Designing Effective Promotion and Advertising Strategies

Advertising represents the talking part of the dialogue referred to in ► Sect. 12.2. In practice, this process is much more complex, as is hinted at by the encoding/decoding model. Advertising, however, is just one element of the promotional mix, which includes personal selling and word of mouth, particularly in the case of services. It may be just as applicable to many nonprofit organizations. It is also, increasingly, a vehicle for corporate promotion. In all these cases, it is a pull technique (persuading consumers to pull the product through retailers) rather than a push technique (selling by sales promotions, for instance, into the channels). Promotion provides a message to create awareness, interest, understanding, attitudes, and purchase decision. The message should ideally contain a unique selling proposition, although it should also be consistent with past campaigns. Recognizing that this message is also passed by word of mouth may be advisable, with opinion leaders playing an important role. Media selection and buying require specialist knowledge and skills but essentially aim to achieve satisfactory (cumulative) coverage with the requisite opportunities to see (OTS) at an economic cost. Although different markets may require different kinds of media to accomplish the same advertising objective, globally minded companies are increasingly employing pattern standardization or globally standardized ads to develop a global image for their products and to reduce advertising costs [57]. The main media are newspaper, television, radio, movies, billboards, and cyberspace. In recent years, an explosive growth of personal computer users with modems has created an electronic form of advertising media through the internet, Prodigy, and other cyberspace linkages. This form of communication promises to create a more personalized, two-way interactive advertising that spans across national boundaries in the near future. Like other budgets, advertising budgets are determined by a number of means, based on (1) affordability, (2) a percentage of sales, (3) competitive parity, and (4) objective and task. Advertising effectiveness can be measured against its objectives, including (1) building awareness, (2) creating favorable attitudes, and (3) maintaining customer loyalty. Advertising budgets determine whether or not to use an advertising agency. Use of an advertising agency represents a strategic decision because the success of the organization will depend largely on the success of that agency. Therefore, careful agency selection is important.