14.2 Major Decisions in Developing an Advertising Plan

Establishing Advertising Objectives

The aim of advertising is to communicate something to an audience. The objectives of such communication can vary depending on the goals of the advertisement. Some common objectives of advertising include information, persuasion, comparisons, and reminders. Let’s explore each of these types of advertising objectives in more detail.

Persuasive Advertising

The goal of persuasive advertising is to convince consumers to purchase by highlighting the benefits of a product or service being advertised. Whereas informative advertising often uses facts and figures to introduce a product, persuasive advertising often focuses more on the emotions of the audience. For example, when an automobile company advertises a brand of its SUV, it might include a scene with a family and focus on the safety of the vehicle (see Figure 14.4). This is an attempt to showcase the benefits of the automobile to the consumer on an emotional level.

Figure 14.4 Car advertisements are a form of persuasion intended to appeal to consumers’ emotions by highlighting the product or service benefits to the consumer. (credit: “Audi Q5 Vs BMW X3 Vs Land Rover Freelander 2 - Comparison - NRMA New Cars” by The NRMA/flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Push Strategy versus Pull Strategy

After choosing an objective for the advertising plan, marketers must determine whether a push or pull strategy will be most effective. A push strategy is aimed at pushing the brand in front of an audience. Often a push strategy will utilize multiple forms of advertising media so that the product or service is in front of the consumer at multiple times. Common push strategies involve sending postcards or emails and placing ads in print and television media.

Conversely, a pull strategy is intended to bring audiences to the product. For example, if a company is launching a new game app, the company may choose to advertise in another game app. The interested consumer would then click on the advertisement and be pulled into the new product (app).

Establishing the Advertising Budget

The next step in the advertising decision process is establishing an advertising budget. There are several approaches to this decision, but it is important to keep in mind that the advertising budget is just one component of the overall promotion budget. Table 14.1 outlines the most common approaches to budgeting.

Companies often use previous year (or period) data to set objectives for the current or future years. Marketing budgets can use the same approach. The percentage-of-sales approach utilizes prior years’ sales or predicted year’s sales and sets a percentage of those sales aside for advertising. This is a simple way to budget, particularly in stable markets. However, it is somewhat backward of what you have learned thus far in marketing: instead of advertising creating sales, it assumes sales creates advertisements.

Some companies choose to budget their advertising dollars after all other organizational budgeting is complete. The all-you-can-afford approach to budgeting ensures everything else in the organization is budgeted for and then sets aside the remaining funds for advertising. This is a practical and simple approach, but it can often lead to budgets that have less money than desired for much-needed advertising.

Unlike other approaches to budgeting, the return-on-investment (ROI) approach views advertising as an investment rather than a cost. The idea behind the return-on-investment (ROI) approach is that for every dollar spent on advertising, a return of that dollar—plus some—is expected. The disadvantage to this approach is the difficulty in determining exactly which ad, media, or campaign is specifically contributing to the return.

The competitive-parity approach relies on setting budgets based on the expected budgets of competitors. This approach works well in stable markets where competition is well established. However, with this approach, marketers are setting rather important budgetary decisions based on competition and can lose sight of internal objectives.

The final common approach to budgeting for advertising is the objective and task approach. The objective-and-task approach is budgeting based on the objectives set previously for the advertising plan. This approach does not consider previous sales or expected competitor budgets. However, marketers must be aware that this approach can lead to overspending when other factors are not considered.

Creating the Advertising Message

Creating the advertising message can be a difficult task for marketers, particularly in the current climate of media. The advertising message is the visual or auditory information that is used in an advertisement to inform or persuade the audience regarding the product, service, or organization. Messages are usually broken down into five areas: the headline, subheading, copy, images, and call to action.⁹ See Table 14.2. Each area must be consistent with one another and with the overall strategy of the advertising plan and the company’s values and mission.

