Advanced Advertising

Advertising definition
Definition: Advertising is a means of communication with the users of a product or service.
Advertisements are messages paid for by those who send them and are intended to inform or
influence people who receive them, as defined by the Advertising Association of the UK.

Description: Advertising is always present, though people may not be aware of it. In today's
world, advertising uses every possible media to get its message through. It does this via
television, print (newspapers, magazines, journals etc), radio, press, internet, direct selling,
hoardings, mailers, contests, sponsorships, posters, clothes, events, colours, sounds, visuals and
even people (endorsements).

The advertising industry is made of companies that advertise, agencies that create the
advertisements, media that carries the ads, and a host of people like copy editors, visualizers,
brand managers, researchers, creative heads and designers who take it the last mile to the
customer or receiver. A company that needs to advertise itself and/or its products hires an
advertising agency. The company briefs the agency on the brand, its imagery, the ideals and
values behind it, the target segments and so on. The agencies convert the ideas and concepts to
create the visuals, text, layouts and themes to communicate with the user. After approval from
the client, the ads go on air, as per the bookings done by the agency's media buying unit.

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.

Tools of Promotion - Advertising, Sales Promotion, Public Relation &

Direct Marketing
Advertising is defined as any form of paid communication or promotion for product, service and
idea. Advertisement is not only used by companies but in many cases by museum, government
and charitable organizations. However, the treatment meted out to advertisement defers from
an organization to an organization.

Advertising development involves a decision across five Ms Mission, Money, Message, Media
and Measurement.

Mission looks at setting objectives for advertising. The objectives could be to inform, persuade,
remind or reinforce. Objective has to follow the marketing strategy set by the company.

Money or budget decision for advertising should look at stage of product life cycle, market
share and consumer base, competition, advertising frequency and product substitutability.

Message’s development further is divided into four steps, message generation, message
evaluation and selection, message execution, and social responsibility review.
Once the message is decided the next step is finalizing the media for delivering the message.
The choice of depends on reach of media, frequency of transmission and potential impact on
customer. Based on this choice of media types are made from newspaper, television, direct
mail, radio, magazine and the internet. After which timing of broadcast of the message is
essential as to grab attention of the target audience.

Checking on the effectiveness of communication is essential to company’s strategy. There are

two types of research communication effect research and sales effect research.

Sales Promotion

Promotion is an incentive tool used to drive up short term sales. Promotion can be launched
directed at consumer or trade. The focus of advertising to create reason for purchase the focus
of promotion is to create an incentive to buy. Consumer incentives could be samples, coupons,
free trial and demonstration. Trade incentive could be price off, free goods and allowances.
Sales force incentive could be convention, trade shows, competition among sales people.

Sales promotion activity can have many objectives, for example, to grab attention of new
customer, reward the existing customer, increase consumption of occasional users. Sales
promotion is usually targeted at the fence sitters and brand switchers.

Sales promotional activity for the product is selected looking at the overall marketing objective
of the company. The final selection of the consumer promotional tools needs to consider target
audience, budget, competitive response and each tool’s purpose.

Sales promotion activity should under-go pretest before implementation. Once the activity is
launched it should be controlled as to remain within the budget. Evaluation program is a must
after implementation of the promotional scheme.

Public Relations

Companies cannot survive in isolation they need to have a constant interaction with customers,
employees and different stakeholders. This servicing of relation is done by the public relation
office. The major function of the public relation office is to handle press releases, support
product publicity, create and maintain the corporate image, handle matters with lawmakers,
guide management with respect to public issues.

Companies are looking at ways to converge with functions of marketing and public relation in
marketing public relation. The direct responsibility of marketing public relation (MPR) is to
support corporate and product branding activities.
MPR is an efficient tool in building awareness by generating stories in media. Once the story is
in circulation MPR can establish credibility and create a sense of enigma among sales people as
well as dealers to boost enthusiasm. MPR is much more cost effective tool than other
promotional activities.

Direct Marketing

The communication establishes through a direct channel without using any intermediaries is
referred to as direct marketing. Direct marketing can be used to deliver message or service.
Direct marketing has shown tremendous growth in recent years. The internet has played major
part in this growth story. Direct marketing saves time, makes an experience personal and
pleasant. Direct marketing reduces cost for companies. Face to face selling, direct mail, catalog
marketing, telemarketing, TV and kiosks are media for direct marketing.

Advertisement, Promotional activity, Public relation and direct marketing play an essential role
in helping companies reaches their marketing goals.

Internet

The Internet has become the tool of choice for advertising. Through this versatile tool,
market your business using social media sites and bulk email services. One of the
most effective and least expensive advertising tools associated with the Internet is
your own website. Change your business website content at any time to draw attention
to one or more aspects of your business, to highlight upcoming sales or to advise
customers of important announcements.

Cell Phone

A compelling advertising tool is the cell phone. There are many apps now available
that can be uploaded to a smartphone that you can use to draw customers. For
example, you might have a big sale on a particular auto part. Your Internet and print
advertising can display a symbol that, when scanned by potential customers' phones,
provides them with a coupon they can then bring to your shop for additional discounts.
You can use similar apps to inform people about your location or provide other
business information.

Verbal Communication

Word-of-mouth has been shown to be one of the most effective tools for advertising.
To facilitate "spreading the word" about your business, don't underestimate the power
of your company's most valuable advertising tool: your employees. They can be your
business' ambassadors, promoting special sales and recruiting new customers. With a
little coaching from you, your employees will be able to successfully implement all the
other ad tools at your disposal.

Consumer Behaviour
Meaning and Definition:

Consumer behaviour is the study of how individual customers, groups or organizations select,
buy, use, and dispose ideas, goods, and services to satisfy their needs and wants. It refers to
the actions of the consumers in the marketplace and the underlying motives for those
actions.

Marketers expect that by understanding what causes the consumers to buy particular goods
and services, they will be able to determine—which products are needed in the marketplace,
which are obsolete, and how best to present the goods to the consumers.

The study of consumer behaviour assumes that the consumers are actors in the marketplace.
The perspective of role theory assumes that consumers play various roles in the marketplace.
Starting from the information provider, from the user to the payer and to the disposer,
consumers play these roles in the decision process.

The roles also vary in different consumption situations; for example, a mother plays the role
of an influencer in a child’s purchase process, whereas she plays the role of a disposer for the
products consumed by the family.

Some selected definitions of consumer behaviour are as follows:

1. According to Engel, Blackwell, and Mansard, ‘consumer behaviour is the actions and
decision processes of people who purchase goods and services for personal consumption’.

2. According to Louden and Bitta, ‘consumer behaviour is the decision process and physical
activity, which individuals engage in when evaluating, acquiring, using or disposing of goods
and services’.

Nature of Consumer Behaviour:

1. Influenced by various factors:

The various factors that influence the consumer behaviour are as follows:

a. Marketing factors such as product design, price, promotion, packaging, positioning and dis-
tribution.

b. Personal factors such as age, gender, education and income level.

c. Psychological factors such as buying motives, perception of the product and attitudes
towards the product.

d. Situational factors such as physical surroundings at the time of purchase, social

surroundings and time factor.

e. Social factors such as social status, reference groups and family.

f. Cultural factors, such as religion, social class—caste and sub-castes.

2. Undergoes a constant change:

Consumer behaviour is not static. It undergoes a change over a period of time depending on
the nature of products. For example, kids prefer colourful and fancy footwear, but as they
grow up as teenagers and young adults, they prefer trendy footwear, and as middle-aged and
senior citizens they prefer more sober footwear. The change in buying behaviour may take
place due to several other factors such as increase in income level, education level and
marketing factors.

3. Varies from consumer to consumer:

All consumers do not behave in the same manner. Different consumers behave differently.
The differences in consumer behaviour are due to individual factors such as the nature of the
consumers, lifestyle and culture. For example, some consumers are technoholics. They go on
a shopping and spend beyond their means.

They borrow money from friends, relatives, banks, and at times even adopt unethical means
to spend on shopping of advance technologies. But there are other consumers who, despite
having surplus money, do not go even for the regular purchases and avoid use and purchase
of advance technologies.

4. Varies from region to region and country to county:

The consumer behaviour varies across states, regions and countries. For example, the
behaviour of the urban consumers is different from that of the rural consumers. A good
number of rural consumers are conservative in their buying behaviours.

The rich rural consumers may think twice to spend on luxuries despite having sufficient funds,
whereas the urban consumers may even take bank loans to buy luxury items such as cars and
household appliances. The consumer behaviour may also varies across the states, regions and
countries. It may differ depending on the upbringing, lifestyles and level of development.

5. Information on consumer behaviour is important to the marketers:

Marketers need to have a good knowledge of the consumer behaviour. They need to study
the various factors that influence the consumer behaviour of their target customers.

The knowledge of consumer behaviour enables them to take appropriate marketing decisions
in respect of the following factors:

a. Product design/model

b. Pricing of the product

c. Promotion of the product

d. Packaging

e. Positioning

f. Place of distribution

6. Leads to purchase decision:

A positive consumer behaviour leads to a purchase decision. A consumer may take the
decision of buying a product on the basis of different buying motives. The purchase decision
leads to higher demand, and the sales of the marketers increase. Therefore, marketers need
to influence consumer behaviour to increase their purchases.

7. Varies from product to product:

Consumer behaviour is different for different products. There are some consumers who may
buy more quantity of certain items and very low or no quantity of other items. For example,
teenagers may spend heavily on products such as cell phones and branded wears for snob
appeal, but may not spend on general and academic reading. A middle- aged person may
spend less on clothing, but may invest money in savings, insurance schemes, pension
schemes, and so on.

8. Improves standard of living:

The buying behaviour of the consumers may lead to higher standard of living. The more a
person buys the goods and services, the higher is the standard of living. But if a person
spends less on goods and services, despite having a good income, they deprives themselves
of higher standard of living.

