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ADVERTISING, SALES PROMOTION & PUBLICITY STRATEGY
1. Advertising
Consists of nonpersonal forms of communication conducted through paid media under clear sponsorship.
Over $2 billion is spent on advertising in Australia each year.
Involves varied media, such as radio, magazine, TV, direct mail and so on.
Has multiple purposes (e.g. image building, information dissemination, advocacy, etc.)
The distinctive qualities of advertising are public presentation, persuasiveness, amplified expressiveness and impersonality.
Organisation arrangements vary from one person handling advertising to an internal advertising department to use of advertising agency.
Objectives Setting:
Objectives must flow from prior decision making on the target market, market positioning & marketing mix.
Advertising objectives can be sorted into whether their aim is to inform, persuade or remind.
The inform category includes such advertising objectives as telling the market about a new product, suggesting new uses for the product, informing the market of a price change & explaining how a product works (A subcategory is pioneering advertising which seeks to build primary demand, that is demand for a product category).
The persuade category includes such advertising as building brand preference, encouraging switching to the advertiser's brand, & persuading the customer to purchase now (A subcategory is competitive advertising whose purpose is to build selective demand, that is, demand for a particular brand. Comparative advertising is competitive advertising which seeks to establish the superiority of one brand along one or more product characteristics through specific comparison with one or more other brands in the product class).
The remind category includes such advertising objectives as reminding consumers that the product may be needed in the near future, reminding them where to buy it, keeping it in their mind during off-season, & maintaining its top-of-the-mind awareness. (A subcategory is reinforcement advertising that seeks to assure current users that they have made the right choice).
Budget Decision
Affordable method (where the company sets the advertising budget on the basis of what they think the company can afford.).
Percentage-of-sales method (refers to companies setting their advertising expenditures at a specified percentage of sales - either current or anticipated - or of the sales price).
Competitive-parity method (is where companies set their advertising budgets specifically to match competitors' outlays, that is, to maintain competitive parity.)
Objective-and-task method (calls upon advertisers to develop their budget by (a) defining their advertising objectives as specifically as possible, (b) determining the tasks that must be performed to achieve these objectives, and (c) estimating the costs of performing these tasks.
Other decision models call for estimating the advertising sales response function, showing the relation between different possible levels of advertising expenditure & resulting sales.
Message Decision
Message generation (the activity of developing a number of alternative messages that would help the product achieve its desired positioning in the market).
Message evaluation & selection (achieved by rating the contending messages on the scales of desirability, exclusiveness & believeability).
Message execution (means that the impact of a message depends not only on what is said but on how it is said.
(a) To guide the development of message execution, the advertiser usually prepares a copy strategy statement describing the objective, content, support & tone of the ad.
(b) Examples of execution styles used in advertising are slice-of-life, lifestyle, fantasy, mood or image, musical, personality symbol, technical expertise, scientific evidence & testimonial evidence.
(c) Words that are memorable & attention-getting must be found.
(d) Format elements such as ad size, colour & illustration can make a considerable difference in an ad's impact, as well as its cost.
Media Decision
Reach (must decide on how many persons in the target audience should be exposed to the ad campaign during the specified period of time).
Frequency (must also decide on how many times the average person in the target market should be exposed to the message within the specified time period).
Impact (must also decide on the quality of impact that the exposure should have).
Choosing among major media types means examining the major media types for their capacity to deliver reach, frequency & impact. Look at advantages & disadvantages. The major media types, in order of their advertising volume, are newspapers, television, direct mail, radio, magazines & outdoor. Professional media planners make their choice among these major media by considering several variables, including target audience media habits, product, message & cost.
Selecting specific media vehicles (means choosing the vehicle within each media type that would produce the desired response in a cost-effective way. The cost-per-thousand criterion is calculating the cost per thousand persons reached by a particular vehicle. It should be adjusted for audience quality, audience attention probability, and editorial quality.
Deciding on media timing (have to decide how to schedule the purchased advertising, e.g. Macroscheduling (refers to strategically scheduling the advertising expenditures over the year in response to such factors as the seasonal pattern of industry sales & expected competitive plans). Microscheduling (refers to allocating the purchased advedrtisng over a short period of time to obtain the maximum impact).
2. Campaign Evaluation
Communication-effect research (seeks to discover whether the advertising is achieving the intended communication effects. Procedure is called copy testing).
Ad pre-testing (used to make improvements in the advertising copy to the fullest extent possible prior to its release.
The three major methods are direct ratings, portfolio tests, & laboratory tests).
Ad post-testing (used to assess the actual communication impact of the ad after it has appeared in the media. Two types are recall tests & recognition tests).
Sales-effect research (means measuring the effect of advertising on sales).
Historical approach (involves the researcher in fitting past company sales to past company advertising on a current or lagged basis using advanced statistical techniques).
