If you think coming up with creative TV or radio spots is expensive, think again. We’re going to explain how you can produce professional, creative ads using tools every security dealer already has access to — with help from your manufacturers.

Typically when we get started with a new client’s marketing campaign, we’ll first start with a marketing audit, fix immediate issues, focus on low-hanging fruit then run our clients into an e-campaign such as PPC, SEO, e-newsletters and such. Recently, however, we landed a larger client based in Florida that already had a pretty good handle on his marketing and needed other ideas to create brand awareness (which helps potential customers researching home security find you and helps you gain more market share within a 60-mile radius).

We did some research and spoke with the client’s local TV station; they had some very affordable specials and didn’t require any lengthy contract, so it was set: we were going to do TV.  Now you might be thinking, how can I afford TV or radio?  Keep in mind you can start off with as little as about $1,000 per month depending on the size of your market.

Then came the question of what to create for the ad. The client, after making it clear he did not want to spend big bucks to hire Steven Spielberg to create his video, asked what his options were. Our reply was, “Why not use the videos your manufacturer already provides?”And voilà! Within three or four days we had a 60-second commercial ready to use on air.

We took the high-res videos featuring the things end users love, such as home automation, arming/disarming the system and kids coming home, and we edited it with simple animation that personalized the video with our client’s logo and contact information and a description of the special he was running. We also created a 60-second narration using www.fiverr.com (which cost us only $60) to create and sync the audio with the video, and shazam! We had a professional video that showcased all the cool technology and had a narrator talking about our client’s history within the service area and about a limited-time offer, helping to create urgency — everyone has to get in on a good deal, right?

So there you have it. If you need to create a commercial but don’t want to get a film crew, create one with existing video provided for you from pretty much every manufacturer, go to www.fiverr.com with a script and run a limited-time special. The results are great and we definitely saw a return, but we also noticed after the ad had run for three to four weeks, it was getting a little stale. So make sure to change out your TV ads every three weeks or so with new creative ads or offers.

So again, with this particular client we had enough budget still to run some radio ads, and since we already had some audio from the TV commercial, we did not need to initially come up with original creative content to run on air; we simply killed two birds with one stone by using the same audio we had created for the TV commercial. And like the TV commercials, after three weeks or so we started to lose traction and had to create additional radio commercials with different offers or narration to change it up. But to create additional audio to run on the radio is simple, and any narrator from www.fiverr.com will walk you through the process; they’re pretty handy because they do it all the time and have helped hundreds of others create cool audio to run on the radio.

On www.fiverr.com you can choose from hundreds of professional voice-over artists. Want a British accent? No worries. Want an alluring young voice? They have that too. They’ll even help you to mix in background music and sound effects with your narration.

So there you go; you now have no excuse for not creating awesome TV commercials or ear-candy audio, enticing potential customers by convincing them your security company is the best choice to protect their loved ones and assets.

We hope you enjoyed this nugget because it’s definitely a useful one. Until next time, believe in being different and look out for them big, honkin’ fat purple cows!