Advertising
Advertising is to call public attention to, especially by emphasizing desirable qualities so as to arouse a desire to buy or patronize a product or service. Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. “Mass demand has been created almost entirely through the development of Advertising”
Advertisement Process
- Steps 1 - Briefing: the advertiser needs to brief about the product or the service which has to be advertised and doing the SWOT analysis of the company and the product.
- Step 2 - Knowing the Objective: one should first know the objective or the purpose of advertising. i.e., what message is to be delivered to the audience?
- Step 3 - Research: this step involves finding out the market behavior, knowing the competitors, what type of advertising they are using, what is the response of the consumers, availability of the resources needed in the process, etc.
- Step 4 - Target Audience: the next step is to identify the target consumers most likely to buy the product. The target should be appropriately identified without any confusion. For e.g., if the product is a health drink for growing kids, then the target customers will be the parents who are going to buy it and not the kids who are going to drink it.
- Step 5 - Media Selection: now that the target audience is identified, one should select an appropriate media for advertising so that the customers who are to be informed about the product and are willing to buy are successfully reached.
- Step 6 - Setting the Budget: then the advertising budget has to be planned so that there is no short of funds or excess of funds during the process of advertising and also there are no losses to the company.
- Step 7 - Designing and Creating the Ad: first the design that is the outline of ad on papers is made by the copywriters of the agency, and then the actual creation of ad is done with help of the art directors and the creative personnel of the agency.
- Step 8 - Perfection: then the created ad is re-examined and the ad is redefined to make it perfect to enter the market.
- Step 9 - Place and Time of Ad: the next step is to decide where and when the ad will be shown. The place will be decided according to the target customers where the ad is most visible clearly to them.
- Step 10 - Execution: finally, the advertise is released with perfect creation, perfect placement and perfect timing in the market.
- Step 11 - Performance: the last step is to judge the performance of the ad in terms of the response from the customers, whether they are satisfied with the ad and the product did the ad reached all the targeted people.
If these steps are followed properly then there has to be a successful beginning for the product in the market.
The objective of advertising
The long-term objective of advertising, as of every other business activity, is to increase the firm’s net profits over what they would be without it. In some cases, increased profits are also immediate objectives; but in others, they are not. Perhaps the most important short-term objective of advertising is to provide support for personal selling and other methods of promotion. Advertising is almost never used alone; generally, it is cast in a supporting role to other means of promotion.
However, advertising is an extremely versatile communications tool. Depending upon the marketing situation, companies use advertising to achieve various marketing objectives:
- To do the entire selling job (as in mail-order marketing)
- To introduce a new product (by building brand awareness among potential buyers)
- To force middlemen to handle the product (pull strategy)
- To build brand preference (by making it more difficult for middlemen to sell substitutes)
- To remind users to buy the product (retentive strategy)
- To publicize some change in marketing strategy
- To provide rationalizations for buying
- To combat or neutralize competitors; advertising efforts
- To improve the morale of dealers and/or salesmen
- To acquaint buyers and prospective buyers with new uses of the product.
However, for companies operating under the marketing concept, it is important to bear in mind that advertising should also serve as an effective and efficient source of information for members of the audience. Following the logic of the marketing concept, an information source can only maximally serve the advertiser’s purposes when it serves the target audience’s purposes.
Budgeting For Your Advertising Campaign
If there is a golden rule for running an advertising campaign, it is that you have to stick to it.
Sustained Advertising = Recognition = Trust = Sales.
Your advertising campaign is a long-term investment that takes time to show a return. Your budget must reflect this reality. When setting your advertising campaign budget, there are two costs to consider: Production costs and Media costs.
Budgeting for both is critical for success.
- Advertising Production Costs: We certainly do not want you wasting money on your advertising campaign. Companies that cut corners on advertising planning and production are wasting a large percentage of their budget.
- Quality advertising production costs money: high quality advertising production really worth it for your advertising campaign? If you did everything right with your advertising, in theory you could reach your target market 100% of the time with the right message
- Here is one more thing to consider: good planning and production work have a long-life span. Many companies never change their basic message and advertising. They start with professional marketing and production, and they use it indefinitely.
- Make no mistake: Advertising planning and high-quality production are critical to your advertising campaign. Professionally produced materials make you look good, and they bring you customers. That is what Professional Advertising is all about.
- Setting a Media Budget: Setting a media budget for your advertising campaign can be tricky, especially for new companies. Spending too little on your advertising campaign will cost you more than spending too much. You need to stay in front of your customers. A random or infrequent advertising campaign schedule equals wasted money. If you want to grow your business, you will probably want to invest more than your competitors are spending as a percentage of sales. A larger company will do better to spend money on some combination of print, mail, radio, Internet, outdoor, and/or television advertising than to spend the budget all in one place. For smaller companies, you will do better to spread your advertising campaign budget between print and direct mail to get the best return for your investment. But there are no hard rules in advertising. You will also get a better response if you run smaller, more frequent ads. Don’t trade frequency for a one-time big bang in your advertising campaign. Don’t trade frequency in print for a less frequent television schedule.
Here are some of the methods companies use to set their advertising campaign budgets.
- The Task Objective Method: How much money do you need to spend to reach the specific goals for the advertising campaign? This is especially effective when you are trying to grow rapidly. Some advertising campaign strategies call for heavy spending upfront in order to win long-term customers.
- The Historical Method: How much did you spend to reach your sales goals in previous years or periods? You will find that by tracking your ads, you will know in advance what you need to do to accomplish your goals.
- Share of Market & Voice: This method links market share to advertising expenditure. A company with a 20% market share would spend slightly more than 20% of the total advertising dollars spent in the market for that product or service.
- Competitive Parity: With competitive parity you spend in equal amounts to your competitors as a percentage of market shares. This is a self-defenses method of budgeting marketing and advertising expenditures.
- The Combination Method: The best advertising campaign budget you can set will be based on some combination of all of the previous models. You want to maintain a minimum level of advertising, fulfil specific goals, maintain your market share, keep up with your competitors, and compare everything to last year.
- The Percent of Sales Method: The advertising campaign budget is a constant percentage of desired sales. A car manufacturer may spend less than 1% of sales, while a small retailer may budget 3 -7% of sales. A jewellery store may budget 8 -12% of sales and other companies may budget 20% or more. If the budget is set to actual sales, and sales drop, you do not want to cut your advertising campaign budget, or you will get caught in a downward spiral.
