What is Advertising?

Advertising is a marketing tactic involving paying for space to promote a product,

service, or cause. The actual promotional messages are called advertisements, or ads
for short. The goal of advertising is to reach people most likely to be willing to pay
for a company’s products or services and entice them to buy.
Finding Your Ideal Customer
When trying to zero in on the types of people who are more likely to need or want
your goods or services, and be willing to shell out hard-earned cash for it, you might
look at demographic characteristics, such as:
 Gender
 Age
 Education level
 Income level
 Zip code
By more precisely defining who your target customer is, you can better choose
advertising vehicles that will reach more of your target customers for less money.
Sure, you can buy an expensive ad in the Wall Street Journal, for example, but if
your best customers live in the western Boston suburbs, you can buy ads in local
papers there for far less.
Where to Advertise
Traditional advertising outlets include newspapers, magazines, TV and radio
stations. Today, however, advertisements are placed nearly everywhere and
anywhere, including:
 Roadside billboards
 Sides of buildings
 Websites
 Electronic newsletters
 Print newsletters
 Inside bills
 Product packaging
 Restaurant placemats
 Event bulletins
 Store windows
 The sides of cars and trucks
 Subway car walls
  Airport kiosks
 Sporting arenas
 YouTube videos
 Creating Effective Ads
Advertising messages themselves are designed to persuade an individual to buy a
company’s goods or services. Even in business-to-business transactions, individuals
have to first be convinced to choose one product over another. To accomplish this,
ads have five main components:
 Headline - This is the key attention-getting message. “Got milk?” is a perfect
headline. Or Wendy’s old, “Where’s the beef?”
 Subhead - Some ad headlines need clarification, much like a book’s subtitle.
 Body copy - The meat of the advertising message occurs in the main section
where the product or service’s features and benefits are highlighted.
 Image - Unless you’re advertising on the radio, including a product photo, or
image illustrating a key benefit is critical.
 Call-to-action - At the end of the ad you want to invite the consumer to take
a step towards doing business with you, such as calling a toll-free number,
visiting a website, texting a certain number, or pulling into the drive-thru
window.
While advertising is the only way to guarantee that your message will be seen or
heard, it is expensive by comparison to other marketing methods. For that reason, it
is more popular with large corporations and brands than small businesses.

How to Design an Advertising Campaign

Advertising campaigns help business owners and their teams outline the best
strategies and tactics for promoting the company's products and services. Whether
you offer a product or service, or plan to promote your product offline or online, an
advertising campaign can guide you through the process. Before you develop your
advertising campaign, take note of your company's position in the market and
determine where you'd like to be. Design your advertising campaign keeping the
values, features and benefits of your product or service at the forefront of the
campaign.
1. Target the market you plan to attract with the product or service you're advertising.
You need to know their geographic location, gender, average income level, marital
status, education level, and hobbies and interests. This information will help you put
together a customer profile, which outlines where your target market gets their
information and the most successful ways to pitch products and services to them.
2. Look at what your competitors are doing, as well as past, current and future trends.
Determine if there are any changes in the marketing environment that may affect
how you advertise your products or services, such as political, economic,
technological or sociocultural factors. You can find this information by paying
attention to national and local news, reading industry reports and reviewing trade
magazines
3. Identify the purpose of your advertising campaign, before you begin planning it.
You may develop a campaign to make customers aware of a new product or service
you're introducing to the market, you may want to introduce customers to a new use
for an existing product or service or you may have a special sales promotion, such
as buy-one get-one free. Use this information to create specific, measurable,
attainable, realistic, timely goals for your advertising campaign.
4. Use your market research to determine how your target market finds out about
products and services and where they are most likely to make their purchases. Use
this information to help you decide whether to use social media marketing, advertise
on blogs and websites, opt for print advertising or do a radio or television
commercial. Determine the specific tactics you want to use, based on your goals and
budget.
5. Specify how you will evaluate whether the effort is a success. If you run a print
advertisement, for example, you can put a unique website address on it and track the
number of visits and sales you receive through it. If you place a banner advertisement
on a national blog, you can track your success based on the number of clicks your
advertisement receives, and how many sales or inquiries you receive, as a result.
6. Time the launch of your advertising campaign for maximum effect. While some
companies advertise heavily during their peak sales months, others save their
advertising dollars for the months when consumer spending decreases. If you're
marketing toys, you might opt for advertising during the holiday season, while if you
offer tanning solutions, you may advertise during the end of winter through the early
spring.
7. Take inventory of the resources your company can use to assist with your
advertising campaign. This includes reviewing the talents, knowledge and skills of
your staff, to see if you need to bring in consultants, determining what technology
you have available on-site and your budget.
8. Hire individuals to help your company create your advertise pieces. If you plan to
run a print ad, you may need a copywriter and graphic designer, while if you plan to
shoot a commercial, you may need a film crew, director, actors and a voice over
artist.
9. Test your advertisement on a focus group composed of your target market, before
you launch it. The focus group will help you obtain the feedback you need to make
adjustments to the advertisement. Once you've made changes, launch your
advertising campaign and wait to calculate the results.

Even though customer satisfaction has become the top priority for businesses, there
are times when they need to stimulate demand and increase sales of their products
for short-run. This is where sales promotion comes into play.

