What’s cable got to do with it?

by Laura Hudson | December 1, 2015

TVHow do you know when cable is the next step in your marketing strategy?

At cj, we consider cable to be a branding medium, very similar to outdoor. It’s great at hitting very targeted geographic areas. But with that targeting comes a much smaller population. That smaller population (viewership) is further fragmented by the hundreds of channel options.

Very rarely will you have a cable buy give you the direct response that you can get from broadcast. I say rarely because I don’t ever want to count anything out, but I can say that we have never seen a cable buy make the phone ring as efficiently as a broadcast buy.

So, why would you ever consider cable?
You want to consider cable when you have a strong and efficient broadcast buy. You’ve maxed out your daytime broadcast schedule. You have an AM News schedule airing and you’re considering the next step. That next step could be cable. It could be a discretionary schedule, which could include cable. Once your DR schedules are in place and working efficiently – it’s time to brand. And cable is a good place for branding dollars.

Cable will brand your firm, and while branding is the ultimate goal, it doesn’t generate the immediate DR return of “see spot run, hear phone ring.” Broadcast daytime TV is still the best option for that.

If you’re ready for the next step – how do you build a buy?
We start with the largest of the cable networks: TNT, USA, TBS, Spike, etc. Since it’s a branding medium, allow spots to run in broad rotators and at times we don’t typically buy broadcast. And lastly, we buy the Interconnect. If we are spending dollars outside of broadcast on TV, we still want to try and hit as much of the population as possible.

So bottom line, we prefer broadcast above all else for increasing call volume. However, cable does have its merits, and they lie with the brand building possibilities.