3 ways to make your DRTV call to action work harder

The call to action (CTA) is the single most important part of a DRTV advert as this is the time to get consumers to respond. At this point your DRTV advert should have provided enough information about the product or service you are selling, but how do you get the most out of the CTA?

Offer a unique deal

This idea is very often looked over when crafting a DRTV campaign. DRTV adverts work best when you offer the consumer something more than they can go out and find themselves on the high street. Consumers may already have an understanding and interest in a brand and all they need is a little bit EXTRA to convert them to respond. Brands can offer unique codes which will help with tracking the response and success of the campaign attribution. It’s also a great way to find out valuable information from consumers, do they respond more to a discount or added extras? Discounts are usually king though, especially with higher value products and services, as many consumers will already know the price of something that they are interested in and my well jump at a small discount.

Build the offer and make sure audio and visual response question work together

DRTV adverts can run the risk of not communicating the proposition correctly when you try and sell too much in a short amount of time. If you want a good response rate you need the offer to be clear. Do this by slowly building the offer in the CTA screen and then adding the way to actually respond to the brand.

One trick of making this clear and directing the consumer through the offer on your DRTV advert, is to make sure the voice over and on-screen graphics animate at the same time. The mind absorbs information easier if you trigger more senses and your consumers will respond more this way. Don’t show something visually when the VO is directing the viewer to something else. Less is definitely more in this regard. You need to give clear reasons to respond to a your DRTV advert.

Use the 1/3 rule

When you are deciding how to construct your DRTV advert you will have to make a decision how much time you spend showing the benefits of the product and how much time you spend selling the deal or offer and pushing for a response. We recommend using a 1/3 rule where one third of the time of the DRTV advert is used on CTA selling and response and two thirds on benefits. This is a fine balance, but remember the main point of a DRTV advert is to get a response. So you need to spend a substantial amount of time selling. Clients or brands can find this difficult to manage when they first try out DRTV as they want to spend as much time talking about the product or service.