Archive for the ‘TV Marketing’ Category

How To Find Out If Your Product Will Sell On TV for $500 Instead of $100,000 Or More

Friday, October 15th, 2010

As you will soon find out if you contact infomercial producers, it can be very expensive to produce and air an infomercial for a test.

I have an acquaintance who tests ideas by infomercial routinely but he says you need to be prepared to roll the dice for $250,000 or so for each test (30 minute long form infomercial production, talent and air time). He told me he can afford to write the checks knowing up front he has maybe a 1/10 chance of success because a hit makes him the big dollars.

Although you might find someone who can make you a low budget spot for $10,000, you’ll still need to pay for air time, a call center and analytics. Assuming you don’t have that kind of cash for testing, here’s an easy way to find out for $500 if your product will fly.

Go to a home show.

So, what’s a home show? There are Home & Garden type shows in every major city at least twice per year – spring & fall.

Get yourself a booth and have a dynamic personality do demos of your product in the booth and see what happens. As many as 70,000 people come through a home show over a 4 day period and you will see if your product and demo stops people, see if they stay to watch your demo, and if they buy.

The same things you test for on TV.

Granted your “pitchman” (maybe you) will not be a celebrity, but you should still get a sense for whether your product and attracts interest and sales from a booth cost of only a few hundred dollars.

For a schedule of home shows go to http://www.acshomeshow.com/HGExpo/listing.php or just put your city name and “Home Show” into Google….