Traditional retailers know that in order to succeed, they need to locate their stores in targeted high-traffic areas.  And many marketers rely on this distribution to drive sales.  But imagine being able to quickly and easily change these locations based on your products’ sales volume and seasonality.  It sounds too good to be true.  But there is a way to ride the wave of high-traffic visibility without the cost and restrictions of brick-and-mortar retail: DRTV.

To put this in better context, consider the increasing popularity of pop-up stores.  Many retailers have embraced the pop-up store during the holidays as a way to add flexibility and expand reach in order to take advantage of seasonality.  The concept here is to offer a selection of popular products in smaller stores located in high-traffic shopping areas.  These additional locations will also increase visibility for a retailer, and create a residual lift for their permanent retail locations and e-commerce platform. DRTV can have a similar impact.  But it isn’t limited to traditional retailers.

E-commerce Opens Doors; DRTV Makes the Sale

As a marketer, if you have an e-commerce platform, you have a virtual store.  Like most brick and mortar stores, it is a fixed location and relies on consumers to find it.  Most e-commerce marketers rely on brand advertising support to create a buzz and drive high-volume traffic.  Other than that, traffic is driven in lower quantities via targeted digital tactics like search and display advertising.  But in most cases, none of these tactics are actually selling any product.  For e-commerce, a DRTV commercial (:60 or :120) can serve as a virtual pop-up store, presenting your products for sale to a mass audience in the targeted high-traffic environment of television.

In a pop-up store, you can learn more about the specific products, and there are sales people on hand to convert the sale.  A DRTV commercial can do these same things as an extension of your web site.  And in the process, generate accountable revenue. But unlike a retail location, with DRTV you don’t have the commitment of a lease.  Sure, the cost of creative production can be seen as a fixed cost similar to the cost to build-out, stock, and set-up a temporary retail location.  But the media is flexible and accountable, so it can be optimized based on performance.  And that is a big advantage.

It’s Time to Consider DRTV in Holiday 2011 Planning

It is easy for traditional marketers to overlook DRTV, because they are not familiar with its ability to deliver across several objectives: awareness, education, direct sales, and retail support.  And prior to the development of their e-commerce platforms, most marketers didn’t have a way to efficiently fulfill sales directly to the consumer.  But it is now time to take another look.

If you have the means to sell product directly to consumers, then DRTV is your virtual pop-up store.  It is a two-pronged tactic that can increase retail sales and generate direct sales that will, at the very least, help fund your marketing costs.  And if successful, it will produce an entirely new revenue stream.  Given this potential up-side, don’t be surprised to see new DRTV campaigns unwrapped this coming holiday season.

Rob Schmidt is an Account Supervisor at A. Eicoff & Co., one of North America’s largest DRTV agencies.

Tags: DRTV, DRTV Best Practices, DRTV commercial, DRTV Media Agency, Emerging Media, interactive tv

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 at 9:00 am and is filed under DRTV Best Practices, DRTV Creative, DRTV Messaging, DRTV News, DRTV Production. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.