Sound Advice – Points to Consider in Managing Your Advertising
The main objective of advertising is to create awareness, increase product sales thereby increasing profits. This serves three basic purposes. Recruiting new customers recover your lost customers and maintain the loyalty of your list of present customers. In a capsule, what is being aimed at is growth and expansion of your business.
As you implement your advertising function, the following are crucial issues that needs considering:
• Development of your advertising objectives
To establish advertising objectives is not only to provide you a basis for running an advertising campaign. It will also give you a basis for planning out future programs and measure the effectiveness of past advertising effort.
The objectives of the advertising must not be separated from a corporate identity. It also has to aim at gaining the confidence of the public for its product and services.
Advertising slogans are sometimes included although it does not aim at promoting the product more than providing the market with the principles on which the company stands on.
• Determining the advertising budget
After the advertising objectives are arrived at, budget determination follows. Here, a budget is established in order to reach the objectives. Many marketers find it not simple to determine this stage as variables follow in which measures of affectivity of the campaign is established at just the right mix.
This is because advertisers avoid reaching a point of diminishing return. The reason for this is that at some point, increased expenditures will not result to increased sales.
• Media selection
You will have a wide range of media vehicle or combinations of vehicles to choose from. These could be the web, magazines, outdoor advertising, billboards, posters, radio the classified adds, brochures, collateral materials etc. The point to consider though is your target markets characteristic. What are for example their social, educational, geographic, and economic background and the cost of reaching them through a selected medium.
• The message that is to be communicated
To encourage preference for your products, you can break down this goal into more specific objectives:
o Informing potential buyers of your products features.
o Announcement of the availability of your product or service.
o Comparison of your product against its competitor.
o Announcing a new brand
o Price change announcements
o To demonstrate the benefits when buying your products.
o Informing buyers where or how your products can be bought.
o To demonstrate how the new product can be used.
o Informing your potential buyers about your company’s technological capability, skills, facility, credentials and expertise.
• Evaluation of the results of the advertising effort
After each effort you would naturally want to appreciate and evaluate the effect that your add made.
During the evaluation, extreme care must be taken into consideration to arrive at a more accurate analysis because often, other factors affect sales other than your advertising.
Because the success or failure of the advertising may not always result to a corresponding sales rate, the following can be adopted:
o Determine the percentage of your target market that has been exposed to your add.
o Know the recall rate or your publics add recognition.
o Was there a change in your products usage or a change in brand awareness?
o Was there a change in your publics’ attitude towards you, your product or other specific component of your product or service?
Getting this information will help you determine and improve on your next campaign so you avoid losing money on advertising.
|
