Objectives to Consider when Managing Your Advertising
The main objectives of advertising are to create awareness, increase product sales and ultimately increasing profits.
This serves three basic purposes. Recruiting new customers, recover your lost customers and maintain the loyalty of your present customers.
What you are aiming for is the growth and expansion of your business.
As you implement your advertising plan, the following are crucial issues that need considering:
• Development of your advertising objectives
Establish your advertising objectives to provide a basis for running your advertising campaign.
To give you a basis for planning future programs and measure the effectiveness of your advertising effort.
The objectives of the advertising must not clash with your corporate identity.
Its aim is to gain the confidence of the public for your products and services.
Use advertising slogans to build an identity for the company.
• Determining the advertising budget
After the advertising objectives are arrived at, a budget must be set
to control costs.
There is a point of diminishing return where increased expenditures does 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 advertising campaign you need to measure and evaluate the effect your advertising has made.
During the evaluation, extreme care must be taken to eliminate
other factors that may have affected sales other than your advertising.
Because the success or failure of the advertising may not always result to a corresponding sales increase,
the following can be adopted:
o Determine the percentage of your target market that has been exposed to your advert.
o Know the recall rate or your publics advert recognition.
o Was there a change in your product 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 your next campaign.
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