Marketers must make the following important decisions while developing an advertising program: 1. Setting Advertising Objectives 2. Setting the Advertising Budget 3. Determine the Key Advertising Messages 4. Media Decisions 5. Evaluating Advertising Campaigns.
Step 1: To Set Advertising Objectives:
An advertising objective is a specific communication task to be achieved with a specific target audience during a specified period of time.
Advertising objectives can be divided into three main categories:
(a) To Inform:
Informative advertising aims to create awareness and knowledge of new products or new features of existing products, e.g. tell customers about a new product policies, promotional schemes, availability of products etc.
(b) To Persuade:
Persuasive advertising aims to create liking, preference, conviction, and purchase of a product or service. Some persuasive advertising uses comparative advertising, which makes a clear comparison of the attributes of two or more brands. E.g. encourage customers to switch to a different brand.
(c) To Remind:
Reminder advertising aims to stimulate repeat purchase of products and services.
Secondary Objectives of Advertising:
(i) Stimulate an increase in sales
(ii) Remind customers of the existence of a product
(iii) Inform customers
(iv) Build a brand image
(v) Build customer loyalty and relationship
(vi) Change customer attitudes
Step 2: Decision on the Advertising Budget:
It is the estimation of expenditure on various components of advertising. It should match with the objectives of a business firm. The amount spent on advertising should be relevant to the potential sales impact of the campaign. Advertising budgets is finalized by marketing manager and media agency.
Factors to be considered while setting the advertising budget:
(i) Stage in the Product Life Cycle:
New products typically receive large advertising budgets to build awareness and to gain consumer trial. Advertising budget for a new product may be different from a product in maturity stage, new products tend to need a larger advertising budget to help build awareness and to encourage consumers to trial the product. Established brands usually are supported with lower advertising budgets as a ratio to sales.
(ii) Market Share and Consumer Base:
High market share brands usually require less advertising expenditure as a percentage of sales to maintain share, it is due to popularity and awareness of customer about brand. It is less expensive to reach consumers of a widely used brand than to reach consumers of low-share brands. If a new company wants to increase its market share it will need high investments on advertising campaign.
(iii) Competition in Market:
Advertisement budget depends on level of competition in market competition can be seen more in the field of automobile, electronic appliances, telecommunication, banking etc. products which are having close substitutes in market needs more expenditure on advertising. In a market with a large number of competitors and high advertising spending, a brand must advertise more heavily to be heard.
(iv) Advertising Frequency:
The number of repetitions needed to put across the brand’s message to consumers has an important impact on the advertising budget. Higher the frequency higher would be budget.
(v) Product Substitutability:
Brands in a commodity class require heavy advertising to establish a differential image. Advertising is also important when a brand can offer unique physical benefits or features.
Stage 3: Determine the Key Advertising Messages and Deciding the Copy:
Research suggests that the clarity of the advertising message is often more important than the amount spent. The advertising message must be carefully targeted to impact the target customer audience.
A successful advertising message should have the following characteristics:
a. Meaningful:
Customers should find the message relevant, easy to understand.
b. Distinctive:
Capture the customer’s attention.
c. Believable:
A difficult task, since research suggests most consumers doubt the truth of advertising in general.
Message evaluation and selection of a good advertisement normally focuses on one core selling proposition, messages should be rated on desirability, exclusiveness, and believability. Message execution can be decisive for highly similar products, such as detergents, cigarettes, coffee, and soft drinks. Advertising does not overstep social and legal norms.
Copy writing is the next step of advertisement programme it is a specialized form of communicating ideas that are meant to serve the requirements of modern marketing. It helps in establishing link between advertising and their prospects. It may also use to promote the acceptance of idea and utilized words to convey message having commercial information.
The term copy includes every single feature that appear in the body of advertisement, copy – is an all-embracing term covering all that appears in an advertisement the written matter, pictures, labels and design. Developing copy is a creative process copy development is mostly done by professional advertising agencies.
Stage 4: Decide which Advertising Media to Use:
There are a variety of advertising media from which to choose. A campaign may use one or more of the media alternatives.
The key factors in choosing the right media include:
(a) Reach:
What proportion of the target customers will be exposed to the advertising? It is the number of different persons or households exposed to a particular media schedule at least once during a specified time period.
(b) Frequency:
How many times will the target customer be exposed to the advertising message? Frequency is the number of times within the specified time period that an average person or household is exposed to the message.
(c) Media Impact:
Impact is the qualitative value of an exposure through a given medium where, if the target customer sees the message – will it have most impact? For example, does an advert promoting holidays for elderly people have more impact on Television if so, when and which channels or in a national newspaper or perhaps a-magazine focused on this segment of the population.
Another key decision in relation to advertising media relates to the timing of the campaign. Some products are particularly suited to seasonal campaigns on television like advertisements of durables on Diwali whereas for other products, a regular advertising campaign throughout the year in media such as newspapers and television.
Stage 5: Evaluation of the Advertising Campaign:
Success of advertising depends on planning and control of advertising campaign it should be evaluated by the advertisers. Most measurement of advertising effectiveness deals with specific advertisement and campaigns. A proposed campaign should be tested in one or a few cities first and its impact evaluated before rolling it out nationally.
Most advertisers try to measure the communication effect of an advertisement that is, its potential effect on awareness, knowledge, or preference. They would also like to measure the advertisement sales effect.
The evaluation of an advertising campaign should focus on two key areas:
1. The Communication Effects—is the intended message being communicated effectively and to the intended audience?
2. The Sales Effects—has the campaign generated the intended sales growth. This second area is much more difficult to measure.
Bases for the measurement of advertisement success:
(i) Number of enquiries from advertisement
(ii) Number of enquiries converted into sales
(iii) Test customer awareness both before and after the advertising campaign
(iv) Number of enquiries
(v) Test customer awareness
(vi) Number of requests for further information
(vii) Test customer awareness of brand recognition and perceived values
(viii) Levels of repeat purchase
(ix) Levels of customer retention
(x) Measure demographic profile of purchases
(xi) Measure type of goods ordered by new purchasers
(xii) Increase in sales by comparing with previous data.