand on TV from as little as £3K. A Sky AdSmart representative will be speaking at our masterclass to explain how the platform has played a pivotal role in helping thousands of businesses, big and small, advertise on TV for an affordable price, by offering a wide range of options to fit different budgets.

5. Attention-grabbing

TV remains a huge part of our culture and many people’s daily lives, whether it’s binge-watching a TV show, some sports, or the news. Many people organise their entire living room around their TV. Their activities revolve around its schedule. People are hungry for their favourite shows, and your business can appear next to this world-class entertainment.

You can’t scroll past, skip or block adverts when they’re on TV, which is a big problem that has emerged in modern online advertising. Coupled with the fact you’re watching on a big, full-sized screen, you are much more likely to give your full attention to an ad on TV compared to any other platform.

Often watched together with other people, TV is a focal point which brings people together and gets them talking, generating conversations about your adverts and driving leads.

So… is TV advertising worth the investment?

Let’s take a look at a TV ad campaign example from one of our clients, Homefire, the UK’s leading smokeless fuel and kiln dried firewood manufacturer and supplier. Spark has produced several adverts for Homefire and they have been running them on AdSmart for 3 years. Each year they have found that the short-term ROI has been self-funding for that campaign.

In a TV commercial we produced for them, we put the fire at the heart of the home through our powerful, visual story-telling. Our idea told the story that, with the ever-changing events of the season (Halloween, Christmas, NYE etc.), altering the look of the lounge, the one thing that stays constant is the cosy, warm fire at the centre of the room.

Homefire used their own mosaic profiling with AdSmart to build an audience profile that would match, so the audience were more likely to respond to their TV adverts. Their Group Head of Marketing, Gavin White, says that they didn’t have a huge budget initially, but this targeting still enabled them to have great conversion, delivering 4 to 1 ROI in the short term in their AdSmart first campaign. They have since used the feedback they received from that ad campaign to refine the targeting going forward and further improve that ROI metric. After long-term analysis, they have found that they are now at a ratio of 10 to 1 ROI. Not only have they acquired new customers, but they have also retained those customers from previous campaigns. Find out more about Homefire’s campaigns here.

To conclude…

Television advertising remains a powerful tool for brand promotion, offering wide reach, precise targeting, and credibility in an affordable and accessible way. At Spark, we understand that the key to unlocking the full potential of TV advertising lies in innovation. Our video production expertise and creative thinking can elevate your TV advertising campaigns. Contact us today to get started.

Or come to our TV advertising masterclass with Sky TV and Tank Top Media on Thursday 26 October 3-5pm at Loki Wine and Deli, Edgbaston to discover the secrets to affordable, successful TV advertising, and hear marketing campaign tips from industry-leading experts.