The vast majority of businesses are SMALL and LOCAL.  So we'll talk mostly about TV marketing options available locally, on small budgets.  These options can be useful to large businesses too - since they need local impact like everyone else.       

Cable-TV is the affordable solution.  Cable reaches, on average, six out of every ten homes.  Popular channels like CNN, Discovery, TNT, Lifetime, ESPN, MTV, or the USA Network, still show increasing ratings.  In fact, Cable-TV has now more viewers than the old "big networks" combined.       

Most of the basic cable channels have advertising slots available to LOCAL cable companies.  These local slots are sold very cheap - often for the price of newspaper classified ads.  True, a business should repeat an advertisement at least two or three times per day, for a period of two or three months, to create a major impact.  But this is still quite affordable.        

The bottom line?  For what you would spend on a single 1-page display in a metropolitan newspaper, you can place hundreds of TV ads on your local turf!  During evening hours, in an average cable area, each spot is seen by several thousand people.  (That's assuming a modest 1% rating.  Imagine the cumulative impact over a three month period!)       

So you no longer need millions of dollars to advertise on major TV channels.       

Now - how about producing your commercials?  This is what our company, Special Interest Television, can do for you.       

"Broadcast Quality" is no longer expensive.    If fact, even some of the digital cameras made for home use give a better picture than professional TV cameras of a few years ago.  So the technology is no longer a problem - everybody has it.        

What is still a BIG problem out there, however, is the knowledge on how to create great TV messages.  Inexpensive technology lowered the barriers to entry, opening the gates to lots of amateurs.  When you can "do broadcast" with a two thousand dollar camera, on tape that costs five bucks per hour, it's easy to become careless.  True professionals, who work on film productions as well, are trained to give meaning to every second in a TV commercial.  (Film productions are still very expensive, not necessarily for technical reasons.   The average commercial done on film, for national broadcast, costs tens of times more than a decent ad for local TV.   Price tags of 100-150 grant for 30 seconds are common, and half a million dollar budgets are not unheard of).       

The solution is to use the affordable digital video technology - while borrowing some of the procedures from film productions.  The mark of professionalism is easy to recognize - by the way a commercial is prepared.  There is no place for improvisation.  Another imperative is to hire some decent talent.  Most people base their buying decisions on emotional factors - so the artistic values are very important.         

To sum up, a local TV campaign has two main aspects:  the production of your commercial and the distribution.  One needs to consider the distribution first, to see what alternatives are available locally and whether they make sense for a particular business situation.       

For more details, go to the top of this page and click the red tabs on the right.