9. Reflects status:

The consumer behaviour is not only influenced by the status of a consumer, but it also
reflects it. The consumers who own luxury cars, watches and other items are considered
belonging to a higher status. The luxury items also give a sense of pride to the owners.

Factors Influencing Consumer Behaviour

The consumer decision process explains the internal process as well as individual behaviour for
making product or service decisions.

Cultural Factors

Social Factors

Personal Factors

Psychological Factors

Economic Factors

Cultural Factors
Culture: The set of basic values, perceptions, wants, and behaviours learned by a member of
society from family and other important institutions.

Consumers live in a complex social and cultural environment. The types of products and services
they buy can be influenced by the overall cultural context in which they grow up to become
individuals.

Below are some of the important cultural factors given:

Culture Cultural Factors have strong influence on consumer buyer behavior. Cultural Factors
include the basic values, needs, wants, preferences, perceptions, and behaviors that are observed
and learned by a consumer from their near family members and other important people around
them.
 2 Subculture . Within a cultural group, there exists many subcultures. These subcultural
groups share the same set of beliefs and values. Subcultures can consist of people from
different religion, caste, geographies and nationalities. These subcultures by itself form a
customer segment.

Social Class. Each and every society across the globe has form of social class. The social class is
not just determined by the income, but also other factors such as the occupation, family
background, education and residence location. Social class is important to predict the consumer
behavior.

Social Factors
Social factors, in turn, reflect a constant and dynamic influx through which individuals learn
different consumption meanings. Below are some of the important social factors given:

i. Family

Family plays a significant role in shaping the buying behavior of a person. A person develops
preferences from his childhood by watching family buy products and continues to buy the same
products even when they grow up.

ii. Reference Groups

Reference group is a group of people with whom a person associates himself. Generally, all the
people in the reference group have common buying behavior and influence each other.

iii. Roles and status

A person is influenced by the role that he holds in the society. If a person is in a high position,
his buying behavior will be influenced largely by his status. A person who is a Chief Executive
Officer in a company will buy according to his status while a staff or an employee of the same
company will have different buying pattern.

Personal Factor
A person’s consumption behaviour is shaped by his personal characteristics. Below are some of
the important personal Factors given:

1 Age Age is a major factor that influences buying behavior. The buying choices of youth
differ from that of middle-aged people. Elderly people have a totally different buying behavior.
Teenagers will be more interested in buying colorful clothes and beauty products. Middle-aged
are focused on house, property and vehicle for the family.

ii. Income

Income has the ability to influence the buying behavior of a person. Higher income gives higher
purchasing power to consumers. When a consumer has higher disposable income, it gives more
opportunity for the consumer to spend on luxurious products. Whereas low-income or middle-
income group consumers spend most of their income on basic needs such as groceries and
clothes.

iii. Occupation

Occupation of a consumer influences the buying behavior. A person tends to buy things that are
appropriate to this/her profession. For example, a doctor would buy clothes according to this
profession while a professor will have different buying pattern.

iv. Lifestyle

Lifestyle is an attitude, and a way in which an individual stay in the society. The buying behavior
is highly influenced by the lifestyle of a consumer. For example when a consumer leads a
healthy lifestyle, then the products he buys will relate to healthy alternatives to junk food.

Psychological Factors
Psychological factors also influenced consumers. Internal psychological factors also direct the
decision-making process. These factors influence the reason or ‘why’ of buying.

Below are some of the important psychological factors given:

Motivation

Learning

Attitudes and Beliefs

Perception

i. Motivation

When a person is motivated enough, it influences the buying behaviour of the person. A person
has many needs such as the social needs, basic needs, security needs, esteem needs and self-
actualization needs. Out of all these needs, the basic needs and security needs take a position
above all other needs. Hence basic needs and security needs have the power to motivate a
consumer to buy products and services.

ii. Perception

Consumer perception is a major factor that influences consumer behavior. Customer

perception is a process where a customer collects information about a product and interprets
the information to make a meaningful image about a particular product.

When a customer sees advertisements, promotions, customer reviews, social media feedback,
etc. relating to a product, they develop an impression about the product. Hence consumer
perception becomes a great influence on the buying decision of consumers.

iii. Learning

When a person buys a product, he/she gets to learn something more about the product.
Learning comes over a period of time through experience. A consumer’s learning depends on
skills and knowledge. While a skill can be gained through practice, knowledge can be acquired
only through experience.

Learning can be either conditional or cognitive. In conditional learning the consumer is exposed
to a situation repeatedly, thereby making a consumer to develop a response towards it.

Whereas in cognitive learning, the consumer will apply his knowledge and skills to find
satisfaction and a solution from the product that he buys.

iv. Attitudes and Beliefs

Consumers have certain attitude and beliefs which influence the buying decisions of a
consumer. Based on this attitude, the consumer behaves in a particular way towards a product.
This attitude plays a significant role in defining the brand image of a product. Hence, the
marketers try hard to understand the attitude of a consumer to design their marketing.

Economic Factors
Economic factor also has a significant influence on buying decision of consumer behavior.
Below are some of the important economic factors given:

Personal and Family Income

Income Expectations

Consumer Credit
Liquid Assets

Re i. Personal Income

When a person has a higher disposable income, the purchasing power increases
simultaneously. Disposable income refers to the money that is left after spending towards the
basic needs of a person.

When there is an increase in disposable income, it leads to higher expenditure on various items.
But when the disposable income reduces, parallelly the spending on multiple items also
reduced.

ii. Family Income

Family income is the total income from all the members of a family. When more people are
earning in the family, there is more income available for shopping basic needs and luxuries.
Higher family income influences the people in the family to buy more. When there is a surplus
income available for the family, the tendency is to buy more luxury items which otherwise a
person might not have been able to buy.

iii. Consumer Credit

When a consumer is offered easy credit to purchase goods, it promotes higher spending. Sellers
are making it easy for the consumers to avail credit in the form of credit cards, easy
installments, bank loans, hire purchase, and many such other credit options. When there is
higher credit available to consumers, the purchase of comfort and luxury items increases.

iv. Liquid Assets

Consumers who have liquid assets tend to spend more on comfort and luxuries. Liquid assets
are those assets, which can be converted into cash very easily. Cash in hand, bank savings and
securities are some examples of liquid assets. When a consumer has higher liquid assets, it
gives him more confidence to buy luxury goods.

v. Savings

A consumer is highly influenced by the amount of savings he/she wishes to set aside from his
income. If a consumer decided to save more, then his expenditure on buying reduces. Whereas
if a consumer is interested in saving more, then most of his income will go towards buying
products.

Consumer Theory
What Is Consumer Theory?
Consumer theory is the study of how people decide to spend their money based on
their individual preferences and budget constraints. A branch of microeconomics,
consumer theory shows how individuals make choices, subject to how
much income they have available to spend and the prices of goods and services.

Understanding how consumers operate makes it easier for vendors to predict which of
their products will sell more and enables economists to get a better grasp of the shape
of the overall economy

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Consumer theory is the study of how people decide to spend their money based on their
individual preferences and budget constraints.

Building a better understanding of individuals' tastes and incomes is important because these
factors impact the shape of the overall economy.

Consumer theory is not flawless, though, as it based on a number of assumptions about

human behavior.

Consumer theory is to demand as producer theory is to supply. The major difference is

that producer theory assumes that sellers are motivated by profit, and profit is
something that one can usually directly measure. Moreover, the costs that enter into
profit arise from physical properties of the production process—how many coffee cups
come from the coffee-cup manufacturing plant? In contrast, consumer theory is based
on what people like, so it begins with something that we can’t directly measure but must
infer. That is, consumer theory is based on the premise that we can infer what people
like from the choices they make.

Now, inferring what people like from the choices they make does not rule out mistakes.
But our starting point is to consider the implications of a theory in which consumers
don’t make mistakes, but make choices that give them the most satisfaction.

Economists think of this approach as analogous to studying gravitation in a vacuum

before thinking about the effects of air friction. There is a practical consideration that
dictates ignoring mistakes. There are many kinds of mistakes—for example, “I meant to
buy toothpaste, but forgot and bought a toothbrush” (a memory problem); “I thought
this toothpaste was better, but it is actually worse” (a learning issue); and “I meant to
buy toothpaste, but I bought crack instead” (a self-control issue). All of these kinds of
mistakes lead to distinct theories. Moreover, we can understand these alternative
theories by understanding the basic theory first, and then we can see where the changes
to these theories lead.

Consumer choice
The theory of consumer choice is the branch of microeconomics that
relates preferences to consumption expenditures and to consumer demand curves. It
analyzes how consumers maximize the desirability of their consumption as measured
by their preferences subject to limitations on their expenditures, by
maximizing utility subject to a consumer budget constraint.[1]

Consumption is separated from production, logically, because two different economic

agents are involved. In the first case consumption is by the primary individual, individual
tastes or preferences determine the amount of pleasure people derive from the goods
and services they consume.; in the second case, a producer might make something that
he would not consume himself. Therefore, different motivations and abilities are
involved. The models that make up consumer theory are used
to represent prospectively observable demand patterns for an individual buyer on
the hypothesis of constrained optimization. Prominent variables used to explain the rate
at which the good is purchased (demanded) are the price per unit of that good, prices of
related goods, and wealth of the consumer.

The law of demand states that the rate of consumption falls as the price of the good
rises, even when the consumer is monetarily compensated for the effect of the higher
price; this is called the substitution effect. As the price of a good rises, consumers will
substitute away from that good, choosing more of other alternatives. If no compensation
for the price rise occurs, as is usual, then the decline in overall purchasing power due to
the price rise leads, for most goods, to a further decline in the quantity demanded; this
is called the income effect. As the wealth of the individual rises, demand for most
products increases, shifting the demand curve higher at all possible prices.

In addition, people's judgments and decisions are often influenced by systemic biases
or heuristics and are strongly dependent on the context in which the decisions are
made, small or even unexpected changes in the decision-making environment can
greatly affect their decisions.[2]

The basic problem of consumer theory takes the following inputs:

The consumption set C – the set of all bundles that the consumer could conceivably
consume.