Sales promotion is a part of the promotional mix where the business uses many
short-term customer-oriented strategies to stimulate the demand for its product by
making it look more attractive and/or worthy.
Here’s a simpler definition of sales promotion –
Sales Promotion Definition
Sales promotion is a marketing strategy where the product is promoted using short-
term attractive initiatives to stimulate its demand and increase its sales.
This strategy is usually brought to use in the following cases –
 to introduce new products,
 sell out existing inventories,
 attract more customers, and
 to lift sales temporarily.
American Marketing Association defines sales promotion as –
Media and nonmedia marketing pressure applied for a predetermined, limited
period of time in order to stimulate trial, increase consumer demand, or improve
product availability.
Importance Of Sales Promotion
Sales promotion is a handy technique to fulfil the short term sales goals by
persuading potential customers to buy the product. It is an important promotional
strategy to –
 Spread information about the brand to new customers or new market
 Stabilize sales volume and fulfil short-term sales goals
 Stimulate demand for a short term by making the product look like a great deal.

Objectives Of Sales Promotion

The answer to the question what is sales promotion? also gives a hint to sales
promotion objectives, the main objective being lifting the sales temporarily.
Other objectives include but are not limited to –

To Create Market For New Products

It is sometimes hard to establish demand for a new product in a market of similar
products. In such cases, the company opt for increasing some sales by using sales
promotion strategies like penetration pricing, offers, discounts, and scarcity
principle.
To Remain Competitive
Companies use temporary sales promotion techniques to compete with competitor’s
short term marketing strategies.

To Gain Dealers Trust

Sales promotion techniques increase the sales of the products. This increases dealers’
income and results in them preferring the brand more.

To Take Products To New Markets

New markets are often hard to enter. Sales promotion increases traction and makes
more customers try the new product.
Increase Brand Awareness
It includes attractive incentives which help increase brand awareness, which
eventually leads to more sales.

Woo Existing Customers

Sales promotion is also used to tackle the poaching strategies of competitors and
keep existing customers with the brand.

Sales Promotion Strategies

Sales promotion strategies can be divided into three broad types. These are –
 Pull Strategy – The pull strategy attempts to get the customers to ‘pull’ the
products from the company. It involves making use of marketing
communication and initiatives like seasonal discounts, financial schemes, etc.
 Push Strategy – The push strategy attempts to push the product away from the
company to the customers. It involves convincing the intermediary channels to
push the product from the distribution channels to the final consumers using
promotional and personal selling efforts. This strategy involves making use of
tactics developed especially for resellers, merchants, dealers, distributors, and
agents.
 Hybrid Strategy – A hybrid sales promotion strategy makes use of both the pull
and push strategy to sell the product with the least resistance possible. It involves
attracting the customers using special coupons and also providing incentives to
the merchants to sell the brand’s products.
Types Of Sales Promotions
Sales promotion can be broadly divided into two types according to whom the
promotion is targeted to. These are –

Consumer Sales Promotion

When the sales promotion strategies are targeted to the end consumers, it is referred
to as consumer sales promotion. An example would be offering 20% off on certain
products to the customers. The main motive of consumer-oriented promotion is to
increase sales directly by attracting new customers and wooing existing ones.

Sales Promotion Techniques Targeted To Consumers

Sales promotion tools used for consumer-oriented promotion are –

 Free Samples: Distributing free samples increases brand awareness and triggers
the psychology of ownership where the person chooses the promoted product if
he liked the sample.
 Free Gifts – Offering free gifts attract customers as they get more while paying
for less.
 Discounts/Discount Coupons – Discount coupons are a great method of
increasing sales for the short term. People go for discount coupons as they let
them buy the products they couldn’t afford otherwise.
 Exchange Schemes – Exchange schemes attract many customers as they get
some value even for their old product.
 Finance Schemes – Finance schemes like no-cost EMI, low-interest EMI, etc.
makes it easier for customers to purchase expensive products.
 Shipping Schemes – Sometimes huge shipping costs discourage the customers
from buying products. Such short term shipping schemes remove friction.
 Bundle Discounts – These deals are a great way to reduce unsold inventory. It
includes selling bundled products at a price lesser than when those number of
products are bought separately.
 Bulk Purchase Deals – This is a great sales promotion tactic to reduce unsold
inventory. It includes providing discount to customers who buy in bulk.

Trade Sales Promotion

When the promotion activities are strategized keeping in mind the dealers,
distributors, or agents, it is called trade sales promotion. In this type of sales
promotion, offers are provided within the trade channels with an aim to woo retailers,
wholesalers, agents, or distributors. This is done to get more shelf space as compared
to competitors, motivate the dealers to sell more of the brand’s products and to
increase the sales indirectly.

Sales Promotion Techniques Targeted To Traders

 Point Of Purchase Displays – This includes providing free point of purchase
(POP) display units to the retailers to increase their sales.
 Trade Shows – Trade shows are a great sales promotion strategy where the
business promotes its product to thousands of traders in the trade show. Trade
shows also witness huge discounts as compared to when bought usually.
 Push Money – Also known as spiffs, this technique includes extra payments to
traders to motivate them to meet specified goals. For example, giving them a
$50 bonus per unit for selling product A and $30 for selling product B for a
specified time period.
 Deal Loaders – These are the gifts provided to the traders (wholesalers and
retailers) for ordering a certain quantity of product.
 Trade Deals – These are special concessions provided to the merchants to
encourage them to promote a specific product and increase its sales for a
limited time period.
 Buying Allowances – Special discounts provided to the sellers when they
order a specified number of products.

Sales Promotion Examples

A product can be promoted for a limited time using innumerable tactics. Here are a
few examples of sales promotion tactics that exist –
Black Friday Sale
Black Friday sale is a seasonal sale which occurs only once a year. It involves huge
discounts and special offers which are limited to a day. As a result, it increases the
sales manifold.
Buy One Get One
Buy One Get One (BOGO) is a popular type of sales promotion where two products
are offered at a price of one. This works great to promote a new product or clear the
inventory at the end of the season.

Referral Bonuses
Referral marketing is a great sales promotion strategy where the company pushes its
own customers to bring in new customers. This is done by providing them with
special discounts, offers, cashback, or actual monetary benefits.