Advertising and Public Relations
What Can Advertising Do for My Business?
- Remind customers and prospective customers about the benefits of your product or service
- Establish and maintain your distinct identity
- Enhance your reputation
- Encourage existing customers to buy more of what you sell
- Attract new customers and replace lost ones
- Slowly build sales to boost your bottom line
- Promote your business to customers, investors, and others
What Will Advertising Not Do for My Business?
- Create an instant customer base
- Cause an immediate sharp increase in sales
- Solve cash flow or profit problems
- Substitute for poor or indifferent customer service
- Sell useless or unwanted products or services
What are the Important Virtues of Advertising?
- You have complete control
- Unlike public relations efforts, you can determine exactly where, when, and how often your message will appear, how it will look, and what it will say
- You can more readily target your audience and aim at very specific geographic areas
- You can be consistent, presenting your company’s image and sales message repeatedly to build awareness and trust
- A distinctive identity will eventually become clearly associated with your company, just like McDonald’s golden arches
- Customers will recognize you quickly and easily if you present yourself consistently
What are the Drawbacks to Advertising?
- Advertising works best and costs least when planned and prepared in advance
- It takes time and persistence—you must continually remind prospects and customers about the benefits of doing business with you
What Should My Blueprint for Advertising Look Like?
(1) Design the Framework
- What is the purpose of your advertising program?
- The first step is to define your company’s long-range goals, then map out how marketing can help you attain them
- Focus on advertising routes that are complementary to your marketing efforts
- Set measurable goals so you can evaluate the success of your advertising campaign
- How much can you afford to invest?
- Always remember that whatever amount you allocate will never seem like enough, but if you take your income, expenses, and sales projections, you can determine how much you can afford to invest, which will determine how you will advertise
(2) Fill in the Details
- What are the features and benefits of your product or service?
- Who is your audience?
- Create a profile of your best customer, being as specific as possible because this will be the focus of your ads and media choices
- Who is your competition?
- If you know who your competition is, you will be able to explain to prospective customers why your product or service is special or why they should do business with you instead of someone else, as well as helping you find a niche in the marketplace
(3) Arm Yourself with Information
- There are many sources of information to help you keep in touch with industry, market, and buying trends without conducting expensive market research, such as U.S. government materials from the Census Bureau and Department of Commerce
(4) Build Your Action Plan—Evaluating Media Choices
- Your next step is to select the advertising vehicles you will use to carry your message and establish an advertising schedule
- In most cases, knowing your audience will help you choose the media that will deliver your sales message most effectively
- Use as many tools as are appropriate and affordable
- You can also stretch your media budget by taking advantage of co-op advertising programs offered by manufacturers
- When developing your advertising schedule, be sure to take advantage of any special editorial or promotional coverage planned in the media you select
- For example, newspapers often run special sections that feature real estate, investing, home and garden improvement, and tax advice
(5) Using Other Promotional Avenues
- Advertising extends beyond the media described above
- There are many other options to advertise including imprinting your company name and graphic identity on pens, paper, clocks, calendars, and other giveaway items for your customers
- You can also put your message on billboards, inside buses and subways, on vehicle and building signs, on point-of-sale displays and shipping bags
- You can also co-sponsor events with nonprofit organizations and advertise your participation, attend or display at consumer or business trade shows, create tie-in promotions with other businesses, distribute newsletters, conduct seminars, undertake contests or sweepstakes, send advertising flyers along with billing statements, use telemarketing to generate leads for salespeople, or develop sales kits with brochures, product samples, or application leads
- The number of promotional tools used to deliver your message and repeat your name is limited only by your imagination
The Advertising Campaign
- You can only be ready for action when you are armed with knowledge of your industry, market, and audience, a media plan and schedule, your product or service’s most important benefits, and measurable goals in terms of sales volume, revenue generated, or other criteria
- The first step is to establish the theme that identifies your product or service in all of your advertising to reflect your special identity or personality and the particular benefits of your product or service because tag lines reinforce the single most important reason for buying your product or service
Comparing Advertising and Public Relations Advertising Promotion
- Space or time in the mass media must be paid for, but coverage in mass media is not paid for
- You can determine the message with advertising, while with public relations, the interpretation of the message is in the hands of the media
- Timing, communication, and message sponsorship also varies
- The intention of advertising is to inform, persuade, or remind about a product, usually with the intention of making a sale, while the intention of public relations efforts is often to create good will, to keep the company and/or product in front of the public, or to humanize a company so the public relates to its people or reputation
- Writing style is also different between the two forms
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