Marketing, Advertising and Promotion are the cornerstone of any successful business.
This site was designed to help small to medium size business develop there marketing skills, learn new things, and get some advice from the experts.
It is written by business people who own and run there own succesfull small business and have considerable real world experience with marketing and promoting their enterprises.
We all know that good Promotions with the right merchandise can be an effective tool for generating motivation from a buyer. The right Promotional products can add real value to a brand allowing for higher investment leverage.
Example: Let’s, Say you buy a branded merchandise product for $2 that has an apparent value of $10. You get a value adding benefit almost immediately. Great marketing merchandise alongside your brand extends your advertising budget more than most promotional marketing will not.
However, it does comes down to choosing the RIGHT promotional product for you. The wrong promotional product can be disasterious. A. A Bad or tarnished image B. A bunch of money (bad promo products) just sitting useless in a corner.
5 stages of a well managed advertising campaign
- Stage 1 : Set Objectives
- Stage 2 : Set the Budget
- Stage 3 : Determine the key Advertising Message
- Stage 4 : Decide which Advertising medium to use
- Stage 5 : Evaluate the Advertising Campaign
Stage 1. Marketing Advertising Promotion : An Introduction
Any small business owner will understand the anxiety you feel whenever you release an advertisement for your company. The then impending agony of waiting around for that phone to ring, only to find silence.
Sounds like you? Have you ever been waiting for the stampede of people coming to your store, all those people who read your advertisement. But nothing. Expecting everyone you meet to want that promotional product with your logo on it. The very same product you now have 5 boxes of under your desk, that nobody wants. We’ll don’t worry, your not alone, we have all been there.
That’s where the articles on this site will help you! We can help you with those marketing black spots in your business. Show you how to manage an effective advertising campaign, how to write better advertisements, discuss technique’s and strategies. Learn new methods of marketing. Buzz words like punk, viral and gorilla marketing strategies. We have tips for creating awesome promotions using products, themes and events. All contained within these pages.
The wealth of marketing knowledge is forever growing and will continue to do so. So, every good business marketer knows you need to be continuously learning and growing to stay ahead of the pack. Good luck for now!
Stage 2 : Set the Budget for Advertising Campaign
The Budget will be determined by several factors associated with the objectives listed above plus many more. Primarily the role of advertising is to create demand for either a product or service but advertising is also used to bring awareness, in the commerial sense (business), the moral sense (often charity driven) and, in the case of professions, in the ethical sense.
New products will often require a longer campaign and therefore larger budget to build awareness and encourage consumers to trial the related product/service. A highly differentiated product or service may require specific-type advertising to set it apart from competitors – emphasising the points of difference.
Setting the budget is not easy…after all how can a business predict the right amount to spend? Where to allocate it? Which Medium?
Stage 3 : Determine the key Advertising Message
Spending alot doesn’t guarantee success. Research suggests that clarity and simplicity of the message is often more important than the amount spent. The advertising message must be carefully presented to impact the target audience (customers). Successful advertising usually has the following characteristics..
a) Meaningful – Customers should find the message relevant.
b) Distinctive – Capture customers attention
c) Believable – A very difficult task since research has shown that customers doubt advertising in general.
Stage 4 : Decide on Advertising medium for Campaign
These days there are a variety of advertising media to choose from and a campaign could use more than one. The key factors when choosing the right media include:
a) Reach – what proportion of target audience will be exposed to the advertising?
b) Frequency – how many times will the target customer be exposed to the advertising message?
c) Media Impact – Where, if the customer sees the advertising, will it havethe most impact? For example will the advertising have more impact on television, in a newspaper, in a ’specific focus’ magazine or Internet based.
Another key decision in relation to advertising media relates to ‘timing’ of the campaign. Some products/services are particularly suited to seasonal campaigns on television whereas for other products a regular ‘year round’ campaign in newspapers and/or specialty magazines is more appropriate.
Stage 5 : Evaluate the Advertising Campaign
The evaluation should focus on two key areas but could include more:
(1) The Communication Effects – Is the intended message beingdelivered effectively and to the intended audience?
(2) The Sales Effects – Has the campaign generated the intended Salesfigures or growth? (difficult to measure)
Next week we will expand these topics further and include fresh info and ideas on Marketing-Advertising-Promotion.