A preference relation over the bundles of C. This preference relation can be described
as an ordinal utility function, describing the utility that the consumer derives from each
bundle.

A price system, which is a function assigning a price to each bundle.

An initial endowment, which is a bundle from C that the consumer initially holds. The
consumer can sell all or some of his initial bundle in the given prices, and can buy
another bundle in the given prices. He has to decide which bundle to buy, under the
given prices and budget, in order to maximize his utility.

Understanding Consumer Theory

Individuals have the freedom to choose between different bundles of goods and services.
Consumer theory seeks to predict their purchasing patterns by making the following three basic
assumptions about human behavior:

Utility maximization: Individuals are said to make calculated decisions when shopping,
purchasing products that bring them the greatest benefit, otherwise known as maximum utility
in economic terms

Nonsatiation: People are seldom satisfied with one trip to the shops and always want to
consume more

Decreasing marginal utility: Consumers lose satisfaction in a product the more they
consume it

Working through examples and/or cases, consumer theory usually requires the following
inputs:

A full set of consumption options

How much utility a consumer derives from each bundle in the set of options

A set of prices assigned to each bundle

Any initial bundle the consumer currently holds

Advantages of Consumer Theory

Building a better understanding of individuals' tastes and incomes is important because it has a
big bearing on the demand curve, the relationship between the price of a good or service and
the quantity demanded for a given period of time, and the shape of the overall economy.

Consumer spending drives a significantly large chunk of gross domestic product (GDP) in
the U.S. and other nations. If people cut down on purchases, demand for goods and services
will fall, squeezing company profits, the labor market, investment, and many other things that
make the economy tick.
Example of Consumer Theory

Let’s look at an example. Kyle is a consumer with a budget of $200, who must choose how to
allocate his funds between pizza and video games (the bundle of goods). If a pizza costs $10 and
a video game cost $50, Kyle could buy 20 pizzas, or four video games, or five pizzas and three
video games. Alternatively, he could keep all $200 in his pocket.

How can an outsider predict how Kyle is most likely to spend his money? Consumer theory can
help give an answer to this question.

Limitations of Consumer Theory

Challenges to developing a practical formula for this situation are numerous. For instance,
as behavioral economics points out, people are not always rational and are occasionally
indifferent to the choices available. Some decisions are particularly difficult to make because
consumers are not familiar with the products. There could also be an emotional component
involved in the decision-making process that isn't able to be captured in an economic function.

The many assumptions that consumer theory makes means it has come under heavy criticism.
While its observations may be valid in a perfect world, in reality there are numerous variables
that can expose the process of simplifying spending habits as flawed.

Going back to the example of Kyle, figuring out how he will spend his $200 is not as clear-cut as
it might at first seem. Economics assumes he understands his preferences for pizza and video
games and can decide how much of each he wants to purchase. It also presumes there are
enough video games and pizzas available for Kyle to choose the quantity of each he desires.

Consumer Behavior Models

few models are developed that further explain why consumers make the decisions they
make, and how they affect businesses. Here we are going to discuss five customer
behavior models, and how they can be used to make customer centric experiences.
These models are divided into two categories – traditional and contemporary. A
consumer behavior model is a theoretical framework for explaining why and how customers
make purchasing decisions. The goal of consumer behavior models is to outline a predictable
map of customer decisions up until conversion, thus helping you steer every stage of the
buyer’s journey.

Consumer behavior models may sound complicated, but they’re not. They’re a way to create a
“buyer behavior story” that you can use to refine and improve your customer experience.

A consumer behavior model is a theoretical framework for explaining why and how customers
make purchasing decisions. The goal of consumer behavior models is to outline a predictable
map of customer decisions up until conversion, thus helping you steer every stage of the
buyer's journey.

Traditional Behavior Models

The desire to understand the economic systems made economists develop

some traditional consumer behavior models. Economists believe that through
economics it can be easily understood how limited resources are allocated among
unlimited wants, needs, and demands. The following traditional behavior models focus
on the purchasing behavior based on the emotions of the buyer.

2. Learning Model

No matter who the customer is, all of them have elementary needs such as clothes,
food, shelter, etc. and according to the learning model, the consumer behavior responds
to the desire to fulfill these needs. Whether customers will buy a particular product or
not is determined by whether they need that product or not. To an extent, this model is
influenced by Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Source
This hierarchy by Maslow shows that humans should satisfy low-level deficit needs
(bottom of the hierarchy, i.e., basic needs) before progressing on to meet higher level
growth needs. As we move upward in the hierarchy, we get a feeling of self-fulfillment.

In simple terms, the learning model says that no customer would move on to meet the
learned needs if they have not satisfied their basic needs yet. For example, if you are a
customer who is very hungry, your goal will always be to grab some food before a
learned need to get some trendy accessories.

Learning model can be applied in any business, but it’s most effective in online
businesses. Online businesses can easily develop AI to recommend the right product at
the right time, customers would be more likely to buy it. Moreover, online stores can
also use SEO report software to see its impact on the customer experience, after all,
customer experience and behavior are interrelated. Though there are many tools
available in the market for this purpose, most of them are complicated to use. However,
businesses can use Whatagraph to create visual SEO reports easily.

Psychoanalytic Model

Sigmund Freud is the father of Psychoanalysis, and when something comes from, one
should take it seriously. Freud’s psychoanalytical model is based on the fact that
consumer behavior is affected by both the conscious and unconscious mind.

This theory explains three major concepts- ID, ego, and superego. ID here can be
understood as the submarine of an iceberg, as it is the unconscious mind of an
individual to ignore stress and look for happiness and pleasure. Ego, on the other hand,
is part of the conscious mind that is operating the reality principle. And lastly, the
superego is the ethical and moral part of the human mind that limits the desires of ID. In
the psychoanalytical model, because the subconscious mind is also at work, sometimes
even customers don’t know why a particular product pleases them.
Source

In terms of application, this model is a little unique from others. It is most effective for
the businesses that are out there selling a certain image of society. For example, let’s
say your product is spectacles. Now, we know that because of the environment it is
mostly used in, glasses are a symbol of intelligence. So you can ask your advertising
team to use pictures of people wearing glasses in an educational or office setting. This
way, you’ll be able to appeal to the desires of the customers.

Sociological Model

According to this model, every buyer is part of an institution or community called

society, which plays an important role in the development path of an individual.
Customers have to play various formal and informal roles in their life like as a family
member, as an employee of a firm, as a member of a professional forum, and as an
active member of an informal cultural organization. All the interactions that happen in all
these roles influence the buying behavior of the customer.

Each individual customer is recognized depending on their occupation, income, place of

residence, etc. These factors put them in a bracket of social class. Members of different
classes enjoy certain status and prestige. Moreover, these classes have set their
standard of living, as a result of which customers find an urge to fit in. So, it eventually
affects the buying behavior of the customers as they are going to purchase the things
that make them look like a part of that specific class.

Contemporary Behavior Models

Unlike traditional models, contemporary models focus on deliberate and rational
decision-making rather than emotions and unconscious desires. Let’s look at three of
the contemporary behavior models.

Hawkins Stern Impulse Buying

The impulse buying theory, like the learning model, claims that it’s not necessary that
there are rational thoughts involved in the purchase of a product. Talking about impulse
buying, the first thing that comes to mind of many is picking candy bars moments before
billing or adding an additional product to the cart before checking out on the
eCommerce website. This certainly is an impulse purchase. Hawking Stern, however,
categorizes impulse buying into four different types.

Escape Purchase: It’s also called pure impulse purchase. Here consumers purchase
the items that are not even on their list. Appealing visuals make them buy extra
products.

Reminder Purchase: Consumers never plan to buy these products, but they do so once
they are reminded that this product exists. E.g., strategically placed ice cream scoop in
the store’s transparent refrigerator.

Suggested Purchase: These purchases occur when a consumer is made aware of a

product after a recommendation or suggestion from online algorithms or an in-store
salesperson.

Planned Purchase: Though these are the opposite of impulse purchases as customers
know that they have to buy a particular product. But, they don’t do so unless they find
offers on that product.

Engel-Kollat-Blackwell (EKB) Model

The main reason behind the construction of this model was to solve problems related to
the understanding of consumer behavior. It mainly considers two factors to come to a
conclusion about consumer behavior, i.e., information collected from the market and
facts about the customers. This model outlines a five-stage decision-making process
before consumers make a purchase. They are awareness, information processing,
evaluation, purchasing decision, and outcome analysis. This model is most effective for
businesses that have a lot of competitors with similar products/services.

Challenges With Consumer Behavior Modeling

For all the benefits it can provide, there’s just one challenging part- it is not easy to build
customer behavior models, and it’s quite expensive too. One of the major reasons
behind this is customer analytics experts, as there are not many people who can do the
job for you because there are so many complex and risky mathematical formulas
involved.

Moreover, even if you have somehow managed to build a customer behavior model, it is
still not easy to manipulate it for the purposes of a marketer. And their purpose is to
determine what are the best possible actions they can take for each group of
customers. Nevertheless, if developed correctly, customer behavior models can make
targeting customers quite easy.

Final Words

Consumer behavior is the response of the customer towards a particular product. It

might be a single person who decides the response, or a group of individuals, or even
society for that matter. The buying behavior does not necessarily depend on the needs
of the customers. It is an important aspect of marketing, and these models are quite
evident for that. We hope that now you understand what the consumer behavior model
is, and how it affects marketing decisions.

Brand management

Brand management is a function of marketing that uses techniques to increase the

perceived value of a product line or brand over time. Effective brand management
enables the price of products to go up and builds loyal customers through positive brand
associations and images or a strong awareness of the brand.

Brand management begins with having a thorough knowledge of the term “brand”. It
includes developing a promise, making that promise and maintaining it. It means
defining the brand, positioning the brand, and delivering the brand.

Brand management is nothing but an art of creating and sustaining the brand. Branding
makes customers committed to your business.

