Getting your business on TV might be more achievable than you think.
Traditionally, TV advertising was associated with household brands and enormous marketing budgets. If you were a small or medium-sized business operating in one region of the UK, paying to advertise to millions of people nationwide didn't necessarily make sense.
But television advertising has changed.
Platforms such as Sky AdSmart and ITVX, alongside other forms of addressable and connected TV advertising, allow businesses to be far more targeted about who sees their adverts. Instead of buying a national TV campaign, you can potentially target particular locations, audiences and types of households.
So, how do you actually get your business on TV?
You'll need to decide who you want to reach, choose where your advert will appear, buy the appropriate media, produce your TV commercial, get it approved for broadcast and deliver it in the correct technical format.
It sounds complicated, but it doesn't have to be. In this article we will tell you how to get on TV.
Can a Small Business Advertise on TV?
Yes. You don’t have to be McDonald’s, Nike or Coca-Cola to advertise your business on television.
That’s probably the biggest misconception surrounding TV advertising.
Historically, television was a mass-reach medium. Businesses bought airtime around particular programmes or times of day to reach the audiences watching them.
That model still exists, and national TV campaigns can obviously require significant media budgets. But it isn’t the only way to advertise on TV anymore.
Addressable TV and streaming platforms have made television accessible to businesses that don’t need – or can’t afford – national exposure.
Imagine you’re an independent kitchen company based in Newcastle.
You don’t particularly care whether somebody in Bristol sees your advert. It’s highly unlikely that you will be installing their new kitchen.
What you really want is to reach potential customers in the areas you serve and modern TV advertising makes that kind of targeting possible.
How Do I Advertise My Business on TV?
There are generally two parts to getting a business onto television:
- Making the advert and
- Buying the media space where the advert will appear.
These are related, but they’re not the same thing.
The video production side covers everything required to create the commercial itself: developing the idea, writing the script, filming, editing, sound, graphics and preparing the finished commercial for broadcast (including licences and usage rights).
The media side determines where the advert runs, how frequently it appears and who is likely to see it.
For most businesses, the process looks something like this:
1. Decide what you want the TV campaign to achieve
2. Identify your target audience
3. Decide where and how you want to advertise
4. Establish your production and media budgets
5. Develop your creative idea and script
6. Submit the script for the appropriate compliance checks
7. Produce your TV commercial
8. Complete clearance and technical delivery
9. Launch the campaign
10. Measure what happens thereafter
The important thing is to think about the media and creative together.
There’s no point producing a fantastic TV advert without knowing your audience or how you’re going to reach them. Equally, buying airtime won’t produce the desired outcome if the advert doesn’t give viewers a compelling reason to remember or respond to your business.
Do I Have to Advertise Across the Whole of the UK?
The short answer is no.
This is why modern television advertising is accessible for SMEs and regional businesses. It is now possible to run much more geographically targeted TV campaigns rather than automatically paying for national coverage.
Sky AdSmart
Sky AdSmart allows different households watching the same programme to be served different adverts.
Rather than every viewer seeing exactly the same advert in the commercial break, an advertiser can select audiences based on certain criteria.
For a regional business, location is particularly useful.
If a business wanted to advertise to relevant households in the North East, there would be little reason to pay for impressions in parts of the country outside of this specific catchment area.
Depending on the platform and available audience data, targeting can go beyond geography into household and demographic characteristics.
What About Advertising on ITVX?
The definition of “TV advertising” has expanded considerably.
Millions of viewers now consume television through streaming and on-demand services rather than only watching scheduled linear television.
Services such as ITVX offer advertisers another way of reaching audiences watching premium television content.
This creates opportunities for businesses to combine the impact of a television commercial with more sophisticated digital-style audience targeting.
For businesses already advertising through platforms such as Meta, YouTube or Google, the principle will feel familiar:
- Define an audience,
- Serve advertising to that audience and
- Measure the resulting campaign.
The difference is the environment in which your brand appears.
How Much Does It Cost to Get My Business on TV?
There’s no single price for advertising on television. The total budget is usually made up of:
- TV advert production – what it costs to make the commercial.
- Media spend – what you pay for your advert to be shown.
Media costs will vary depending on your chosen platform, audience, geographic area, campaign length, reach and frequency.
Production costs vary too.
A straightforward commercial filmed with a presenter in one location will cost significantly less than an advert involving actors, studio hire, multiple locations, complex visual effects and several days of filming.
Your production and media budgets need to be built around your objective.
Does My TV Advert Need Clearcast Approval?
If you’re producing an advert for UK broadcast television, clearance is a fundamental part of the process.
UK TV advertising is governed by the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising – the BCAP Code.
Clearcast provides the pre-clearance service used by most major UK commercial broadcasters. Its role is to assess TV commercials against the BCAP Code before they’re broadcast. Advertising regulations can influence what you can say and even how you say it.
For example, if your advert makes an objective claim such as:
- “The UK’s number one…”
- “Save 50% if you act now…”
- “Proven to…”
- “The fastest…”
- “More effective than…”
you may need appropriate evidence to substantiate it.
