I sure hope that you included a URL in your ad.

Whether you like it or not, potential customers who watch/read your ad will go looking for you online. Are you making it easy for them to do that?

In a research study that we recently did for one of our clients, we showed participants a TV commercial. In an overlay at the bottom of the frame, each participant saw one of three things:

• The company name (no call to action)
• A phone number
• A vanity URL

After watching the commercial, we asked each participant what they’d do to follow up (they were allowed to pick more than one activity).

Visiting the website and searching for the company were the top two activities, regardless of the call to action.



Hang on a second, you say. According to that chart, participants were more likely to visit the website when there was no call to action. Good point.

Except that when we asked them what website they’d visit, they told us the wrong one. The client was using a vanity URL that the participants couldn’t remember or guess – instead, they guessed at a URL that would have ended up taking them to the site’s homepage, where there was no information relevant to the commercial. If they’re looking for you online, wouldn’t you like them to find the information they’re looking for?



This led us to recommend that the client:

• Use URLs and a phone number in their commercials
• Use folders in their URLs (www.company.com/promo) rather than vanity URLs (www.buyfromcompany.com)
• Reinforce the call to action by including “call 1-800-555-1234 or visit company.com/promo” in the commercial voice over

So now that we’ve established that your potential customers are going to try and find you online, let’s take a look at how many of you are actually making that easy for them to do.

A recent study from Nominet looked at the use of URLs in print and TV advertising in the UK. The UK is pretty sophisticated when it comes to online stuff.

Only two thirds of print and TV advertising had a URL. When you break that apart, 83% of newspaper advertising had a URL, while only 61% of TV advertising did. In an analysis that looked at £40 million worth of advertising, that means that tens of millions of British pounds of advertising maybe aren’t being used as effectively as they could be.



Are you throwing money away by not including a URL in your advertising?


© 2010 Enquiro Search Solutions.