Advertising On Life Support
Advertising is on life support but it is not dead. Although it seems that advertisers and their agencies are trying to kill it.
When done correctly, it still has its place in the marketing mix. The problem with advertising, as in so many marketing tactics, is that companies launch ads before they really think their program through.
First, let's think about what we want our advertising to achieve. You should tie your advertising objectives to the objectives you have for your business. Ask yourself what benefits advertising can help bring to the business.
Are you looking for new customers who don't know you? Are you trying to get a share of your competitors' customers who know a little about you? Or, are you trying to get your own customers to buy more from you? The answers to these questions will help you establish what type message is needed because one ad cannot address all carbon-based life forms. Ads need to be aimed at specific audiences. And media dollars, if you're fortunate enough to have them, are precious, so let's target the ad message as we'll need to target that media spending.
Prospects need to have their interest aroused, while you might need a "make a change" message aimed at competitors' customers, and your own customers may respond best to a loyalty message.
Now, you should determine how best to get your message out. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising says that advertising is "the means of providing the most persuasive possible selling message to the right prospects at the lowest possible cost."
This means that there are lots of ways to deliver your advertising message. You are not limited to the big three: radio, TV and newspapers. Direct mail might be a better answer for you if you have a narrowly defined audience. Going after a mass audience may mean you need mass media. Remember: it's the most persuasive message to the right prospects at the lowest cost. And with corporate advertising spending, remember the old adage, "Nothing happens until the cash register rings," and adjust your message and media decisions accordingly.
Marketers tend to overestimate the power of advertising. They want to hit the market with a big campaign and receive a flood of new business. Here's the dirty little secret: most people ignore most advertising. It can't make people do what they don't want to do, nor interest them in what they are not interested in. Advertising is a crutch - a strong, efficacious one when done right, but additive to the rest of your communications programming. Repeat that mantra until you determine that advertising is additive or not to your overall program.
Your job as a marketer is to do the heavy lifting up front to develop a compelling message, and deliver it effectively to a specific audience using the right medium. Otherwise you are wasting your time because your ad campaign will be dead on arrival.