Selecting Advertising Media

Once the message is determined, the marketer will select which advertising media is appropriate for the message. The selection of advertising media will often be determined based on reach, frequency, impact, and engagement that the marketer is hoping for.

Reach refers to the estimated number of potential customers that can be reached with an advertising campaign. Frequency refers to how many times someone is exposed to an advertisement in a given time period or how many times an advertisement is shown in a time period.

Impact refers to how quickly members of the audience receive an advertising message. The form of media that is used will help to determine the impact of the message. For example, a direct mailing may take longer to be received by the audience than a Facebook advertisement. Finally, engagement refers to any interaction with advertising content. This becomes particularly important in digital marketing. The number of times members of an audience click on an Internet ad would measure the engagement of that particular advertisement. Clearly, the more engagement, the more likely a consumer is to make a purchase. Keep in mind that engagement can also be negative—such as a “dislike” or negative comment on a social media advertisement.

There are trade-offs between reach and frequency. It seems obvious that marketers would want an advertising campaign to reach the greatest number of people possible with one advertisement. But is one exposure enough to call a person to purchase the product? Often, potential consumers need to be exposed to a message more than once before they will make a purchase. Therefore, the marketer must decide whether reaching the most people or reaching the same people the most is more beneficial to the advertising strategy.

Figure 14.5 Newspapers are a form of print media advertisement. (credit: “Business Newspaper” by bestpicko.com/flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Different Media Alternatives

As you learned earlier in this chapter, there are different forms of advertising media that marketers will choose from. Most marketing strategies do not focus on only one media but rather on a mix of media that are most likely to reach the target audience. Print media includes magazines, newspapers, brochures, and fliers (see Figure 14.5). Broadcast media includes radio and television.

Outdoor advertising is a very economical option because it has such a large reach. Banners, flags, wraps, events, billboards, and even automobiles are types of outdoor advertising. Most companies have shifted their budgets away from some of these more traditional media and moved to digital media. Digital media is any advertising done via the Internet, mobile phones, and other devices other than television and radio (Kindles, iPads, etc.).

Each media has its own advantages and disadvantages and best uses. When marketers decide on media to be used, they must consider the product or service, the target market, and any budgetary constraints. For example, a product that is primarily targeted toward senior citizens would be best advertised through traditional media, while millennials are more likely to see advertisements in digital form.

Pretesting the Advertising

Pretesting advertising involves research that predicts the performance of an advertisement before it airs. The three most common types of pretesting are portfolio tests, jury tests, and theater tests.

Portfolio tests consist of respondents browsing through various versions of an advertisement and then being asked to recall certain details from each. Respondents are chosen from the target audience, and those advertisements most recalled by participants are chosen to air for the entire target audience.

Similarly, jury tests are a form of pretesting in which the respondents discuss the advertisements most likely to induce a purchase.

Theater tests utilize a sample of the target audience as well. In this form of pretesting, the audience is shown advertisements—usually television ads—in the context that they would be shown to the entire target market.

Post-testing the Advertising

Post-testing simply refers to testing the effectiveness of a campaign after it has launched. Marketers have several ways in which they can post-test the advertising campaign.

Aided recall is a type of advertising posttest that uses cues to assist a sample audience in recalling brands and products in an advertisement.

The opposite of aided recall, unaided recall does not use any cues or prompts to test the recollection of the advertisement message. The respondent is typically asked open-ended questions to gauge information retained from the advertising message.

Attitude tests investigate the attitudes of a sample target audience toward a product or service. Often, the attitude test will ask the respondent to compare the advertised product with a competing product.

An inquiry test is a type of advertising posttest that runs two or more similar ads on a limited scale and determines which of the ads are most recalled by and effective for respondents.

Another form of advertising posttest is the sales test. The sales test determines how many sales will be made based on a test market. This test can be done as either a pretest or a posttest. As a pretest, it is used as an estimate or prediction of future sales that the advertisement will attract. As a posttest, it measures the actual sales that can be linked to the advertisement.