Introduction to Advertising

Meaning of Advertising -

Advertising is an activity of attracting public attention to a product, service, or business as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media. Advertising is an activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media.

Advertising is a paid form of a non-personal message communicated through the various media by industry, business firms, nonprofit organizations, or individuals. Advertising is persuasive and informational and is designed to influence the purchasing behavior and/or thought patterns of the audience. Advertising is a marketing tool and may be used in combination with other marketing tools, such as sales promotions, personal selling tactics, or publicity.

Definition of Advertising -

"Advertising is the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media." Now let's take this statement apart and see what it means.

Advertising is defined differently by different people; some of the definitions are as follows:

According to Richard Buskirk, "Advertising is a paid form of non-personal presentation of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor."

According to Wheeler, "Advertising is any form of paid non-personal presentation of ideas, goods or services for the purpose of inducting people to buy."

According to William J. Stanton, "Advertising consists of all the activities involves in presenting to a group, a non-personal, oral or visual, openly sponsored message regarding disseminated through one or more media and is paid for by an identified sponsor."

Non-personal

Basically sales is done either personally or non-personally. Personal selling requires the seller and buyer to get together. Personal selling has its on advantages and disadvantages. Whereas advertising is non-personal selling. Personal selling has many advantages over advertising like direct communication, bargaining, enough time to discuss in detail about the product, seller can easily locate potential buyer. Advertising has none of the advantages of personal selling, very little time to present sales message, message is cannot be changed easily.

But, advertising has its own advantages which is not found in personal selling: advertising has comparatively speaking, all the time in the world. Unlike personal selling, the sales message and its presentation does not have to be created on the spot with the customer watching. It can be created in as many ways as the writer can conceive, be rewritten, tested, modified, injected with every trick and appeal known to affect consumers. 

Advertising covers large groups of customer and to make it effective proper research about customer is done to identify potential customers, to find out what message element might influence them, and figure out how best to get that message to them.

Thus, it appears that advertising is a good idea as a sales tool. For small ticket items, such as chewing gum and guitar picks, advertising is cost effective to do the entire selling job. For large ticket items, such as cars and computers, advertising can do a large part of the selling job, and personal selling is used to complete and close the sale.

Advertising is non personal, but effective.

Communication

Communication means passing information, ideas, or feelings by a person to another. Communication uses all the senses like smell, touch, taste, sound, sight. Only two senses - sound and sight are really useful in advertising. In advertising, what appears is everything the writer thinks the customer needs to know about the product in order to make a decision about the product. That information will generally be about how the product can benefit the customer.

Paid For

Advertiser has to pay for the creation of ad and for placing it in the media. Cost of ad creation and cost of time/space in the media must be paid for. Cost of advertising depends on TRP of media, reach of media, and frequency of ad to be displayed.

Persuasive

"Persuasive" stands to reason as part of the definition of advertising. The basic purpose of advertising is to identify and differentiate one product from another in order to persuade the consumer to buy that product in preference to another.

Identified Sponsors

Identified sponsors means whoever is putting out the ad tells the audience who they are. There are two reasons for this: first, it's a legal requirement, and second, it makes good sense. Legally, a sponsor must identify himself as the sponsor of ad. By doing so the sponsor not only fulfils the legal requirements, but it also makes a good sense, if the sponsor doesn't do so, the audience may believe that the ad is for any competitor's product, thus wasting all the time and money in making and placing the ad.

Objectives of Advertising -

 The real objective of advertising is effective communication between producers and consumers with the purpose to sell a product, service, or idea. The main objectives of advertising are as follows:

Informative

Objective of advertising is to inform its targeted audience/customers about introduction of new product, update or changes in existing products or product related changes, information regarding new offers and schemes. Informative advertising seeks to develop initial demand for a product. The promotion of any new market entry tends to pursue this objective because marketing success at this stage often depends simply on announcing product availability. Thus, informative advertising is common in the introductory stage of the product life cycle.

Persuasive

Objective of advertising is to increase demand for existing product by persuading new customer for first time purchase and existing customers for repurchases. Persuasive advertising attempts to increase demand for an existing product. Persuasive advertising is a competitive type of promotion suited to the growth stage and the early part of the maturity stage of the product life cycle.

Reminder

The objective of advertising is to remind customers about existence of product, and ongoing promotional activities. Reminder advertising strives to reinforce previous promotional activity by keeping the name of a product before the public. It is common in the latter part of the maturity stage and throughout the decline stage of the product life cycle.

Mathews, Buzzell, Levitt and Frank have listed some specific objectives of advertising.

• To make an immediate sale. 
• To build primary demand. 
• To introduce a price deal. 
• To build brand recognition or brand insistence. 
• To help salesman by building an awareness of a product among retailers. 
• To create a reputation for service, reliability or research strength. 
• To increase market share.

SCOPE OF ADVERTISING

Advertisements are important for:

• standardized products
• products aimed at large markets
• products that have easily communicated features
• products low in price
• Products sold through independent channel members and/or are new.

Nature of Advertising

Used by many types of organizations including Churches, Universities, Civic groups and charities, politicians!!Need to consider the following issues:

• Does the product possess unique, important features to focus on Unique Selling Point (USP)
• Are the hidden qualities important to the buyers
• Is the general demand trend for the product adequate
• Is the market potential for the product adequate
• Is the competitive environment favorable
• Is the organization able and willing to spend the required money to launch an advertising campaign