A strong brand differentiates your products from the competitors. It gives a quality
image to your business.

Brand management includes managing the tangible and intangible characteristics of

brand. In case of product brands, the tangibles include the product itself, price,
packaging, etc. While in case of service brands, the tangibles include the customers’
experience. The intangibles include emotional connections with the product / service.
Branding is assembling of various marketing mix medium into a whole so as to give you
an identity. It is nothing but capturing your customers mind with your brand name. It
gives an image of an experienced, huge and reliable business.

It is all about capturing the niche market for your product / service and about creating a
confidence in the current and prospective customers’ minds that you are the unique
solution to their problem.

The aim of branding is to convey brand message vividly, create customer loyalty,
persuade the buyer for the product, and establish an emotional connectivity with the
customers. Branding forms customer perceptions about the product. It should raise
customer expectations about the product. The primary aim of branding is to create
differentiation.

Strong brands reduce customers’ perceived monetary, social and safety risks in buying
goods/services. The customers can better imagine the intangible goods with the help of
brand name.

Strong brand organizations have a high market share. The brand should be given good
support so that it can sustain itself in long run. It is essential to manage all brands and
build brand equity over a period of time. Here comes importance and usefulness of
brand management. Brand management helps in building a corporate image. A brand
manager has to oversee overall brand performance.

Brands are different from products in a way that brands are “what the consumers buy”,
while products are “what concern/companies make”. Brand is an accumulation of
emotional and functional associations.

Brand is a promise that the product will perform as per customer’s expectations. It
shapes customer’s expectations about the product. Brands usually have a trademark
which protects them from use by others. A brand gives particular information about the
organization, good or service, differentiating it from others in marketplace.

Brand carries an assurance about the characteristics that make the product or service
unique. A strong brand is a means of making people aware of what the company
represents and what are it’s offerings.

To a consumer, brand means and signifies:

Source of product

Delegating responsibility to the manufacturer of product

Lower risk
Less search cost

Quality symbol

Deal or pact with the product manufacturer

Symbolic device

Brands simplify consumers purchase decision. Over a period of time, consumers

discover the brands which satisfy their need. If the consumers recognize a particular
brand and have knowledge about it, they make quick purchase decision and save lot of
time. Also, they save search costs for product.

Consumers remain committed and loyal to a brand as long as they believe and have an
implicit understanding that the brand will continue meeting their expectations and
perform in the desired manner consistently. As long as the consumers get benefits and
satisfaction from consumption of the product, they will more likely continue to buy that
brand. Brands also play a crucial role in signifying certain product features to
consumers.

To a seller, brand means and signifies:

Basis of competitive advantage

Way of bestowing products with unique associations

Way of identification to easy handling

Way of legal protection of products’ unique traits/features

Sign of quality to satisfied customer

Means of financial returns

A brand, in short, can be defined as a seller’s promise to provide consistently a unique

set of characteristics, advantages, and services to the buyers/consumers. It is a name,
term, sign, symbol or a combination of all these planned to differentiate the
goods/services of one seller or group of sellers from those of competitors. Some
examples of well known brands are Mc Donald’s’, Mercedes-Benz, Sony, Coca Cola,
Kingfisher, etc.

Component of Brand
There’s a common misconception that many people have that a “brand” is basically just the
name of the company and the logo that they use. While these elements contribute to the overall
brand of a business, the term “brand” is actually much more comprehensive than that. It involves
many different components, which is why it takes a lot of thought in order to successfully
develop your brand. The following are the four main brand components that you will need to
address when building your brand and what kinds of strategies you can put into place to further
develop those components.

1. Brand Identity
Your brand identity is how you want your brand to be perceived. It’s important that you know
what your brand identity is and what you want it to be. If you don’t, how is anyone else supposed
to know? You’re going to have a tough time generating brand awareness if you lack a strong
brand identity. The following are a few steps that you should take to establish your brand
identity:
 Identify your mission
What was the reason you established your company in the first place? What is your
company’s goal? Consumers want to know what your mission is (and they don’t want to hear
that it’s “to make a profit”) and it will reflect who you are as a company.

 Establish your unique value proposition

Your unique value proposition is what sets you apart from your competitors. It’s a statement
of how your offer benefits your customers, how you will meet the needs of your customers,
and what makes your offer unique. Every marketing campaign you run should align with
your unique value proposition.

 Create your brand’s visual identity

The visual elements of your brand certainly factor into your brand identity. Just consider the
logos and color palettes of some of the biggest companies out there, from Facebook’s simple
logo and use of blue to McDonald’s golden arch and yellow and red palette. A strong logo
that’s instantly recognizable is important, but so is choosing your colors. Different colors
have different meanings and the colors you choose can have a psychological impact on your
audience as well. For example, many fast-food restaurants use red and yellow because that
combination of colors is thought to stimulate the appetite. Just keep in mind that consistency
is key. If you decide to use shades of blue in your logo and on your website, then you should
use those same colors for your social media pages, email newsletters, and physical location
as well.

 Increase brand recognition

It’s going to take some time to get your vision of your brand identity out to the masses.
You’ll want to generate awareness of your brand to do this through a variety of marketing
efforts, such as building a website that emphasizes your mission and unique value
proposition, creating content that’s optimized for SEO, using social media to engage with
 consumers and to post your content, and more. It’s also vital that you make sure your
mission, unique value proposition, and visual identity are consistent across all platforms. If
it’s not, it will end up hurting your brand identity.

2. Brand Image
Your brand image is similar to your brand identity in that it deals with how your brand is
perceived. However, whereas your brand identity is how you want your brand to be perceived,
brand image is how your brand is actually perceived. Consider your brand image as the
reputation you currently have with the general public. Take for example United Airlines. Not
long ago, they updated their brand design in an attempt to strengthen their brand identity as a
“thoughtful, modern, and innovative airline.” However, their brand identity and brand image are
currently quite different from each other after numerous massive PR failures regarding their
customer service. Keeping that in mind, the following are a few ways to build and maintain a
positive brand image:
 Spread your message via PR
Use public relations to spread your key messages as well as relevant news concerning your
company. You can do this through news outlets, trade publications, and even online blogs.
Public relations will help you raise awareness of your brand and what you’re doing, thereby
helping to improve your brand image.

 Establish a social presence

Social media is an incredibly effective way to build your brand image, whether it’s by
sharing content with consumers, keeping consumers up to date on the latest news and product
launches, spreading awareness of your message, and engaging with consumers on a personal
level. In fact, you can even use social media to address negative comments. It’s a good way
to repair potential damage done to your brand image as a result of a poor customer
experience by showing that you care and trying to correct the situation.
 Create high-quality content
Content will help to increase brand awareness by bringing in more web traffic. However, it
can also help to build your brand authority. By publishing content that is relevant to your
company and to your audience (and that’s of high quality), you’ll become a trustworthy
source of information, which — in turn — will help improve your reputation and increase
brand trust.

3. Brand Culture
Brand culture refers to your company’s core values and how you set an example for those values.
Businesses have always

emphasized certain values; however, those values were often things like “reliability” or
“honesty.” Values that are more equivalent to basic ethics. While those are important values to
hold onto, more and more businesses have begun taking moral stances as well as political stances
in addition to generally accepted values. These types of values feed into your brand culture as
well. Take Nike for example. They have taken strong social positions by running commercials
backing Colin Kaepernick and recently touting the importance of the women’s U.S. soccer
team’s World Cup win. These are branding efforts touting their championing of equality, which
has become a part of their brand culture. The following are a few tips to help you establish your
brand culture:

 Define your values

Define exactly what your values are and how your company lives out those values. Don’t be
afraid of taking a stance if there’s a particular stance that you want to take. Using the Nike
example again, their backing of Kaepernick was considered controversial and plenty of
consumers did not agree with their position. However, those that did agree with their position
became even more strongly aligned with Nike’s brand. You can’t please everyone, but by
sticking to your values, you’ll be more likely to strengthen your relationship with many of
your customers.

 Spread awareness of your values

Let consumers know about your values by declaring them on your website or by encouraging
discussion about your values on social media. Publishing content that backs your values is an
effective method as well.

 Ensure that your company reflects your values

There’s nothing consumers hate more than a hypocrite. If you’re flaunting your support for
equal pay across social media and in your marketing efforts, then you better be practicing
what you preach. Your brand culture is incredibly dependent on your ability to embrace your
own values within your company.

4. Brand Personality
Your brand personality refers to the human characteristics that your company has. Developing a
brand personality is vital to connecting with your audience on an emotional level and for making
your brand relatable. Because of this, make sure that you use the following tips to develop your
brand personality:

 Learn who your audience is

Understanding your audience is something that you need to do from the very beginning. It’s
an important step in building your brand identity as well. However, it’s particularly important
when it comes to developing your brand personality. The way you present yourself and the
way that you communicate should reflect not only who the audience is but what they expect.
For example, if you have a younger audience, then a dry, formal tone may not resonate with
them. However, if your audience is older, using younger slang and current pop culture
references may go over their heads.

 Engage with your audience

 While you can get your personality across in the content you write, it’s easier to do through
engaging with people. It’s why using social media is so important. Your entire audience sees
your interactions and it helps establish your personality a certain way. For example, Wendy’s
has a reputation for having a playful personality because of their use of humor and the
pretend feuds that they get into with other brands on Twitter.

 Be consistent in tone
If you’re going to be funny and informal on one platform, you need to make sure that
personality carries over to all of the other platforms you use, both online and offline. If
you’re inconsistent, it will hurt your ability to develop a cohesive brand personality, which
will only confuse your audience.

These are the four main brand components that you will need to address when developing your
brand strategy. A strong brand requires a strong brand identity, brand image, brand culture, and
brand personality. Implementing a successful brand strategy that develops all four of these
components increases brand trust, loyalty, and awareness.

