Marketing, Promotion, Advertising and Media Plans

One of the most difficult things for a business person to do is to decide to spend money on advertising. Why? You often get no immediate result, you don't know how to advertise, you don't know the media, you write the check and get no product use gratification, you have no budget.

It is entirely possible to waste your money

Promotions - a catchall phrase for all of the firm's marketing communications including:

• Advertising
• Sales Force (Personal selling)
• Sales Promotions & Point Of Purchase (POP)
• Publicity

Public Relations is not really a promotional tool in that it is geared towards different goals other than sales. (see below)

1) Personal Selling - two-way personal interaction by phone or in person with your consumers.

2) Sales Promotions - direct inducements to affect behavior or reinforce ideas and feelings; often offering extra value, as an incentive to consumers to cause immediate sales or changes of behavior: samples, coupons, price-off deals, rebates, premiums, games & contests. POP's/Counter displays, racks, banners, in- & out-of-store sinage
Using Promotional Tools rollover

Using Promotional Tools link

3) Publicity - advocacy communications without direct media cost to generate interest in the company and its products and to increase sales, usually through the creation of newsworthy events by the company. These efforts will have a cost and the events themselves may be advertised.

4) Advertising - (you'll see in a minute)

Public Relations - use of the media without media cost to disseminate favorable & credible news about a product, brand, firm, organization, or a person. The goal is usually image building more than to effect sales or consumer behavior directly. Tools are press releases, the exclusive story, interviews, the press conference, the photo & caption, the bylined article, speeches, and house publications.

We can look at these options as the "Promotions Mix", each with differing effectiveness and efficiency when meeting marketing goals.

The Promotions Mix components can be compared for cost versus individual or mass market reach.

What is Word of Mouth?

• Diffusion of Innovation
• Innovators & Early Adopters
• Connecting with your Viral constituencies
• How will you generate Word of Mouth? Discussion 1
  

So what is ADVERTISING? - any paid form of non-personal, point-of-view communications advocating goods, services, and ideas by an identified sponsor, including the following Media Tools:

These are known as Media Tools. The question is which medium is the best tool to carry the message to a particular audience to achieve a particular objective or outcome?

Vehicles: are the next , more tactical level of strategizing - a specific media tool choice, where the medium is radio and the vehicle is KMBY, 60 seconds, 8/3/09, evening drive time news. For television = ?

Display vs. Classified - display ads include graphics and classifieds are text boxes in a directory format.
Cooperative - two or more parties share the cost and mix their elements (messages, logos, etc.) in an ad aimed at common markets.
Business to Business (B2B) - another businesses are the target market.
Business to Consumer (B2C) - the target market is the end users
Direct Response - the objective of the ad is immediate action or behavior.
Corporate & Institutional - used to affect the business' image, stock, recruiting, etc., public relations.
National, Regional, Local (mostly retail), International - usually refers to the circulation (print) or broadcast coverage area (tv, radio) geographically.
Spot Advertising - When a national company inserts individual ads into selected local media in selected markets rather than blanketing through a network
Campaign - the combination of media and vehicles used, # of ad insertions of each type, reach and other outcome goals, buying and scheduling, over a period of time.
Duration - the length of time the ad campaign runs; short durations may inhibit results just as they are starting to be effected in an audience.
Reach - total number of individuals in your target audience that are exposed to your message at least once by the combination of media and vehicles used.
Message - includes the copy (words), design (graphics, layout, as architecture, audio, video components, etc.) and production - the combining of these elements.

Advertising is planned and executed either by the business organization itself, or by experts known as ad agencies (15% fee for billed media plus some production costs), or by the business itself with the aid of experts for some aspect of the advertising process (such as graphics arts, layout, or production).

Below is a typical Ad Agency organization and job titles with differing skill sets.

Local Agency Hutton & Sherer

• Planning - research, target marketing or audience selection, campaign planning, setting objectives.
• Creative - graphic arts, layout, scripting, production, copywriting.
• Media Planning, Buying & Scheduling - budgeting, buying media time, media planning for flights, patterns, & media choices, distributing ad materials (cassettes, slides, artwork).
  

a) Market Research & Competitive Analysis
1) Market/Audience Targets
2) Marketing --> Media Objectives
3) Message/Creative

• Message Formation
• Media
  • proximity
  • exposure (see/hear/read)
• Creative
  • attention (proximity)
  • retention (learning)
  • results (objective)
  • recall (at appropriate time)

4) Budget
5) Re-think 1 thru 3 in light
of Budget Restrictions
6) Media choices

• medium
• vehicle
• insertions, reach, frequency, GRP's, flighting plans & scheduling plans

7) Promotional Support

• sales promotion devices
• publicity
• packaging, branding and positioning

8) Media Scheduling & Buying

• materials
• implementation
  
  

General Goals:

• market vs. demarket
• primary vs. selective demand
• entire market or segment

Categories for specific objectives are:

• Awareness/thinking/information
  • non-recognition
  • recognition
  • specific learning (knowledge, information)
• Attitudes/feelings/judgments
  • rejection
  • liking
  • preference
  • insistence
• Behavioral
  • do without
  • postpone
  • substitute
  • trial use
  • 1st time buy
  • regular repeat purchase
    

1) Define the task - increase brand recall

2) Degree of change - from 20% recall to 80%

3) Define the audience - 18-34 year old men with Lear Jets

4) Time period - within the next three months