Objectives of Advertising and Marketing

Advertising has great influencing power. Ever wondered how a 30 second film or radio spot or a half page magazine ad impacts a buyer’s perception and influences his or her buying decisions? Advertising’s power to alter markets and enhance a brand’s profit margins is astounding.  The impact varies depending upon the results desired. The short term impact of advertising includes creating awareness, providing information, etc. Its long term impact includes creating brand perception, building brand image, giving brand a personality that has an emotional connect with its audience.

The potential and the promise advertising shows are great but, if used wisely one can get desired results only when used it wisely. The need is to create better advertising. Creating great advertising is a team work. It requires all the teams to work together including the advertising agency, Research Company and the client to work together.

Firstly, the client must develop a sound plan for his brand and not a self-delusion. The client must define the objective of advertising in the marketing plan and what he wants that plan to achieve. If the budget allows, the advertising should be tested at an early stage in the creative process by using tools like storyboards. Early testing gives advertisers the opportunity to tweak or alter the advertisement for better before you spend the big buck on the final production. Doing these early testing gives advertisers the assurance that his strategy is in place.

Put your product’s benefit in your headline. This gives advertisers better prospects of grabbing the readers’ attention and thus generating the urge of getting more information. Talk to the point. Today, nobody wants to waste his precious time, especially for advertisements, including your target audience.  And so, make sure your communication message is precise, easy to understand and conveys the message in minimum words. Wherever needed, use bullet points, subheads and graphics to communicate important inputs.

Another thing that works wonder in promoting a brand is recommendations from other users. Testimonial ads can do the job as your prospects tend to trust their peers telling it like it is. As an advertiser, you can benefit from it by quoting positive comments from your happy customers in your ads. Just make sure to be specific while writing a testimonial. Use the full name and the company affiliation of the customer whose comment you are quoting in your ads. This makes you look more credible and your ads more convincing.

 ‘Wrap ads’ art another cost effective strategy to promote your brand. Wrap ads are fractional ads that are designed to look like new product announcements all published on a single page surrounding an island half page ad. 

If you wish that your prospects should respond, better give them a valid reason to do so. Whenever you’re writing the call to action for an ad, keep in mind the phrase “what’s in it for the customer?” This is the deciding factor for your prospect customers that will have an impact on sales lead generation. So, choose your words carefully and make the most of your advertisements.