The Beginning of Our Brand Strategy

We started doing brand strategy work a few years back after encountering various clients who
came to us for content strategy work but couldn’t articulate who they were or what they were
really trying to achieve. We soon realized they needed more than content help; they needed a
total brand realignment. We were eager to help guide them, but we also had two big realizations:

1. Brand strategy work seems really complicated—and it shouldn’t be. Once we

started learning more about brand strategy, we ran into so many schools of thought,
conflicting perspectives, and outdated exercises. If we wanted to give our partners a
simple framework, we’d have to create it ourselves.
1. We didn’t know our own brand as well as we thought we did. The more we
explored our clients’ brand problems, the more we realized we were struggling with
many of the same issues. If we wanted to confidently guide our clients through the
brand strategy framework we created, we’d have to be the guinea pig and test it on
ourselves first.
So we dug in, got dirty, and did the work. Thankfully, after an entire year of tweaking and testing
(first on ourselves, then with a few brave clients), we emerged with a tried-and-true brand
strategy process that was simple, intuitive, and adaptable for any brand of any size. Was it easy?
Absolutely not. Was it worth it? Oh yeah.
We think it’ll be worth it for you, too. In this guide, we’ve taken everything we’ve learned about
brand strategy—the books, podcasts, articles, and personal experience—and distilled it down
into a simple step-by-step process to create an effective, flexible brand strategy that will help
you…
 Understand who you truly are and use your beliefs and values to guide your
decisions in ways that are better for your people, your business, and the future.
  Communicate your brand consistently and effectively through every piece
of content you make.
 Attract the right customers to build a strong, lasting brand.
 Position your brand in a way that helps you compete now—and tomorrow.
To make it easy, we’ve included the tools, resources, and real-life examples you need to get
through the brand strategy process, from finding your Brand Heart to creating the brand
guidelines to express it.
2. What Is a Brand Strategy?
As branding guru Marty Neumeier says, a brand strategy is “a plan for the systematic
development of brand in alignment with a business strategy.”

A brand strategy helps you understand who you are and acts as a blueprint to help you
communicate it.
Our brand strategy process is broken into three distinct parts. We guide you from your Brand
Heart (the core of your brand), to the articulation of your Brand Messaging (how you talk
about who you are), to your Visual Identity (the visual expression of your brand). By the end,
you’ll have a full brand strategy, summed up in fresh brand guidelines to help you bring your
brand to life.
3. Why Do You Need a Brand Strategy?
When you don’t know who you are, why you exist, what you believe in, or what
you’re trying to achieve, your business suffers. From customer communication issues
to employee retention, a lack of brand strategy causes problems at every level of an
organization.
Having worked with hundreds of clients over the last decade, we’ve learned to spot the telltale
signs of a brand in crisis, often caused by a lack of strategy. (Some of these issues might sound
familiar to you. Before we documented our brand strategy, we suffered from them too.)
When you have no brand strategy…
 You don’t understand your purpose, vision, mission, or values, so you make
marketing and business decisions that don’t reflect them.
 You don’t have a documented marketing plan, but you hope that whatever you’re
doing will work.
 Your team is fractured by disunity, confusion, and conflict, making it hard for
employees to feel engaged and interested.
 You don’t have cohesive brand messaging, so your content tends to be
inconsistent at best, and contradictory at worst. As a result, it’s difficult to
attract people who share your values (customers, employees, etc.).
 You can’t clearly articulate your brand, and as a result, you can’t carve out a
discernible place in the market.
 How to Develop Your Brand Architecture
Branding is a bit of a mystery for many small to mid-market (SMB) companies. There are many
opinions and methods as to how best approach it.

Top creative agencies have their own “proprietary” methods for crafting a brand strategy. They
have to, in order to position themselves against competing agencies. They use cool-looking
graphics: circles, triangles, and flow charts to illustrate attributes, values, personality traits, and
promises.

Many companies never bother to craft a brand strategy, instead allowing the market to brand
them, for better or worse. Deep down, marketers know they should be putting more effort into
branding, but many don’t know where to start.

The good news is, if you were to break down most agencies’ proprietary branding methods,
you’d find many similarities.

If you’re one of the 90% of companies that don’t have the budget to hire top agency talent for
your branding, don’t worry; with a little elbow grease and a good plan you can create your own
brand strategy. Solving the branding black box just takes a little learning and a strong
commitment.

Brand Architecture Is Your Brand Strategy Foundation

The key to your entire brand strategy is your brand architecture. Your brand architecture sets
the foundation for all the other components of your brand, and aligns your brand personality
traits, brand means, brand messaging, brand promise, brand story and your visual and
operational requirements into a single unified structure.

Brands play on our emotions, so your brand architecture should uncover the specific emotions
around which you might build your brand.

To create your brand architecture, follow this five-step process:

1. Start by listing each of your product/service features. Then, list the benefits of each.

A feature is an element of what something does or what it is. For example, a car’s features may
include a ski rack and an upgraded stereo system.

A benefit is a positive result that the feature delivers.

2. Now focus on the benefits. For each one, determine whether it’s functional or
emotional.

A functional benefit is directly related to the functionality of the feature. Example: An upgraded
stereo provides higher-quality sound.

An emotional benefit is one that evokes a feeling or emotion. Example: An upgraded stereo
might make the user feel like a rock star.

3. Next, review each feature and benefit individually, and determine its level of
importance to the market. Assign each to one of three categories:

Expected: These are basic and expected; a customer won’t buy without these features or
benefits. Every product/service in this category must offer these features.

Adds value: Not expected, but most customers probably won’t purchase based on this factor
alone. Nevertheless, it helps differentiate your product/service from those of your competitors.

Will buy: Customers will choose you over your competitors based on this feature/benefit alone
– it’s just that valuable.

4. Now, rank your features and benefits. Brands play on our emotions—even B2B brands.
The strongest brands are built around emotional benefits. Use this ranking system:

Features that are expected = 1

Features that add value = 2

Features that will buy = 3

Functional benefits that are expected = 4

Functional benefits that add value = 5

Functional benefits that will buy = 6

Emotional benefits that are expected = 7

Emotional benefits that add value = 8

Emotional benefits that will buy = 9

5. Few brand architectures are built around features, but by including them in the
rankings, we emphasize the importance of focusing on benefits and, more specifically,
emotional benefits that cause people to desire your offering on a visceral level. The final step is
to identify the emotional benefits that will become the core of your brand strategy.

Typically, you should focus on the highest rankings for the architecture of your brand. Evaluate
all of those with a ranking of 6 or higher. You might decide to include a few functional benefits
with the emotional benefits.

Carefully consider the functional or emotional benefits you select for your brand architecture.
You’ll spend a lot of resources to convey these to the marketplace, so test them among your
team and your market if you’re unsure.

After you’ve decided on your brand architecture, you can begin thinking about the other
components of your brand strategy: your brand personality traits, your means, your promise,
your story, and your visual and operational requirements.

WHAT IS BRAND EQUITY? HOW TO BUILD AND MEASURE IT

As companies increasingly move their focus from the product to the consumer, the general
perception of a brand is more important than ever. Additionally, roughly 74% of today’s
customers expect more from brands in regard to how they treat customers, employees and the
environment. To stay ahead of this shift, organizations need to consider how their various
marketing initiatives contribute to brand awareness. Let’s take a look at the strategies that they
can leverage in order to effectively build and improve upon on their overall brand equity:

What is Brand Equity?

In marketing, brand equity is the level of sway a brand name has in the minds of consumers,
and the value of having a brand that is identifiable and well thought of. Organizations establish
brand equity by creating positive experiences that entice consumers to continue purchasing
from them over competitors who make similar products. This is done by generating awareness
through campaigns that speak to target-consumer values, delivering on promises and
qualifications when consumers use the product, and loyalty and retention efforts.
By offering consumers loyalty incentives such as points that can be exchanged for discounts or
a free product on their birthday, they are more likely to continue to purchase from your brand
rather than moving on to a competitor. Awareness and experience are the two key tenets of
brand equity:

Brand Awareness: Can consumers easily identify your brand? Messaging and imagery
surrounding your brand should be cohesive so consumer can always identify it, even for a new
product. What kinds of values do consumers associate with the brand? Perhaps they think of
sustainability, quality, or family-friendly qualities.

Brand Experience: How have first hand experiences with your brand gone? This could mean
that the product performed the way it was supposed to, that encounters with brand
representatives and customer service teams have been accommodating and helpful, and that
loyalty programs have been worthwhile.

Why is Brand Equity Important?

A key benefit of establishing positive brand equity is the benefits it can have on ROI.
Organizations that leverage the power of branding often earn more money than competitors,
while spending less - whether on production, advertising, or elsewhere. For example, positive
brand equity enables brands to charge price premiums. When consumers believe in the values
put forth by a brand and the quality of their products, they will pay higher prices to purchase
from that brand. Additionally, should an organization want to add new product offerings,
marketing them under the same umbrella brand will help the new product take off faster, as
trust has already been established. This is especially important as a rising number of
consumers, roughly 80%, now refuse to do business with or buy from a brand that they don’t
trust, and nearly 90% intend to disengage from a brand that breaches their trust.

How Brand Equity Impacts Return on Investment (ROI)

Brand equity can positively affect the bottom line in the following ways:

Order Value per Customer

If your brand has positive brand equity, people are more likely to spend more money to
purchase those products. This results in higher profit margins. It may cost companies the same
amount as competitors to make a product. However, consumers are willing to pay for the brand
name - For example, a pair of designer shoes may be worth more to consumers as opposed to
those of a lesser known or generic brand.

Reputation & Less Ad Spend

If your products have a good reputation, people will seek you out as their go-to brand. This
results in less money being spent via advertising and leads to increased sales when you launch a
new product due to established trust.

Customer Lifetime Value: If your customers are loyal to your brand, they will purchase more
from you. Apple is regularly regarded as one of the organizations with the highest brand equity.
Apple users tend to own other Apple products, while Android users do not generally have a
loyalty to a specific PC technology provider.

Customer Loyalty: Customers are 7 times more likely to forgive brands they are loyal to for
mistakes. Additionally, consumers are 9 times more likely to try new products from brands they
are loyal to.

