Infomercial Fulfillment News & Information

Retail Distribution Review (RDR) is coming. What will be the true impact for financial advice providers? And could investors find themselves in a ‘land of unintended consequences’?

Financial advice – a landscape of radical change

Crisis brought the less edifying aspects of financial services practice onto the front page. Yet even before 2008 and a time of great uncertainty, governments were pressing regulators to re-examine existing rules, or to draft new and tougher legislative frameworks. The stated goal was impartiality of financial advice.

The Financial Services Authority – FSA – in the United Kingdom (echoed in the European Commission’s 2009 publication on Packaged Retail Investment Products – PRIPS) intends radical change to the landscape of financial advice.

Jon Pain, the FSA’s Managing Director for Supervision, has made it clear “… RDR applies across the market place not just distribution – IFAs, Fund Managers, Banks, Private Banks, Insurers and many others, all need to be thinking about what impact the RDR will have…”

There is no shortage of impacts. For example, hidden charges will have nowhere to hide. Emphasis on the need for transparent mechanisms for consumers to pay for advice means the FSA has focused on front office remuneration and commissions.

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While this is an inherently difficult question to answer, it can make the difference between success and failure of a DRTV campaign.

Our first question is: why would we need to measure? For many clients we are already capturing phone data, so what purpose does it serve to include web data in our results? We know what stations are working and those that don’t, so how would incorporating web leads into the data stream that I feed into Core Direct (the leader in DRTV tracking and reporting) help my process? The answer is rather simple. Our DRTV activity is pushing more people to a website than to a call center for most clients and categories. Only the 65+ market is an exception to this rule.

For one client, in the financial services category, over the course of two years time, we saw the percent shift from 80% phone volume, 20% website volume to the reverse – 20% call volume, 80% web volume. And this was years ago. Using a small subset of the overall data to make decision is fraught with error. We learned that fact on this account when we finally incorporated web leads into our analysis and saw that we had been over-rewarding older-skewing cable networks and canceling younger-skewing cable networks. One company, in the Education category, actually has seen their phone calls dwindle down to almost nothing and decisions are made to keep or jettison a daypart on a station based on one or two calls, while over 90% of their leads are occurring online. So we must incorporate web leads into our data stream. My mantra is every day one more person decides to go online to check out your website instead of picking up the phone.

So let’s get started. There are a number of interesting challenges in grabbing web leads and putting them into a tracking system, such as Core Direct. One is, what data do we take from the website? Luckily for us, in the online world, many streams of customers are from known sources, such as affiliate marketing, email marketing, behavioral and re-targeting. We also can ignore people who search (organic or paid) in the category, like car loans or insurance, for example. What we can capture is direct type-in, branded search and organic search (such as queries for Mixbook, Allstate and Jenny Craig). DRTV will drive those areas.

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The old-school approach to order fulfillment doesn’t fly for many Internet retailers. Warehousing, packing, shipping and return-order processing are labor-intensive and time-consuming. This has led to a growing trend among online sellers — the use of Web technologies to automate order fulfillment.

I’m talking about e-commerce fulfillment providers (EFPs). They take the “friction” out of order fulfillment. In a typical scenario, a consumer will buy merchandise at a Web site. This triggers an order that is sent electronically to an EFP who processes the order. A shipper such as FedEx or UPS is then automatically notified. Upon shipment of the order, an automated notification is sent to the consumer and to the merchant. There is almost no human intervention. In other words, it’s a true Internet fulfillment model.
Fulfillment as a Service
From a strategic perspective, one of the most important benefits of this model is that the retailer doesn’t have to make a capital investment in infrastructure. Yugster.com is an example. The Web site has grown by nearly 500 percent in the last year and is similar to other e-commerce sites, such as Woot.com and 1SaleaDay.com. In the past, such rapid growth for an e-commerce operation would have required an enormous investment in processes, systems, personnel and physical space. Aside from the obvious fact that it’s not easy to raise capital, such an investment could be risky because there’s no guarantee the business will continue to grow. By eliminating the need for a capital investment, EFPs remove a significant barrier to entry for would-be online retailers.

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Operators are Standing By

Insomniacs must lead the most hassle-free lives. Aside from the whole “no sleep” thing, thanks to the wonderful world of late-night infomercials, their lives have been transformed by towels doubling as garments, tools to freeze pet droppings for easy pickup and a way to get out of reaching for things with their hands.

To some, infomercials may seem like a relic of Americana gone the way of tube TVs and VHS. However, infomercials are not only dependable like “Seinfeld” reruns — the products have received a boost due to an increased availability online and in retail stores.

“The industry is a strong platform, and it is still growing despite a weak economy,” says Kevin Harrington, chairman of As Seen On TV Inc. and TV Goods Inc. “We have found that in a down economy, people tend to go back to the basics and seek out comfort and convenience products.”

