Three major tools of mass promotion are
advertising, sales promotion and public relations. We define advertising as any paid form
of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an
identified sponsor.
Advertising is the use of paid media by a seller to inform, persuade and remind
about its products or organization is a strong promotion tool. American
marketers spend more than $ 125 billion each year on advertising and it takes
many forms and has many uses. Advertising decision making is a five step process
consisting of decisions 1) about the objectives, 2) the budget, 3) the message,
4) the media and finally 5) the evaluation of results.
Objectives
- Communication objectives
- Sales objectives
Budget
- Affordable approach Percent of sales
- Competitive party
- Objective and task
Media
- Reach, frequency,
- Impact major media types
- Specific media vehicles
- Media timing
Message
- Generation
- Evaluation &
- Selection
- Execution
Evaluation
- Communication impact
- Sales impact
Advertiser should set clear objectives as to
whether the advertising is supposed to inform, persuade or remind buyers.
The advertising budget can be based on what
is affordable, on a percentage of sales, on competitors spending, or on the
objectives and tasks. Some specific factors may be considered related
budgeting: Stage in the product life cycle, Market share, Competition and
clutter, advertising frequency and Product differentiation.
The message decision calls for designing
messages, evaluating them and executing them effectively. The media decision calls for defining reach,
frequency and impact goals; choosing major media types; selecting specific media
vehicles and scheduling the media or deciding of media timing.
Finally, evaluation calls for Measuring the Communication
Effect and Measuring the Sales Effects of advertising before, during and after
the advertising is placed. In measuring communication effect copy testing can
be done before or after an ad is printed broadcast that is availing of methods-
pre-testing, portfolio tests and Laboratory tests. Measuring of sales effect by
many factors such as product features, price and availability.
Sales promotion covers a wide variety of short term
incentive tools- coupons, premiums, contests, buying allowances- designed to
stimulate consumers, the trade and the company’s own sales force. Sales
promotion spending has been growing faster than advertising spending in recent
years. Sales promotion calls for setting sales promotion objectives; selecting tools;
developing, pre-testing and implementing the sales promotion program and
evaluating the results.
Public relations- gaining favorable publicity and creating a
favorable company image- is the least used of the major promotion tools,
although it has great potential for building awareness and preference. Public
relations involves setting PR objectives, choosing PR messages and vehicles,
implementing the PR plan and evaluating PR results.