Stock Price: Strong brand equity can increase stock market process for organizations, out of
the expectation that it will continue to perform.

How to Build Brand Equity

There are obvious payoffs to establishing brand equity, but it takes a lot of work and research
upfront to build and maintain this status. It begins with conducting research into the values and
needs of a target audience, as well as identifying what makes your brand different. Once
established, organizations must continue to spread awareness to earn new business, while
fostering loyalty among existing customers.

Understand Your Why

In Simon Sineck’s book Start with Why, he argues that compelling organizations have a
purpose behind their brand. Too many advertisers focus on the How (How my product will
make your day easier) versus the Why (Why does this organization do what it does). For
companies like Apple, the Why is immediately apparent. They defy the status quo and
stretch what’s possible. Because Apple's advertising focuses on their brand (and not their
computers), they were able to expand their product lines into new areas such as phones
and music, where other computer companies failed.

Test your Messaging

When creating messaging, it is still important to test your positioning with con sumers.
How do they react? What do they respond best to? Are you addressing their pain points?
Are you creating the type of message they will stop and engage with?
Developing messaging and creative elements should be a data-driven process, informed by
what your specific consumers are drawn to. This is especially crucial in today’s fragmented
market.
Drive Awareness

Once you have a compelling message, you must drive awareness for both your brand and
your company focus. This often means emphasizing brand values over product attributes,
and emotional connections over conversions. In a world focused on the next immediate
transaction, it can be hard to advocate for such long -term planning. Brand
campaigns must run on longer timelines for consumers to register messages and connect
them back to branded products. This increase on brand focus will yield to results down
the line if done correctly.

Maintain Consistency

Once your brand is established, be consistent. This includes us ing consistent typefaces
and style guides. Treat your brand like a writer would treat a character. Even if the
advertising idea is good, if it is outside of your brand’s “personality”, don’t pursue it.

Customer Experience

Due to the rise of social media and the individual consumer’s voice, brands are no longer just
defined by what advertisements say. Brands are what consumers discuss or perceive. Having a
focus on the customer and putting them in the center of your company will help elevate your
overall brand. Consider Amazon’s review system. The site encourages users to be active in
reviewing products and communicating with sellers to ensure they get exactly what they need -
rather than just making a sale. When choosing between immediate transactional value and the
needs of the customer, they choose the customer. Amazon understands that taking this long-
term approach to customer experience will have a better impact on the bottom line.

Social media is also a great way to get face time, so to speak, with your actual consumers. For
example, Nike has a dedicated Twitter page (NikeSupport) to respond to consumer needs 24
hours a day in seven languages. This provides insight into where your brand may be missing the
mark, which can then be used for optimizations.

Can Brand Equity Increase Profits?

Brand equity has a direct correlation to profitability. When consumers recognize your brand,
they’re likely to choose your product over a competing brand – even if your product has a
higher price tag.

For example, people with seasonal allergies will look for Claritin, and may not even know what
“Loratadine” is. At the same time, they may perceive Claritin to be more effective than the
generic store brand, even if the ingredients are nearly identical. This is because Claritin has
invested heavily in brand equity.
Once your brand equity is established, customer loyalty will follow. This will allow for a high
customer retention rate and will translate into profitability for years to come.

How to Measure and Understand Brand Equity

Brand equity can seem like and abstract concept that is difficult to measure or quantify.
Depending on the goals of your branding efforts, there are multiple methods that can be used
to measure equity through brand tracking efforts. Brand tracking not only provides an
understanding of a brand campaign’s ROI, but can help to measure awareness, association, and
more. These studies focus on either business impact metrics - retention, conversions, price - or
consumer impact metrics such as consumer research, sentiment analysis, etc.

Here are a few ways to measure goals from a branding perspective:

Financial

For those looking to assign a numeric value to a brand, consider the following

Company Value: To measure the brand equity, you could think of the firm as an asset. When
subtracting the tangible assets from the overall value of the firm, you would be left with the
brand equity.

Market Share: What is your company’s market share? Leaders in the market tend to have a
higher brand equity.

Revenue potential: What does the revenue potential look like for your product? How does
this compare to your company’s current revenue?

Product Value

A good way to measure product value is to compare a generic product with the branded
product. In the case of soap, Unilever can measure if women were more likely to purchase Dove
over the store brand. Additionally, you could consider what users potentially prefer, such
asCoca Cola compared to Pepsi, for example.

Brand Audit

Conducting a brand audit can also help you get a better understanding of how your brand is
performing. To begin a brand audit, review comparison sites, social channels, and web
analytics. Pull this data together to see how consumers are talking about you and if this is inline
with the vision for your brand.
Brand Association - Keller’s Brand Equity Model

This brand equity model was developed by Dartmouth professor Kevin Lane Keller and
emphasizes the need to mold the feeling associated with a brand’s products. By creating
positive associations with your products, you can shape how customers think about your brand.
The model is based on a hierarchy of brand equity that begins with a brand establishing their
identity and differentiation, and is fully realized when the brand establishes resonance and
connection with target consumers. By understanding where your brand is in the pyramid, you
can get a better idea of how much brand equity you have, and what the next steps should be to
further establishing your brand in the consumer conscious. The steps consist of:

Brand Awareness

Communicating the Idea behind a Brand

Understanding Customer Response

Brand Resonance/ Connection

Understanding Consumer Perception

Although not as quantifiable, mapping consumer perception to your brand is also an important
aspect of understanding brand equity.

Recall and Recognition: Do people remember your brand without a prompt (unaided brand
awareness) or do they need an aide? (aided awareness). Understanding how familiar people
are with your brand can help you address any gaps in the market.

Emotions Associated with the Brand: Failing to address negative emotions with your brand
can be a costly mistake. Even if your brand holds a monopoly of the market, consumers who are
eager to switch will do so as soon as a competitor grows into maturation.

Examples of Companies with High Brand Equity

There are a few brands that stand out as those who have arguably mastered positive brand
equity. These brands have achieved consistent, identifiable design, unaided awareness, and, in
many cases, unwavering consumer preference over competitors.

Apple Computer

In 1997, John Sculley, a former executive at Pepsi who went to Apple, said to the Guardian,
"People talk about technology, but Apple was a marketing company. It was the marketing
company of the decade." In the 1990s, Apple nearly went out of business. As Marc Gobe,
author of Emotional Branding, said “It goes beyond commerce. This business should have
been dead 10 years ago, but people said we've got to support it.” This support comes from the
loyalty of Apple product users, so that when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, there was a base for
him to build upon.

As Simon Sinek said, “People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.” Many
companies tried to make the switch from computers to other products, but failed. They
had spent the majority of their time highlighting features (for example: Gateway was
certainly qualified to make flat screen TVs, but their new products never caught on with
the public.) Apple on the other hand focused on the brand and its relationship with the
consumer. They dared consumers to challenge the status quo right alongside them, so
when they introduced revolutionary products such as the iPod or iPhone, consumers were
eager instead of confused. Focusing on brand creates customer relationships and unties a
company in a single direction.

Coca-Cola

Nowhere is the emphasis on brand more prevalent than in the constant debate of Pepsi versus
Coca-Cola. While Pepsi shares may be higher due to its diversified portfolio, Coke still outshines
Pepsi in both companies’ key product lines. The Pepsi Challenge campaign in the 1980s forced
the Coca-Cola company to take a look at their product line in one of their marketing campaigns
(The Pepsi Challenge). Coke even sweetened their drink to try to meet consumer demand, but
was faced with backlash. Coca-Cola began focusing on its brand more so than the product. They
emphasize how Coca-Cola brings families together using relationships and nostalgia (i.e. Share
a Coke campaign). The brand uses a logo, font, and consistent color scheme that are
immediately identifiable.

We continue to see instances of brand over product today. In fact, Adidas

recently announced plans to move away from short-term metrics to focus on overall brand
health. The brand’s Global Media Director called out the focus on short-term and conversion-
focused campaigns that are popular now in order to deliver on quarterly earning expectations.
Their hope is to move away from this model, to use a 60/40 ratio of long-term brand building
campaigns and short-term conversion campaigns.

As demonstrated by these and other brands, establishing positive brand equity can have a
marked effect on the bottom line. With this in mind, organizations should devote resources to
building out these campaigns with customer values and experience in mind.

Final Thoughts

The shifting focus to the consumer means that organizations must actively think about the
brand image they are creating for themselves, as well as how each action and initiative
contributes to overall brand awareness and perception. Through solutions such as Marketing
Evolution’s brand optimization, organizations can gain insight into what makes its brand
resonate with customers. Equipped with this information, marketing teams can make strategic,
data-driven decisions about how to optimize future strategies designed to build brand equity
and drive ROI.

What Is Brand Personality?

The term brand personality refers to a set of human characteristics that are attributed to
a brand name. An effective brand increases its brand equity by having a consistent set of traits
that a specific consumer segment enjoys. This personality is a qualitative value-add that a brand
gains in addition to its functional benefits. As such, a brand personality is something to which
the consumer can relate.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Brand personality is a set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand

name.
2. Companies should accurately define their brand personalities so they resonate
with the right consumers.
3. A company's brand should aim to elicit a positive emotional response from a
targeted consumer segment.
4. The personal side of brand personality is so important especially in the digital
age of artificial intelligence and automation.
5. Don't confuse brand personality with imagery, which consists of a company's
creative assets.

How Brand Personality Works

Brand personality is a framework that helps a company or organization shape the way people
feel about its product, service, or mission. A company's brand personality elicits an emotional
response in a specific consumer segment, with the intention of inciting positive actions that
benefit the firm.

