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Case Study: The Offline To Online Local Media Buy

If your dealing with local clients sometimes you have an agency type relationship with them where you buy all of their media for a percentage of spend.

I happen to have had access to an offline to online media buy recently and wanted to share the results with you guys.  The media purchased was cable TV.  The media buy cost roughly $25,000 spread over 2 weeks of cable TV advertising.  This cost represented 200 cable spots which breaks down to about $125 per commercial.  I did not place this buy or create the commercial, but was responsible for landing page design and tracking.  Also keep in mind that cable TV is a branding medium and branding was a large goal in this campaign.  Direct response results were an additional advantage

Results over a 2 Week Period
Absolute Unique Visitors: 132
Unique Email Leads: 40
Total Phone Calls: 6
Landing Page Conversion Rate: 35%

If you were measuring the campaigns success solely on leads generated through the landing page this campaign would be a bomb however that was not the sole basis of success or failure.  The average cost per lead was $543 yet the campaign has been running 3 months past this original buy and the client is thrilled with the results.  The landing page converted a huge amount of the visitors to leads however if the client were only trying to generate leads, I would have suggested internet advertising before dropping this kind of cash on cable TV.

I thought you guys would find an offline to online case study interesting so I hope you did.  Do you have any questions about this?

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Published inCase StudiesLocal Online Advertising

17 Comments

  1. so the tv commercial had your website for them to visit. so they went from tv, to your site, to become a lead? that does sound like an expensive way to go.

    how did you negotiate a % of spend if all you did was the lander? seems like a good deal for you , but how did this come about?

  2. Ad Hustler Ad Hustler

    I can’t say the niche here but it’s a lead for a complex sale (think automotive or real estate). The goal of the campaign was branding the particular business and making it a household name in the area that these ads ran.

    The commercial also had a tag line Go to such and such a site to get more info about the deal in this commercial. At the landing page, there was a form to take their contact information to get more information about the offer.

  3. newjersey newjersey

    So they really have no tangible metric to justify “client is thrilled with the results”?

    I hate not being able to measure ROI. My company (non affiliate marketing “day job”) recently started stalling projects for customers if they cannot agree on tangible and measurable goals. If they cannot measure the success we don’t do it. This is tough to enforce with customers but really helps everyone in the long run.

    I hate working on projects where the only reason we are doing it is “because the customers wants to do it that way”. If you cannot measure it, and don’t know your goals, then why are you doing it!?

    In the example above brand awareness is the goal so it makes sense, and you have very accurate web metrics.

    Great info and case study!

  4. Ad Hustler Ad Hustler

    @NewJersey – The client has no tagible metric to be thrilled with the results. As ridiculous as this sounds when it comes to clients, a lot of the time results = how the client FEELS about the ad. Oh wow, I saw myself on TV 200 times can make the client happier then giving them 1,000 qualified leads.

  5. newjersey newjersey

    yep – at my day job we are trying very hard to get clients out of that mode and force them to measure results. It saves us from doing projects that are not mutually beneficial. This is CRM consulting though, not lead gen, but alot of it rings true.

    You are dropping knowledge bombs on the internets like crazy recently – keep it up!

  6. BenevolentForce BenevolentForce

    Thanks for the case study. Loving the frequency and quality of the posts lately! Really good material.

  7. Vinny Lingo Vinny Lingo

    “…a lot of the time results = how the client FEELS about the ad.”

    This is really starting to sink in for me. In most of the conversations I’ve had recently, it’s as if the results necessary to keep the business afloat are running a distant second to stroking the egos of the business owners.

    Doing the local directory thing, I’ve seen that owners care more about how their listings look than if they were getting any monetary benefit from being listed.

  8. Offline to Online Local media seems to be interesting thing to discuss and its good that you have shared your experience with it.

  9. Holy shit, I was wondering where you went? I’m glad you’re back man. Throw out all that video game crap, waste of time. Good for you dude! At least you realized your problem, the 1st step to recovery.

  10. “The average cost per lead was $543 yet the campaign has been running 3 months past this original buy and the client is thrilled with the results.”

    you’d think these folks could do a few creative things to get on the local news for free 😉 I wish I had their money to throw around

  11. I would say it would benefit everyone & especially you a lot, if it was a comparative case study. Plus, what kinda criteria need to be considered, according to you, as projected campaign?
    Btw, what was on for past few days, when I couldn’t read you?

  12. Keep the case studies coming. I think we are all glad to have not spend 25k grand to get $543 leads.

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