Due to the stiff competition that businesses continue to experience, business managers and owners must advertise in the media to create service and product awareness, generate more sales and revenues, and build their company image and reputation.
Indeed, one scholar by the name of Edgar Watson Howe remarked that, “doing business without advertising is like winking a girl in the dark: you know what you are doing, but nobody else does.”
To stay afloat, business managers must delegate substantial amounts of money to advertise their products and services. According to Sissors, Baron, and Ephron (2002), advertising is viewed as the paid, non-personal promotion of an idea, cause, service, or product by a previously identified sponsor attempting to persuade or inform a particular target audience. It is mostly used to promote new services and products. Since the beginning of time, advertising has taken many different forms.
For example, archeologists have uncovered rock paintings along Phoenician trade routes used to advertise wares as well as walls painted in Rome announcing gladiator fights. According to Lee and Johnson (1999), advertising has evolved from this early beginning to take a multiplicity of forms and to penetrate nearly every aspect of the modern society.
Having explained advertising, it is only imperative that I say something on media. According to Sissors, Baron, and Ephron (2002), a medium is a self-effacing word describing something that is intermediate or in-between.
A medium is a means not an end. Media is the means through which the advertising will be relayed to potential customers. According to Lee and Johnson (1999), there are various mechanisms for advertising, which includes billboards, banners at sporting events, internet websites, and newspapers, logos on clothing, radio spots, magazines, and television commercials.
All these types of media would be discussed in detail in this coursework. It is up to the business managers to decide on which type of advertising media would best fit the needs of the company. Various factors are considered when deciding on the type of advertising media to use. Below, I mention a few of the factors.
Factors to consider when deciding on advertisement media
Advertising Budget
It is imperative for business managers to set an advertising budget for each product once they identify their advertising objectives. According to Lee and Johnson (1999), developing an advertising budget is often one of the difficult processes because brand managers want to be given a large resource allotment to promote their products and services.
It is the function of business managers to ensure that the established advertising budget is in harmony with the overall company objectives. If a huge sum of money is spent on advertising, unnecessary expenditures will curtail profits. In the same vein, sales volume will not achieve its potential if too little money is spent on advertising.
The dilemma that is constantly faced by marketing mangers is determining how much is “too much” or what spending level is “too little” (Sissors, Baron, & Ephron, 2002). Before the advertising budget is established, managers must take into consideration other market factors such as competition, advertising frequency, clutter, product differentiation, market share, and stage in the product life cycle.
Advertising frequency
Before choosing on the advertising media to use, business managers must first decide on the number of times an advertisement should be repeated during a given period to a product or service’s name, message, and other crucial information. In order to achieve a high advertising frequency, a larger advertising budget is necessary.
According to Porter (2008), product and service lifetime as well as buyer profile need to be taken into consideration when drawing up the advertising frequency. For example, moving business entities conduct most of their businesses around the end of the month. Advertisements taking place after the beginning of the month are most likely to be ineffective.
Media impact
Business managers must first evaluate how effective the advertisement would be through the various media outlets. Based on its products and services, a company must decide the best method to maximize consumer awareness and interest (Bhargava, 2007). For example, a company like Mercedes-Benz, which markets expensive vehicles would fair better when it advertises on specialty car magazines than on the television.
The magazines are likely to reach a high percentage of its potential customers. A thorough analysis must be carried out on the strengths and weaknesses of each advertising media in relation to cost before money is spent on any advertising media.
Media timing
According to Nigel et al. (1999), companies must first decide on where to run the advertisements. They must also decide whether the want to employ a pulsing or a continuous pattern of advertising. Pulsing advertisements are scheduled disproportionately within a given time frame. For example, a company can decide to run twenty-five television commercials over a three month period to promote the precise products that it want to sell.
The advantages of pulsing strategy is that the company could end up spending less sums of money on advertising over a shorter time frame but still gain the same recognition as the advertising campaign is more intense. Continuous advertising strategy is whereby advertisements are run on a programmed basis for a given time frame.
The obvious advantage of the strategy is that an advertising campaign can run longer and provide more contact and exposure over time. For example, a business can commission an advertising campaign for a particular service or product that last for three years, hoping that the product or service will stick in the minds of customers.
Reach
According to Hong and Leckenby (1996), business managers must first evaluate the percentage of consumers in the target market who will be exposed to the advertising campaign for a given time frame before deciding on the advertising media to use. Companies must go for the advertising media that has the possibility of reaching close to 100 percent of its targeted audience.
The basic here is that the more the target customers are exposed to the message, the higher the chances for future sales. After all the above considerations have been evaluated and vetted, company managers must then decide on the best advertisement media to use