Customers are more likely to purchase a brand if its personality is similar to their own. There
are five main types of brand personalities with common traits:

1. Excitement: Carefree, spirited, and youthful

2. Sincerity: Kindness, thoughtfulness, and an orientation toward family values
3. Ruggedness: Rough, tough, outdoorsy, and athletic
4. Competence: Successful, accomplished, and influential, which is highlighted by
leadership
5. Sophistication: Elegant, prestigious, and sometimes even pretentious
6. Brand personalities are even more important, especially in the digital age where
automation and artificial intelligence (AI) technology is growing. As much as consumers
enjoy being able to shop online or have companies predict their preferences, studies
show that people still want personal interaction and direct customer service when it
comes to the way they do business with companies. 1

7. Customers are more likely to purchase a brand if its personality is similar to their own.

Brand Personality vs. Imagery

A company's brand personality should not be confused with its imagery. A company's imagery is
a series of creative assets that communicate the tangible benefits of its brand. Conversely, a
firm's brand personality directly creates an emotional association in the mind of an ideal
consumer group.

It is important for a company to accurately define its brand personality so it resonates with the
appropriate consumer. This is because brand personality results in increased brand equity and
defines the brand's attitude in the marketplace. It is also the key factor of any
successful marketing campaign. In order to choose a brand's personality, companies consider
the five personality types and select the one the company wishes to convey.

If, for example, a new outdoor apparel company wants to resonate with consumers, the natural
inclination is to create a brand personality that is rugged. But it is possible that a competitor
may have already positioned itself as the rugged outdoor apparel brand. To set itself apart, the
new company can position itself uniquely in the mind of the customer by adopting a brand
personality of sophistication. This differentiates the brand as an upscale, high-end option to
outdoor apparel, which attracts a specific type of consumer.

Real-World Examples of Brand Personality

There are many examples in the corporate world of how brand personality works. Here are
some of the most common ones below.

Dove chooses sincerity as its brand personality. In doing so, the company hopes to attract
feminine consumers.

Luxury brands, such as Michael Kors and Chanel, aim for sophistication by focusing on an
upper-class, glamorous, and trendy lifestyle, which attracts a high-spending consumer base.

REI, the outdoor recreation retail store, has a rugged brand personality and aims to inspire its
audience (typically outdoorsy, adventurous people) to be strong and resilient

Why Is It Crucial for Companies to Define Their Brand Personality?

It is important for companies to accurately define their brand personalities so they resonate
with the appropriate consumers. This is because a brand personality results in increased brand
equity and defines the brand's attitude in the marketplace. It is also the key factor of any
successful marketing campaign.

What Are the Different Types of Brand Personalities?

A company's brand personality elicits an emotional response in a specific consumer segment,

with the intention of inciting positive actions that benefit the firm. There are five main types of
brand personalities with common traits. They are excitement, sincerity, ruggedness,
competence, and sophistication. Customers are more likely to purchase a brand if its
personality is similar to their own.

What Is the Difference Between Brand Personality and Imagery?

A company's brand personality should not be confused with its imagery. A company's imagery is
a series of creative assets that communicate the tangible benefits of its brand. Conversely, a
firm's brand personality directly creates an emotional association in the mind of an ideal
consumer group.

What Is Brand Image? – Importance & Examples

Brand Image is how customers think of a brand. It can be defined as the perception of the
brand in the minds of the customers.
This image develops over time. Customers form an image based on their interactions and
experience with the brand. These interactions take place in many forms and do not necessarily
involve the purchase or use of products and services.

What Is Brand Image?

Brand image is the perception of the brand in the mind of the customer. It is an aggregate of
beliefs, ideas, and impressions that a customer holds regarding the brand.

An image is the set of beliefs, ideas, and impression that a person holds regarding an object.

A simple definition of brand image could be – the customers’ perception of the brand based on
their interactions and experience with the brand or their beliefs of what the brand could be.

A brand can be perceived differently by different customers. Hence, the formation of a

consistent brand image is a huge task for any business.

Importance Of Brand Image

Every Company strives to build a strong image as it helps in fulfilling their business motives. A
strong brand image has the following advantages –

1. More profits as new customers are attracted to the brand.

2. Easy to introduce new products under the same brand.
3. Boosts the confidence of existing customers. Helps in retaining them.
4. Better Business-Customer relationship.
5. A company with a bad image may struggle to operate and might not be able to launch a
new product under the same brand.

What Gives Rise To Brand Image?

Companies spend most of their time, effort, and resources in building their brand identity. They
decide how their brand will look, how should the customer feel when they contact the brand,
where should the brand be located in consumers’ minds, and other associations. All these,
when summed up, give rise to a brand personality which eventually gives rise to the brand
image when the customer interacts with this brand or gets to know about it.

Now, it is not always necessary that an image forms out of interactions and experience with
the brand. There are times when prospective customers form an image of the brand in their
mind after reading news about the brand or after watching an influencer review it.
This is just like with humans. When we meet a person, we assess his personality and form a
perception of him in our minds based on our interactions. Similarly, we also form perceptions
when we hear about that person from some of our friends.

Examples Of Brand Image

1. Coca-Cola is a brand known for a product best used at the time of happiness, joy, and
good experience. It is the ‘original cola’ and has a ‘unique taste’.
2. Woodland Shoes are solid and are an ideal choice for outdoors. They last very long.
3. McDonald’s has an image of an inexpensive brand that serves the food very quickly.
4. Walmart is best known for a retail brand selling goods for a lesser price than usual
retailers.
5. Rolls-Royce is a premium brand considered to be exclusive for wealthy and influential
people.

The brand image of Nike is different from other apparel brands. It’s considered to be a cult
brand which deals only in sportswear.

Brand Image vs Brand Identity

Brand identity is how the company portrays itself to the customers. It’s how the brand wants
the customer to perceive it.

Brand image, on the other hand, is how the customers actually perceive the brand. The
company has less control over its image and always strive to align the brand image with the
desired brand identity.

Brand Image Brand Identity

Brand image is the customers’ perspective of the Brand identity is how the brand wants to
Definition brand. It is how the customers actually see the portray itself to the customers. It’s how
brand based on their interactions. the brand look at itself.

Brand identity is fully controlled by the

Control The brand has less control over its image.
brand.
 Brand Image Brand Identity

Indication Customers’ perception of the brand. How the brand identifies itself

Corporate brand
Corporate branding is a very comprehensive term which covers all of the marketing affairs of a
professional company and their association with each other. In a more sophisticated way, we
can say that a corporate brand is a philosophy or core value of a business, set to a theme.
Corporate branding is how a corporation presents itself to the world, and how it presents to its
own employees.

As a startup company, the first thing you’ll need to do is to focus on a specific direction you’re
headed with the company. What’s your “why”?

This, as well as employees, partners, customers and all other stakeholders play a key role in
shaping the image of a brand; a brand is a reflection of all the individuals directly or indirectly
attached to it.

All successful companies use logos, slogans, or symbols that represent their products or
services. These can be in the form of promises, traditions, and identity.

For example:

What comes to our mind when we see the Apple logo? We probably recall everything
associated with the brand: premium pricing, expensive phones, fast computers, innovation,
consistency, Steve Jobs etc.

It’s just a simple logo with no letters explaining everything about the brand. How did Apple Inc.
build such a strong impression in the minds of millions of people around the globe? One thing
we can say for sure is consistency. The secret is to observe strict adherence to the philosophy.

How to build a powerful corporate brand?

How can you turn your business into a brand? For that, you need to develop a corporate
branding campaign. If you want to give your business a life, you have to develop a brand. But,
first, you need to define a few fundamental concepts, which are:

1. What is your brand all about?

 2. What are your services and products?
3. What purpose do your products and services serve?
4. Who is your targeted audience?
5. Why should they prefer your brand?
6. What promise and values do you offer?

After answering these questions carefully you can move forward and do some homework which
includes:

1. Identify what is wrong with your business

2. Understand and unify your employees under a company policy
3. Build a strong brand message
4. Make your business visible, get a good website
5. Design a logo that represents your business
6. Make your business visible, so get a good website

Devise a data-driven marketing strategy

This whole corporate branding strategy will help you create an image and position for your
products and/or services in a competitive market. You can always add more values to your
brand in order to strengthen the relationship with your customers. It’s highly recommended to
get professional assistance at every step.

For example, consulting a company which offers corporate branding services will help you
design an ideal logo. Make sure you consult a richly experienced corporate branding service.
Start thinking about building your brand and let your business grow beyond limits.

What is Corporate Branding?

Corporate Branding is an act of using the brand name of the company in the
overall advertising efforts and all the communication to the stakeholders. It is
the intangible attitude and spirit behind the company that gives it a distinguishing identity
in the industry and in the minds of consumers. It is the much broader concept as compared to
promoting the products and services of the company.

It provides a competitive advantage to the company whilst selling its products and services
in the market as the consumers are well aware of the company due to its strong corporate
identity and brand name.
It facilitates new product launches and is well accepted in the market due to the strong
corporate legacy created with the previous or existing line of the products and services
offered by the company.

It helps the company to tap and enter new markets and locations on the domestic
and international level as the corporate entity has already created repute for itself with the
corporate branding efforts.

There is an emotional connection with the existing and prospective consumers as it arises a
feeling of brand loyalty in their minds.

It makes the marketing and promotional efforts easier as with the Corporate Branding well in
place, the consumers have the factor of trust towards the product and service offerings by
the company.

There is an increased awareness about the company and its offerings with the consumers
identifying the logo, mascots, color shades, tagline, and other brand elements having the
top-of-the-mind recall about all the expressions of the brand.

The framework of Corporate Branding:

As mentioned earlier, the facets of Corporate Branding are quite different from the product
branding as the latter strives hard on the selling points and generating profits for the
company whereas the former enlightens the market and the target audience about the
existence of the brand, values, fundamentals, unique selling proposition, aim and purpose
to be in the industry, and very importantly how is it different from the other brand existing in
the market.

It starts with the management and the key staff members together understanding the nature
of the brand, business philosophies, long-term and short-term objectives, and the target
audience along with the market to promote the brand and the products and services.

The next step is deciding on the way to position the brand in the market and in
the psychology of the consumers and that can be arrived by understanding and finalizing
that in which category does the operations and product range falls, is it luxury, mid-segment
or affordable and then the brand positioning is decided.