Harrington added that the most successful products must solve a problem in a unique way — ideally one that can be visually demonstrated. So we had to ask: What are some of the more useful and successful recent infomercial products?

Infomercial company and DRTV Agency, InfoWorx Direct won three Service Industry Advertising Awards (SIAA) in a competition that included over 2000 entries. The InfoWorx short form and long form infomercials for “Ball Mark Caddy” and “LegMedic” won Gold Awards while the 2-minute Direct Response TV commercial for “Wagic’s Resolve Multi Tool” won a Silver Award.

Since 1992, direct response television agency and infomercial production company, InfoWorx Direct, has established itself as a successful, award winning producer of both short-form DRTV commercials and long-form TV infomercials. InfoWorx has developed the most affordable turnkey infomercial model in the industry that offers clients award winning television and radio infomercial production as well as TV and Radio infomercial media buying services. The company specializes in all aspects of direct response advertising services and consulting, and offers an entire turnkey solution from script to sales for DRTV clients as well as specific services including production, media buying, telemarketing management, fulfillment, and home shopping placement.

Recently, InfoWorx licensed the pioneering Media Management System (MMS) and has continued to increase their in house media services with some of the lowest cost and highest ROI remnant deals in the country.

“At InfoWorx, we always want to stay ahead of the curve with the most advanced and effective production, media buying, and tracking technology. We are very proud of our award winning creative spots and when we can optimize their effectiveness with cutting-edge media buying technology, our clients always come out ahead,” Ron Perlstein, Executive Producer & Media Director of InfoWorx explained. “We devote ourselves to creating measurable strategies that deliver a positive and lucrative ROI whether it’s a long-form infomercial, short-form DRTV spot, or radio campaign.”

Perlstein added, “The role of the direct response commercial agency has evolved from infomercial production to Infomarketing. It is now our goal to secure the largest market share in the shortest period of time putting the least amount of money at risk. We make the telephone ring and drive traffic and customers to our websites in order to generate orders and leads for our clients from day one.”

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Nowadays, success of any business is largely dependent on internet because it has emerged as a very big platform to get in contact with large numbers of customers. Therefore, it is very important for every business to have a website on the internet. But just having a website on the internet is not sufficient because there is very tough competition. So in order to fight the competition your website should be attractive and innovative to catch the attention of the viewers. In such situations it becomes necessary to hire web fulfillment services to ensure that your website is not uninformative, boring and misleading.

Further, your website must provide all information about the products offered by you. In fact the website created by you should be a perfect website which is capable of generating traffic and thereby ultimately increase the sales of your products. Hence, for creating a perfect website it is necessary to take help of web fulfillment services. There are many companies which offer such services. These web fulfillment companies have experienced professionals who are highly skilled to create and promote the kind of website you want. Although, availing these services can be a bit expensive for you initially but in the long run it will prove to be beneficial for you as it will ensure growth and success of your business.

A small business has many options when it comes to marketing and selling its products and services. One communication method that some companies use is the infomercial. Once thought of as something only found on late night television, infomercials have become more popular and acceptable as a legitimate marketing method. Infomercials are now showing up online and on television. Do an infomercial for a small business by developing a presentation for your product or service, and choosing the right outlet to broadcast your production.

Steps

1. 1

   Decide what the infomercial will promote. You need to plan whether your infomercial will promote a service your small business provides, a single product it sells, or a group of products and services you offer.

2. 2

   Develop a budget. An online infomercial will cost less than a televised spot. Determine how much your small business can spend on this.

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Rodney Vincent’s back pain device, the True Back, languished on an open market for nearly a decade before he decided to make an infomercial.

“It wasn’t achieving what I wanted to achieve with it,” he says. “I knew I wasn’t getting as many sales as I could get.”

Like many inventors before him, Rodney Vincent has led somewhat of a whimsical career. Originally from the U.K., he studied architecture in school before landing a job with the Formula 1 racing team. After some time in the motor trade he became involved in the aviation business, and eventually wound up owning his own travel and tour operating company. Vincent has no formal training in anatomy, but like many entrepreneurs, he has a great sense of business acumen.

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Admit it, you’ve watched plenty of infomercials and have seriously contemplated ordering that special apple peeler or that amazing OxiClean detergent. We may like to roll our eyes when an infomercial comes on TV, but the truth is, one in three Americans have pulled out their credit cards during an infomercial sales pitch. Whether it’s an unbelievable gadget or a product that is sure to make our lives easier, the market for infomercial products is huge: beauty, business opportunities, weight loss products, housewares, and personal care products. Maybe it’s the fast-paced “Buy Now!” pitch followed by bonus products, or the tantalizing demonstrations, but there must be another reason why so many infomercial products pull in millions of dollars and remain so popular.

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