Advertising and promotion are two marketing terms that often get used synonymously. Let’s set the record straight and say that they are not the same thing, in fact, they are quite different. Both advertising and promotion are part of the marketing communications mix along with public relations, personal selling and direct marketing. This mix of marketing tools shows the dynamic approach marketers use to promote a business, venture or event. The 5 P’s of marketing cover every necessary detail in designing an advertisement or promotion: person, place, price, product and promotion.
Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation by an identified sponsor. In other words, when a company pays the local newspaper to advertise their business it would be considered advertising.
The advertising objective is pretty simple. What do you intend to accomplish with your advertisement? The best way to identify your specific goal is to include the task of which you wish to accomplish with a target audience during a specific period of time. An example of an objective would be:
To increase the amount of consumers by 15% who actively choose Our Brand over our primary competitor Their Brand during the course of one year.
As you can see this objective clearly states what the advertisement is intended to do. However, as we will discuss a little later, one of the downsides of advertising is the inability to accurately measure its effectiveness.
Ways to Advertise
So we know that advertising is usually paid for by the company to gain exposure to fulfill their objective. More exposure equals more money which is better for the business. Most companies plan advertisements to get maximum exposure by assessing their target audience, the media platforms available to them (inside of the budget and applicable to the target audience), and the message they are trying to convey. These variables ultimately determine how the advertisement ends up reaching the public. The most popular outlets for advertisements are newspapers, social media, television, direct mail, radio, magazines and outdoor media. Each one of these avenues has its own set of advantages and limitations. Furthermore, the advantage of one media platform in connection with a specific advertisement could be a disadvantage with a different kind of ad.
Selecting which platform to use is a matter of assessment. First, the ad designer must think about the message or product being advertised. What demographic are you targeting? What are the habits of these consumers? Do you have a lot of competition that you need to overcome? Here are some other things to consider:
How long do you want this advertisement to run?
How many people are aiming at advertising to? Is it a niche group or the general public?
What are you hoping to happen from your ad? More sales? Awareness?
How much does it cost to run an ad for your top three media choices? Will you gain your exposure goal by taking the cheaper route?
What is the pattern of the ad? Is it continuous or more like a pulse?
These are just a few examples. Designing the ad to tailor to your objective while taking in all of your goals requires a lot of insight into your customer base. It also requires understanding if your ad is going to be informative, persuasive or a reminder advertisement. Informative advertising is often used by non-profit campaigns looking to raise awareness about a cause – like the AIDS campaign posters you see all over the city of Lagos . This kind of advertising is called primary demand. Persuasive advertising is used to convert customers to your brand and products. It’s called selective demand because you want to persuade them to select you and the ad message indicates why. Lastly, there is the reminder advertisement type and this is simply reminding the consumer about a product or service that they are probably already familiar with.
Pros to Advertising
The benefits of advertising are pretty obvious. If you’re a new company seeking a customer base, advertising is the quickest and most efficient way to get your name out there. Exposure can be very high if the ads are designed correctly and the appropriate media outlets are chosen. Secondly, ads can be incredibly versatile which allows for maximum expression through video, audio, painting, photography, spoken word, and so on. The sky is the limit.
Cons to Advertising
Advertising can be expensive, it can be tuned out by the masses and it’s rather hard to measure its effectiveness. Advertising can cause a sort of public “tune out” where the target audience is being so bombarded with advertisements from all of the other companies that they turn a blind eye to it all (think about when you watch TV and you mute the volume through the 10 minutes of commercials). Advertising is also very expensive. Advertisements are all around us and almost every business utilizes them for their benefit.
Promotion is a short-term incentive to encourage trial or purchase of a good or service.
Promotions act as mini-advertisements that come equipped with incentives for the consumer. Consumers love incentives, if you give someone a reason to shop with you (like free products, coupons, discounts or risk-free trials) customers are most likely to act impulsively and sign up for whatever it is you are offering. Companies use promotions when they are releasing a new product, when they can’t breech the brick wall that surrounds their target audience or when they have a profit goal they would like to reach. Much like advertising, promotions usually begin with an objective and then break down into promotional planning and execution.
Trade and retail promotion is a little bit behind the scenes. It’s something most consumers probably aren’t aware of, but it’s important from a promotional perspective. Trade and retail promotion objectives include:
Convince retailers to carry a brand or product
Get a shelf or space for the product
Promote the brand as a newcomer at the retail store to create a buzz
Push the brand to consumers
When attempting a trade or retail promotion, marketing specialists use trade-promotion tools to accomplish their goal. These tools include:
The idea here is for promotion developers to find a way to push the product into a new market.
Consumer promotion is the most well-known of the promotional channels. Promotion designers develop customer promotion objectives to secure business.
These objectives are:
Get customers to try a product
Persuade customers away from competitors
Get consumers to purchase the product after the trial runs out
Have customer loyalty programs that retain these new customers
Build long-term relationships with the customers
So how do companies do it? They use consumer promotional tools, like:
Limited time specialty items
The goal is to pull the customer into your business and make it so good for them that they don’t ever want to go anywhere else.
The pros are quite simple: promotions attract attention and incentivize consumers to try a product. The business running the promotion will have a better chance of securing a customer base if they can just get the product into their hands (this exhibits confidence and pride in the product being offered). Promotions encourage customer to try a product that they may not normally have. This is a great marketing scheme because it draws in consumers from inside and outside the usual audience. If you’ve ever stayed up late watching infomercials on television than you know all about promotional ads. You can tell promo’s by the tone of immediacy in the advertisement, “get it now before we sell out of this great once-in-a-lifetime deal!” This urgency creates a quick response from consumers who don’t want to be left behind when the promotion is over. A quick response is ideal for campaigns that are trying to increase revenue within a short-period of time.
Promotional advertising has a lot of pluses, but these pluses all have their shadows. In general, advertisers want to create one-of-a-kind campaigns that leave no room for competition. The idea is to be so good and so unique that customers don’t even bother with other companies in your industry. However, when it comes to promotions, competitors can imitate what you’re doing and cause customers to be stuck questioning which promo they should take advantage of. There is no real way around this as once your campaign is live – everyone can see it, including competitors.