What is advertising?
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.
Features of Advertising?
i. Paid form:
Advertising is always a paid form of communication and hence commercial in nature. Thus, advertising can clarify be distinguished from publicity which is not paid for by the sponsor.
ii Non-personal presentation:
Advertising is a non-personal presentation. Whatever the form of presentation, advertising is always directed to a mass audience rather than to any individual. At time:, e advertising message may give the impression of a personal appeal. However, all the sensations are non-personal in nature.
iii. Sell or promote ideas, goods and services:
Advertising is aimed at promoting and selling not only tangible and physical goods, but also ideas and services. Most often services like banking and insurance are sold through advertising. For example, Posts and Telegraph Department advertises to promote the use of PIN CODE for fast delivery of letters. The scope of advertising is wide and designed to sell not only goods but services and ideas also.
iv. Identified sponsor:
Advertising always has an identified sponsor. In other words, advertising discloses or identifies the source of the opinions and ideas it presents. On the other hand, the sponsor for publicity or propaganda can remain anonymous.
v. Inform and persuade:
Advertising usually informs the potential consumer about products and services, their benefits and utilities. It also persuades the consumers to purchase such products and services.
In short, advertising is the art of influencing human action and awakening of a desire to possess products and services. It is a mass persuasion activity duly sponsored by the manufacturer, retailer, or dealer for whom the advertising is done.
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