Experimental design (used to measure the sales impact of advertising by varying the level of advertising and testing this effect on sales.).
3. Sales Promotion
Comprises a variety of tactical promotional tools of a short-term incentive nature designed to stimulate earlier and/or stronger market response.
Tools can be subclassified into tools for consumer promotion (samples, coupons, trading stamps, etc.), trade promotion (buying allowances, free goods, push money, etc.), and sales-force promotion (bonuses, contests, etc.).
Sales promotion activities have grown rapidly in recent years and are most effective when used in conjunction with advertising.
Step 1 Establish the Sales-Promotion Objectives
They are derived from basic marketing communication objectives, which in turn are derived from more basic marketing objectives developed for the product.
Step 2 Select the Sales-Promotion Tools
Samples are offers of a free sample or trial of a product to consumers & is the most effective & most expensive way to introduce a new product.
Price packs (cents-off deals) are offers to consumers of a certain amount of money off the regular price of a product.
Premiums are items of merchandise that are offered at a relatively low cost or free as an incentive or bonus to purchasers of a particular product.
Point-of-purchase (POP) displays & demonstrations take place at the point of purchase or sale, next to the merchandise.
Trade promotion is where manufacturers work out techniques for trying to secure the co-operation of wholesalers & retailers e.g. a buying allowance (a short-term offer of cents-off on each case purchased during a stated time period); a merchandise allowance (compensates dealers for featuring the manufacturer's product in their newspaper ads, radio programs, or handbills); a display allowance (compensates them for carrying or building special displays of the product); free goods (merchandise offered to middlemen who buy a certain quantity); push money (cash or gifts to dealers or their sales force to push the manufacturer's goods); specialty advertising (gift items that carry the company's name that help remind or reinforce a relationship between the manufacturer & middlemen, e.g. pens, matchbooks, calendars, memo pads, etc.).
Business conventions & trade shows (where industry trade associations organize annual or more frequent conventions for their members & typically sponsor a trade show at the same time.
contests (consumers submit an entry - jingle, guestimate, suggestion - to be examined by a panel of judges who will select the best entries).
sweepstakes (consumers submit their names to be included in a drawing of prize winners).
games (consumers receive something every time they make a purchase which may or may not help them win a prize).
sales contests (aimed at dealers or the sales force to induce them to make more sales & prizes will be given to the top performers.
Step 3 Develop the Sales Promotion ProgrammeSize of incentive (the marketer has to determine the most cost-effective size of an incentive).
Conditions for participation (incentives may be made available to everyone or select groups).
Distribution vehicle for promotion (must decide how to promote & distribute the promotion program to the target audience).
Duration of promotion (length of time that the promotion lasts).
Timing of promotion (construct a schedule for sales promotion).
Total sales promotion budget can be developed from ground up, including administrative & incentive costs & expected number of units to be sold or to use a conventional percentage of the total budget for sales promotion.
Step 4 Pre-test Sales Promotion Programme
Pre-tests should be conducted whenever possible to determine if the tools are appropriate, the size of the incentive is optimal, and the method for presentation is efficient.
Step 5 Implement & Control the Sales Promotion Programme
Requires that specific goals & implementation plans for individual promotions be established.
Step 6 Evaluate the Sales Promotion Results
The most common consumer promotion evaluation technique is to compare sales performance movement before, during, & after a promotion.
Consumer-panel data could be used to examine the kinds of people who responded to the promotion & what they switched to after the promotion.
Consumer surveys can be conducted to learn how many recall the promotion, what they thought about it, how many took advantage of it, & how it affected their subsequent brand choice behaviour.
Sales promotions can also be evaluated through carefully arranged experiments that vary such attributes as incentive value, duration & distribution media.
4 .Publicity
The activity of receiving editorial space, as divorced from paid space, in all media read, viewed or heard by a company's customers & prospects, for the specific purpose of assisting in the meeting of sales goals.
Has three distinctive qualities: high credibility, off guard & dramatization.
Public relations practitioners perform the following functions: press relations, product publicity, corporate communications, lobbying & counselling.
The factors indicating that publicity has high potential in the total promotional mix are newsworthiness, stimulus for sales force & dealers, need for credibility & small budget.
Step 1 Establish the Publicity Objectives
The objectives must be stated & then translated into specific goals.
Step 2 Choose the Publicity Messages & Vehicles
Determine whether there are any interesting stories to tell about the product. Creating news (event creation) & finding news are two important tasks.
Step 3 Implement the Publicity Plan
One of chief assets of publicists in getting stories placed is the personal relationships they have established with media editors.
Step 4 Evaluate the Publicity Results
The easiest & most common measure of publicity effectiveness is the number of exposures created in the media.
A better measure calls for finding out what change in product awareness/ comprehension/attitude occurred as a result of the publicity campaign.
Sales & profit impact is the most satisfactory measure, if obtainable