Using search and social to support TV advertising

Brands still invest a significant amount of advertising in TV. According to eMarketer, TV spending will be over $72 billion in 2017. While TV is great at reaching a large audience, it is most effective when combined with an effective search and social strategy to be able to fully pull through with your audience.

As your media planning efforts go into full swing, it is important to understand what effect TV will have on your other channels and what best practices can be put in place to ensure your campaigns capture all potential extra eyes on your brand. ROI can only improve if the channels are integrated and not managed in silos.

How SEM can support TV advertising

Be ready for increased branded and unbranded traffic. With over 70 percent of users having a second device up and running while watching TV, according to Manhattan Research, advertising on TV can drive immediate reaction and inquiries for your brand. This needs to be taken into account when planning budgets for the year across both branded and unbranded efforts. Depending on your overall budget for TV and whether you are running in prime time, you can see varying levels of immediate increase in branded searches.

I have seen mature brands experience anywhere from 20-30 percent lift in search traffic as a result of TV ad buys. With a launch brand or new market, these numbers could be significantly higher. It is important to note that branded searches are not the only thing that will rise — unbranded searches for your product category will, too.

The image below shows the drastic increase in searches a brand saw for their brand name as a national TV campaign launched. In this case, the brand was relatively new to the market and had not done much mass marketing. This caused the overall lift in brand awareness to skyrocket in coordination with the launch of TV advertising. Because the brand planned ahead, they were able to take advantage and capture the extra brand searches with additional budget.

Review creative, bid on relevant terms. Chances are, there will be people who viewed your TV advertisement but the brand or call to action will not resonate with them. In some cases, they may leverage search engines and search for something like “tv ad with lady who had blue running shoes” or “commercial with man standing in the rain.”

While the total volume of long-tail keywords like this may be minimal, reviewing the creative content can generate a set of keywords that are highly efficient in converting users. If there are any unique taglines or calls to action utilized within the creative, including those as keywords is an easy way to capture additional traffic.

Edit ads to include common messaging used in TV creative. Relevancy is key in capturing searches activated by your TV ad. Leading up to the launch of TV efforts, make sure your search ads utilize similar messaging to that used in your TV advertisement. This could be anything from a discount to a new brand slogan. Relevancy will increase click-through rate (CTR).

How social can support TV advertising

Promote your TV ad through social channels. Not every TV ad is meant for social media, but in some cases, TV creative can be inspirational, funny or bring out other emotions that resonate with your target audience. In these cases, it may make sense for your social profiles to share your TV creative or even promote it through advertising.

Be ready for increased engagement. With your brand receiving more attention and attracting additional eyeballs, your social channels will as well. Be prepared for more engagement with your paid social advertising and your organic presence on social channels.

Connect TV and social through common messaging. Depending on how large an effort social is for your brand, the creative may utilize a call to action that drives users to your social presence. You may have seen recently that many brands choose to have social drivers within their creative. If this occurs, make sure your social presence is active and engaged with any type of hashtag or discussion that is called out within the creative.

Don’t wait for the conversation to start; have it be active and running prior to the launch of your TV advertising so new people can jump right in.

Using both search and social to measure impact

Measure the effectiveness of your TV campaign through search and social. While ROI will be your ultimate deciding factor on whether TV makes sense for your brand, both search and social media can be great ways to quickly gauge the pulse of performance. Monitoring increase in brand searches and increase in brand mentions pre- and post-launch of your TV campaign can help gauge how well the creative is resonating with your audience.

At the end of the day, if your clients are making the investment into advertising on TV, it is paramount to involve the search and social teams alongside the creative agencies and media planners. When all teams work together, the channels that capture users lower in the funnel can be most effective.