Page 213 - DMGT509_RURAL MARKETING

Rural Marketing

Notes 11.1 Advertising

Advertising campaigns are planned to achieve certain communication objectives in a given
timeframe in line with overall product, pricing and distribution policies of the company. The
role of advertising in today’s severely competitive environment is to differentiate the product
from other products in the market. Advertising campaigns become successful once such a
differentiation becomes evident. Customer go through stages of information processing before
they take the final purchase decision, like awareness of the product, learning about its benefits,
formation of an attitude towards the product, and then the actual purchase action is followed by
post purchase experience about the product. Advertising is used to build the company’s image
according to the perception of the company in the public mind.
Promotion tries to generate immediate consumer response with respect to company’s overall
marketing strategy. As advertising builds long-term customer awareness and attitudes,
promotional plans are meant to have a short-term influence on the customers. Promotional
plans can become counter productive in the long-term perspective as when the promotion is
withdrawn the sales may start dipping. Promotion can help build brand equity and awareness
both for long-term and short-term gains. However, promotion does help in improving sales in
the short term. They are better methods as compared to price reduction since price reduction
becomes a long-term loss in revenue while promotional plans can be withdrawn once the target
for which they were made has been achieved.

Advertising often grips people’s minds, their psyche, in a way that a make believe world, a
virtual world, gets created. So, what exactly is advertising? Who wants it, for whom is it created
and how? These and several such questions we will answer in this and following chapters. How
the advertiser can hit the bull’s eye of consumer psyche every time!
Advertising Management today has become an important area of business and that is why, even
common man, laypersons are quite aware of the subject. However for a professional, it is
essential that not only the subject is learnt thoroughly but even subtle nuances are understood
so that the person becomes comfortable with it. With practice expertise can be gained to strengthen
the skills. Advertising is a fast moving, glamorous discipline and yet without proper concepts it
can become quite banal. Kotler says a satisfied customer does the best advertising!
Students of advertising management should learn the steps needed for making an effective
advertising campaign. Sales promotion public relations and publicity are the other methods
used for increasing sales, brand awareness and related customer loyalty.
Advertising planning starts with setting sales objectives as also, advertising goals like improving
the top of the mind recall. Next advertising budget has to be formulated that takes in to account,
the stage of the product in the Product Life Cycle, market share, competition’s share of the
market, frequency of advertising effort and the cost of alternate product (cost of product switching).
The students must become familiar with the different media available with their costs to help
them select the best possible media for the campaign. They need to know the media reach,
impact, and frequency. Besides they should know the major media available, specific media for
the campaign, and geographical media coverage. Next, they should learn the methods of message
generation, and evaluation and selection of the message along with the social acceptability of
the message. Lastly, the advertising effectiveness measurement must be planned in relation to
the objectives selected for the campaign.
It must be clearly understood that there is a direct relationship between customer awareness
level of the product and customer readiness for product trial. It can be seen that when the
advertising frequency is increased it creates better product awareness that leads to larger trials
by the customers.

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