Use :15 Second TV Spots To Promote Products or Departments in Your Store

The sad fact about retail marketing is most mid to small-level retailers don't believe they have the budget to put towards promoting a specific product line or department within their store. Everything needs to go towards making that week's sales figures. Retail is very demanding that way – especially for regional retailers.

But, what if there is a product line or department in your store that an increase in market share would help your overall store traffic and, ultimately, your profits? Isn't that worth finding a way to promote it? The short answer is yes. It comes with a big question, though. How?

One way to find the budget to promote a product line or store department is to split your :30 second spots into two :15 second ones and use one of them to promote your product/department. We've talked in a previous post about how to use :15's in the same commercial break to power surge your media budget. Now if you take a percentage of those :15 spots and use them to promote your specific product offering, you can do it without adversely effecting your overall event promotion.

We have used this strategy for a number of retailers successfully. For instance, for our furniture retailers, we've used the split :30 (2 x :15 spot) approach to promote their mattress departments. Our data shows that the mattress buyer is a different buyer than the general furniture buyer. It tends to have a wider scope than a store's typical shopper – by driving more mattress buyers into the store, we are able to bring new customers into the store that may not have come in otherwise. This gets them into our database and exposes them to a store they may not have considered otherwise. The end result is a larger share of the mattress market and an expanding customer base.

Any retailer can use this strategy to bolster a product line or department within their store. And by converting a portion of your :30's into :15's, you actually increase your reach and frequency.

"By running :15 second spots at the same commercial pod, for the price of a :30, you increase your total gross impressions or overall reach by 1.5 times," says Buffy O'Connor, Yaffe Media Director. "This works especially well in the typical retail event buy, squeezing all the spots into a 3 or 4 day period."

If you are running a promotion or sale during this time, you can make your departmental or product-specific :15's pull double duty by tying them into the overall event. In the furniture retailer example, we create a :30 spot for the event, then do a :15 second version of it and pair it with a ;15 mattress spot – but have the mattress spot also tie into the event. That way, you're still promoting sales for the week while bolstering the product line that will help your long term profitability.

There you have it; a way to promote specific parts within your store without sacrificing your need to make the week's sales results. Give it a try and let us know how it worked for you. Or if you need further advice, drop us a line or give us a call (248.262.1700). We'll be glad to help.

Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director and media fan