TV advertising or Radio. Which is best

We started running a TV commercial for a small area on Friday. We decided to go the TV route instead of Radio for a couple of reasons. One was the cost. I can't believe how expensive it is to advertise on the radio, at least for our area which is pretty small. The other was that our particular product is something that is hard to describe just by words. For some products Radio might be the best bet, for others you need pictures. Besides, I like to watch TV.

Working with the TV station was pretty painless. We discussed some ideas and they made the commercial for us. I even got to be in it...WOO HOO! The station didn't charge us for making the commercial as long as we committed to a certain level of air time. After discussing our limited budget with the sales rep he suggested running the commercial with a lot of spots for 1 week then taking a week off. He said this would give us a longer campaign money wise while giving the illusion that we were on all the time. We turned a 5 week budget into a 10 week campaign. Our average cost per commercial is under $8.00. Of course for some of the better spots it cost more. One of the best things I found out is that they have a thing called rotators. In our area they cost $20 and we might get lucky and be aired during Oprah or other high cost shows. If we asked for that particular spot, we might have to pay $100 or more. Some shows can cost $600-1000. It's a pretty good value.

Now that it's airing, I can go on our website and just by monitoring the hits by the hour, I can see what time of day the commercials are on. Ain't technology great! This is all still part of our proof of concept. Hopefully after the campaign we'll have all the information we need to see if we have a winning invention.

We had talked with a local radio station about 6 months ago and they were wanting us to commit to a year long advertising schedule in order to get the price down to where it was a reasonable cost per commercial. We weren't convinced at that point that radio was the way to go for us. For some it's perfect.

Advertising people say that you should target 7% of your budget for ads. In our case that would be about $1.40 but what the hey.Weigh all of your options and talk to the advertising experts (Sales). After listening to them tell you how they can turn a horse turd into a cupcake make a decision. Who knows maybe both mediums will work for you.