That’s why we recommend thinking about compliance before you start filming, not once the commercial is finished. This eliminates the need to implement fundamental changes after production. If an important line, scene or claim can’t be cleared from your finished advert, it can become an expensive problem.
Can I Just Use My Existing Promotional Video?
Possibly.
But a good corporate or promotional video isn’t automatically a good TV advert.
Think about how people experience television advertising. Your advert has only 30 seconds to:
Grab their attention → communicate the problem → introduce your business → give them a reason to care → make the brand memorable → prompt some form of action.
There’s very little room for wasted time.
An existing promotional video may contain useful footage that can be repurposed, but it probably has not been designed to be an advert.
It may also contain claims, graphics, music or other elements that require further consideration before broadcast.
Sometimes adapting existing content makes perfect sense, other times producing a commercial specifically for television will produce a much better result.
What Makes a Good TV Advert for a Small Business?
You don’t necessarily need an enormous production to make an effective television commercial.
You need a strong idea.
One of the biggest mistakes smaller advertisers can make is attempting to squeeze their entire business into 30 seconds.
“We’re a family business established in 1987…”
“We offer outstanding customer service…”
“We have a wide range of products…”
“We pride ourselves on quality…”
“Visit our website to learn more…”
By the time you’ve explained everything, the viewer may remember nothing.
A TV commercial usually benefits from one clear proposition.
What’s the one thing you want the viewer to remember about your business?
Build the advert around that.
A simple, distinctive idea executed brilliantly can be far more effective than an expensive advert trying to communicate ten different messages at once.
Can I Target Local Customers With TV Advertising?
Yes, and this is arguably one of the biggest reasons SMEs should reconsider television.
Suppose you’re a business operating in South West London. You might already be spending money on:
- Google Ads.
- Meta advertising.
- LinkedIn.
- YouTube.
- Outdoor advertising.
- Radio.
You may never have considered TV because you’ve assumed you’d need a substantial advertising budget, to rival the household brands you see on TV all the time.
That’s no longer the case.
Addressable television allows campaigns to become significantly more targeted, which means a regional business can potentially concentrate its media spend on the locations and audiences that actually matter.
That doesn’t automatically make TV the right advertising channel for every business, but it does make the statement “we’re too small for TV” more redundant.
Is TV Advertising Better Than Social Media?
It’s not really an either/or decision.
TV and social media can play very different roles within the same campaign.
Social advertising gives you sophisticated targeting, rapid testing, interaction and detailed performance data.
Television gives your brand something different: scale, attention, association with premium content and the credibility that can come from appearing in a TV environment.
And your production doesn’t necessarily need to exist solely on television.
If you’re investing in creating a strong TV commercial, you can plan from the beginning to produce additional versions for other platforms.
A well-planned production can generate an entire suite of advertising assets rather than one 30-second file, making the production cost even more attractive.
How Long Does It Take to Get a TV Advert on Air?
Allow more time than you would for a typical social media campaign.
A TV commercial involves creative development, production, compliance and technical delivery, as well as organising the media campaign itself. The exact timeline depends on the complexity of the advert.
A relatively straightforward production can naturally move much faster than a complex commercial. Clearance also needs to be factored into the schedule.
That’s why involving your production company and media partner early is valuable.
If you’ve booked airtime before you start thinking about the advert, you’ve already put unnecessary pressure on the production. This happens more often than you think when networks apply massive discounts to their advertising slots. Sometimes an offer which is too good to miss is presented and you have to take it before you even have anything ready to air.
Do I Need a TV Advertising Agency?
You need the right expertise around the campaign, but that doesn’t necessarily mean assembling an enormous traditional advertising agency team.
You’ll typically need expertise covering two areas:
creative and production, to create the commercial;
and
media planning and buying, to get it in front of the right audience.
We handle the production side of that process, creating a commercial specifically designed for the environment in which it will appear. We also have relationships with media buying partners who can facilitate the final part of the process, and get your advert on the air.
For businesses approaching television for the first time, that guidance can be just as important as the cameras and editing.
So, How Do I Get My Business on TV?
Start with the audience rather than the advert.
Ask yourself:
- Who do I want to reach?
- Where are they based?
- What action do I want them to take after seeing us?
- What is the single most important thing they need to remember?
From there, you can establish the most appropriate television or streaming platform, media budget and creative approach. As previously mentioned, the evolution of TV advertising means you can now advertise to a select audience (either geographically or targeted based on their profile).
You’ll still need a professionally produced commercial (I wouldn’t recommend the Kanye West approach where he recorded a Superbowl commercial on his iphone in a darkly lit environment, simply because he spent all of his budget buying the media slot). Although his approach paid off, it is important to realise that most of us will be using the advert to build trust, raise brand awareness and make the view take action.
You don’t necessarily need to understand the relevant advertising regulations but you definitely need to work with a partner who does. Make sure this is understood at the planning stage and well before anything is recorded. For broadcast television, the advert needs to go through the appropriate clearance and technical delivery process.
But none of those things means television is reserved for multinational brands.
For the right business, with the right audience and the right creative idea, getting your business on TV may be considerably more achievable than you thought.