MARKETING AND ADVERTISING PLANNING

The company generates sales only through marketing, and as such it is the most important plan. This plan contains information about four important aspects of the organization. An organization’s advertising plan is drawn from its marketing plan. It also decides the allocation of advertising budget.

ELEMENTS OF THE MARKETING PLAN:

1. The situation analysis: Here the organization’s current situation is considered and is related to its past activities.

2. The marketing objectives: The objectives flow from the company’s current situation and management vision of the future.

3. The marketing strategy: It spells out how a company plans to realize its marketing objectives. Objectives lead to strategies. In the marketing strategy, we have to select the target market, determine the marketing mix for this market, and position the product in each market, and

4. The action plan.

BRANDING POSITIONING: Positioning is a creative exercise which starts with a product. Positioning is not what you do the product but it is what you do to the mind of the prospect. The shortest route to the heart is through the mind. Positioning may lead to cosmetic changes in the product’s name, price and packaging but far more important is the psychological positioning of potential products. The consumers mentally rank the products in their mind, along one or more than one dimensions. The consumers tend to remember number one.

MEANING OF THE PRODUCT POSITIONING: Product positioning is an attempt to create and maintain in the mind of the target audience the intended image for the product, relative to other brands so that the target audience perceives the product as possessing the attributes they want. There are two sides of the positioning.

(a) Market Positioning: There are three steps of Marketing Positioning.

1. Explore the market

2. Segmentation-Targeting

3. Competitive Strategy

(b) Psychological Positioning: It is a communication exercise that follows AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) Model.

PERCEPTUAL MAPPING FOR POSITIONING: Perceptual Space Map (PSM) shows the perceived relative positioning of products along different dimensions. The attributes or dimensions of a product are identified by qualitative research like depth interviews. Statistical techniques are used to reduce a very large number of dimensions to a few significant dimensions.

ADVERTISING AND POSITIONING: According to George A. Miller, Harvard psychologist, the average person can rarely name more than seven brands. The set of that the consumer has in his mind during the purchasing process is called “evoked set”. This is where the positioning comes in. advertising has to establish the brand in a commanding position in the mindsets of consumers. The image and appeals must be related to the way consumers possibly think about a brand and thus position it in their mind.

RESEARCH FOR POSITIONING: Positioning research starts with the study of the market to identify the factors, which are most important to various users of the product category. First, investigate what the consumers do with the products. Secondly, attitudinal information should be developed according to the purpose for which the brand is to be used and not just for any two brands. Thirdly, it is important to ask why a brand or a product is not being used. Fourthly, it is important to identify the existing brands where they are placed in the consumer’s mind. Lastly, positioning is creative. It helped by complete information. The position of a brand is the perception it brings about in the mind of the target consumers.

BRAND PERSONALITY: Brand image is broader than brand personality because by the time we enter the personality realm; we are dealing with feelings and emotions that the consumer takes away from communication. A well-established brand has a clear brand personality. Closely positioned brands may also acquire distinct personalities as a result of exposure to the product, packaging, service, word - of- mouth and advertising.

Brand personality should not be confused with the description of target audience. Brands are much like people. They have certain physical characteristics, certain skills and abilities and certain associations and attitudes. The brands therefore, appeal to senses, to reason and to emotions.

ADVERTISING PLAN: Advertising plan sets out the advertising objectives and advertising strategy along with details about messages design and media plans, sales promotion and event management tie-up. It also considers the advertising budget, and schedule.

ADVERTISING OBJECTIVES: advertising is expected to improve sales but the effects of advertising on sales are not measurable precisely. Many other factors simultaneously influence sales. Sales objectives are relevant in the context of advertising only.

(i)             Advertising is the only variable in the marketing equation

(ii)           Advertising is a predominant element of the marketing mix

(iii)          Advertising is supposed to generate an instant response

HIERARCHY OF EFFECTS: It is based on the assumptions that people first learn something from advertising. Later they develop feeling for it and are finally led to action. This sequence is called cognitive-affective-action sequence. The various stages in this sequence are awareness, comprehension, conviction, desire and action.

DAGMAR APPROACH: Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results, where to establish an explicit link between ad goals and ad results colley distinguished 52 advertising goals that might be used with respect to a single advertisement, a year’s campaign for a product or a company’s entire advertising philosophy. The goals may pertain to sales, imagine, attitude, and awareness.

According to DAGMAR approach, the communication task of the brand is to gain

(a) awareness

(b) comprehension

(c) conviction

(d) image

(e) action

Thus DAGMAR treats an advertising goal as a communication task, to be achieved among a defined audience in a given period of time.

ADVERTISING STRATEGY: It is basically a blend of the advertising message and the communications media. While do so, it also considers the target audience and the product concept.. Advertising message spells out what the company plans to say.

ALLOCATING FUNDS FOR ADVERTISING: It drives both the marketing and advertising plan. Advertising must justify the expenditure it makes. Advertising is an investment in future sales. As sales are affected by a variety of factors including advertising, it is difficult to determine allocation of funds. Before making allocations, the business environment is considered in its totality. A number of methods like,

Affordability method, Percentage-of –sales method, competitive method, objective and task method etc. are used to determine how much to spend on advertising.

ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN: It is used to mean organized and planned use of advertising for accomplishing a definite purpose. A campaign is a co-coordinative effort of promotion of a particular product/service during a particular period of time to attain pre- decided objective. Buyers are forgetful, often due to a clutter of large number of advertising messages; they over look several of them. It is therefore better to approach them in the form of a campaign. The factors, which affect the duration of campaign, are the type of product offered, the nature of advertiser’s marketing programme, seasonality of sales, media policies and the competitor’s advertising, and the geographical spread of a campaign can be the basis.

CAMPAIGN PLANNING: The basis of any campaign is the consumer behaviour and the market profile. The demographic and the psychographic study of consumers constituting a market is a must to create advertisements for the right target audience with the right type of appeals. Media planning is the selection of appropriate media or a combination of media for placement of advertisements. The points to be kept in mind while planning an advertisement are, Identify the Problem, The Budget, Pre-Testing, Target Audience, Media Selection, The language, The Visual and the Copy, Timing and Duration, Post –Testing and Effect on Sales.

WHY TO PLAN CAMPAIGN:

(i)             To determine the market and its potential

(ii)           To obtain the consumer profile

(iii)          To study the consumer psychology

(iv)          To know the frequency or size of buying

(v)            To decide about the channels and their satisfactory operation

(vi)          To bring about the product modification

(vii)         To determine the geographical scope of the campaign

(viii)       To do the media planning

(ix)          To determine the fundamental human desire to which the advertisement will appeal

(x)           To determine the scheduling and space buying.

BASIS OF CAMPAIGN PLANNING:

The three-word recipe for a good campaign as given by Sir William Crawford is Concentration, Domination, and Repetition.

THREE PHASES OF CAMPAIGN CREATION: There are three phases involved in the creation of any campaign:

1. Strategy development

2. The Briefing Phase

3. The creative Phase