Advertising

Communication for Marketing and Selling

Effective communication about your product, services and ideas is an important key to boost the image of the company, the brand, sales and overall profitability. It is of two types:

• Mass communication or communication using mass media
• Personal communication with prospective customers

Here, in this write-up, we are going to focus only on mass media communication.

Mass Communication

Marketers can use one or more of following mass communication systems:

• Advertising
• Sales promotion
• Events
• Publicity

Here, in this write up, we will focus only on “advertising”. Other systems of mass communication are covered on separate pages.

Advertising

Marketers need to decide about five factors for effective advertising:

• Advertising objective(s)
• Advertising budget
• Advertising Campaign
• Advertising Media
• Advertising effectiveness evaluation

Advertising objective(s)

• Goal or objective of advertising should be specific and quantifiable in terms of quantum of positive impact in the market on a time line.
• Objective of advertising can be to:
  - Inform the buyers about the features and advantages/benefits of your products, services and ideas
  - Create conviction by persuading prospective customers as to why and how your products, services and ideas are better than those of competitors
  - Remind frequently about your offerings
  - Confirm or reinforce as to how the decisions of buyers in buying your offerings is correct by showing satisfied customers

Advertising budget

• Advertising budget is an expense. It is expressed in terms of percentage or ratio of the sales.
• More budget is required for new product introduction, for products where there are already too many competing products, for products needing frequent reminders to the customers.
• Less budget is required for established products where the company has already achieved substantial market share and also where competition is less.

Advertising Campaign

• It mainly deals with what message the marketer wants to send to the market about the products, services and ideas.
• The impact of the message depends on how the advertisement expresses it.
• The process consists of
  - Message generation
  - Creative development
  - Execution
• In the ad campaign, social and legal aspects of advertising should always be considered.

Advertising Media

• The choice of the media and number of exposures of advertising depend on the desired reach, frequency and impact.
• The major media are: television, print media, radio, films and Internet.
• Within these, there is a wide choice of media: newspapers, magazines, yellow pages, television, radio, Internet, outdoor (bill boards, moving vehicles, walls of buildings, public places like cinema theaters etc), direct mailers, brochures etc. Each medium has its advantages and limitations.
• Decisions also need to be made on media timings i.e. scheduling of the advertisement(s) on the chosen media.
• Marketers may choose the ads to appear evenly throughout or concentrated ads only during some specific periods, on and off advertising or a combination of these.

Advertising effectiveness evaluation

• It involves pre-testing (before the ad campaign) and post-testing (after the ad campaign).
• Two major criteria are checked for effectiveness of advertising:
  - Its communication impact (how much is the increase in the awareness of product?)
  - Its sales impact (how much is the increase in sales attributable to adverting?)
• The holistic approach is to find out the share of advertising expenditure by the company on its product (as compared to total expenditures on all products of that type in the market) to achieving the share of voice, share of customers’ mind and heart for the company’s product and ultimately, share of market for the company’s product.

For More Guidance, Assistance, Training and Consultation

Contact: prodcons@prodcons.com

Originally posted at http://advertising-mass-communication.blogspot.com/ Tuesday, March 24, 2009