Next comes in line are the vision and mission statements of the brand that holds quite an
important place in the framework of Corporate Branding.

Then comes working on the creative elements such as logo, tagline, mascot, color palette,
and design templates.
Many companies also hire a brand ambassador such as a famous sportsperson, movie star,
or a celebrity from any walk of life complementing the nature of the brand and its offerings.

Once the aforementioned points are in place, it is the time to execute the Corporate
Branding strategies by sponsoring and participating in various events on the corporate
level that give the due visibility of the brand to the target audience and carving a niche in the
market.

Below we discuss some Examples of Corporate Branding :

1) Apple

The technology giant famous for offering gadgets ranging from mobile phones, tablets,
laptops, computer systems, televisions, and more is not only renowned in the USA but has
made an impact all over the globe with the products that are high on quality, class, and
technology. Its brand logo is quite creative and catchy and as its target audience is niche and
the luxury segment, the design elements are minimalistic in nature with solid color tones
having a classy finesse. Even its print, digital, and television advertisements follow the same
design route with the clear visibility of the logo.

The products of the company can be identified even from the far sight owing to the strong
measures taken by the company to build the Corporate Branding.

2) Nike

The popular sports brand is quite a hit number with not only the sports personalities and
celebrities around the world but also with the common man as well. Its mission
statement reads, “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. “ The
co-founder once said in its speech, “If you have a body, you are an athlete.” Making it very
clear to the entire world that the brand is just not confined to the sportsmen’s but also to
everyone having a zeal for sports and fitness.

Its logo encompasses of a single right tick with the slogan ‘Just Do It’ is quite sporty and direct
in nature ensuring quick registration and a strong recall factor. The company has made a
strong corporate base by sponsoring various sports and related events.

3) Coca-Cola
We all know that sodas are not very good for our health and vitality but the beverage major
Coca-Cola is one of the most loved and profitable brands across the world since more than
hundred years now. Right from mineral water, fruit drinks, aerated drinks, energy drinks to
zero-calorie drinks; it has something or the other in store for everyone with the cola drink
being the most famous amongst the target audience. Its slogan is ‘Taste the Feeling’ as it
harps on the fact that drinking coco cola gives the feeling of freshness with the renewed vigor
and vitality. It keeps on hiring celebrities from the various walks of life as its brand
ambassadors to have an emotional connection with the target audience that is majorly young
generation under the age bracket of 15 to 35 years.

The term and concept of Corporate Branding are much more than the catchy logo and
aesthetic design templates and harps on every expression of the brand such as customer
service levels and unique selling propositions that can be quality, affordability, delivery
timelines, and other depending on the fundamentals and objectives of the organization.

10 Steps To Successful Corporate Branding

Corporate branding is a strong tool for re-aligning a corporate strategy and ensures that the
corporation – big or small – is leveraging adequately on the un-tapped internal and external
resources. There are 10 crucial steps on the way to a successful corporate branding strategy, and
they can serve as a useful guide for any corporate branding project.

1. The CEO Needs To Lead The Brand Strategy Work.

The starting point for corporate branding must be the board room, which is also serving as the
most important check-point during the project. The CEO must be personally involved in the
brand strategy work, and he/she must be passionate and fully buy into the idea of branding. To
ensure success despite the daily and stressful routine with many duties at the same time, the CEO
must be backed by a strong brand management team of senior contributors, who can facilitate a
continuous development and integration of the new strategy.

2. Build Your Own Model As Not Every Model Suits All.

All companies have their own specific requirements, own sets of business values and a unique
way of doing things. Therefore, even the best and most comprehensive branding models have to
be tailored to these needs and requirements. Often, only a few but important adjustments are
needed to align them with other similar business models and strategies in the company to create a
simplified toolbox. Remember that branding is the face of a business strategy so these two areas
must go hand in hand.

3. Involve Your Stakeholders Including The Customers.

Who knows more about your company than the customers, the employees and many other
stakeholders? This is common sense, but many companies forget these simple and easily
accessible sources of valuable information for the branding strategy. A simple rule is to use 5%
of the marketing budget on research and at least obtain a fair picture of the current business
landscape including the current brand image among stakeholders, brand positioning and also any
critical paths ahead. Simply do not forget the valuable voice of your customers in this process.

4. Advance The Corporate Vision.

The corporate branding strategy is an excellent channel for advancing the corporate
vision throughout the company. It allows the management to involve, educate and align everyone
around the corporate objectives, values and future pathway. It provides a guiding star and leads
everyone in the same direction. The internal efforts are at least 50% of making a corporate
branding strategy successful.

5. Exploit New Technology.

Modern technology should play a part of a successful corporate branding strategy. Technology
helps to gain effectiveness and improve the competitive edge of the corporation. A well-designed
and fully updated Intranet is a must in today’s working environment which has become
increasingly virtual with employees working from home, from other locations and traveling
across the globe to name only a few factors. An Extranet can facilitate a much more seem less
integration with strategic partners, suppliers and customers, avoid time consuming paper work
and manual handling of many issues. A company website is not only a must, but rather a crucial
channel for any modern corporation regardless of size. If the corporation is not accessible on the
Internet, it does not exist! The more professional the website, the better the perception among the
Internet savvy modern customer. Gone are the days where corporations could get along with a
business card portrayed on the Internet.

6. Empower People To Become Brand Ambassadors.

The most important asset in a corporation is its people. They do interact every day with
colleagues, customers, suppliers, competitors and industry experts to name a few. But they also
interact with an impressive number of people totally disconnected to the corporation in form of
family members, friends, former colleagues and many others. Hence they serve as the
corporations most important brand ambassadors as the word-of-mouth can be extremely valuable
and have great impact on the overall image of the corporate brand image. The most effective way
to turn employees into brand ambassadors is to train everyone adequately in the corporate brand
strategy (vision, values and personality etc.) and making sure they fully understand – and
believe! – what exactly the corporation aims at being in the minds of its customers and
stakeholders. Nike is a brand which is known for their efforts into educating and empowering
everyone employed by the company to be strong brand ambassadors.

7. Create The Right Delivery System.

The corporate brand is the face of the business strategy and basically it promises what all
stakeholders should expect from the corporation. Therefore, the delivery of the right products
and services with all the implications this entail should be carefully scrutinized and evaluated on
performance before any corporation starts a corporate branding project. Think of the cradle to
grave concept of a lifelong customer and the value he/she will provide in such a time span. Make
sure he/she is handled with outstanding care according to internal specifications and outside
expectations. The moment of truth is when the corporate brand promise is delivered well – and it
does not hurt if the corporation exceeds the customer expectation. Singapore Airlines runs a very
rigid, detailed and in-depth description of any customer touch points with the corporation, and
several resources are spend on making sure it actually does happen every time to every customer.
All employees regardless of title and rank from Singapore Airlines spend a not insignificant
amount of workdays being trained every year.

8. Communicate!

Bring the corporate brand to life through a range of well-planned, well-executed marketing
activities, and make sure the overall messages are consistent, clear and relevant to the target
audiences. Make sure the various messages are concise and easy to comprehend. Do not try to
communicate every single point from the corporate branding strategy. Instead, a selective
approach will make much more impact using the same resources.

Measure The Brand Performance.

A brand is accountable and so should a corporate brand be. How much value does it provide to
the corporation and how instrumental is the brand in securing competitiveness? These are some
of the questions which need to be answered and which the CEO will automatically seek as part
of his/her commitment to run the strategy successfully. The brand equity consists of various
individually tailor-made key performance indicators (including the financial brand value) and
needs to be tracked regularly. A brand score card can help facilitating an overview of the brand
equity and the progression as the strategy is implemented.

10. Adjust Relentlessly And Be Ready To Raise Your Own Bar At All Times.

The business landscape is changing almost every day in every industry. Hence the corporation
needs to evaluate and possibly adjust the corporate branding strategy on a regular basis.
Obviously, a corporate brand should stay relevant, differentiated and consistent throughout time,
so it is a crucial balance. The basic parts of the corporate branding strategy like vision, identity,
personality and values are not to be changed often as they are the basic components. The changes
are rather small and involve the thousands of daily actions and interpersonal behaviors, which
the corporations employ as part of the brand marketing efforts. But make sure complacency does
not take root in the organization and affects the goal setting. The strong brands are the ones
which are driven forward by owners whom never get tired of raising their own bars. They
become their own change agents – and brand champions for great brands.

Advertising Appeal Meaning, Importance, Types & Example

What is Advertising Appeal?

Advertising Appeal is the strategy used to attract attention from the customers to trigger a
response in connection with the product or service being advertised which can lead to an action
such as purchase or inquiry. Advertising is a form of non-personal communication about a
product, service, organization, or idea by an identified sponsor. At the core lies advertising
appeal which is used to attract the attention of the consumers, effectively influence their
feelings and change their attitude in favor of the advertised product/service.

It is the connect that consumers feel with the ad. Creating such an appeal encompasses
understanding what the consumers want or need and what excites them. As a basis for
advertising messages, several different appeals can be used.

Importance of Advertising Appeal

Advertising Appeal is an important aspect of a campaign. Without appeal a customer may not
connect with the brand or the product. The decision of buying a product or a service is a
complex one and it becomes even more relevant when there are a lot of competitors. A
customer needs to understand the message very clearly though the promotional campaigns.
Advertising appeal helps in delivering that messaging in a way through which customer not only
understands the message but also responds to it. The action can be a purchase of the product
or may be research about the product.

Through a proper appeal, even if the product gets added into the consideration set of the the
potential customers, it is a win.

Advertising appeals refers to the approach used to attract the attention of customers or to
influence their feelings towards a brand, product or service. It is the central idea of an
advertisement and speak to an individual's need, wants or interest and entice her to take the
desired action which generally is “Buy me”.

Types of advertising appeal

Some of the most common advertising appeals include:

1. Favorable Price Appeal

The offer price dominates the message. This is used extensively during sales promotions e.g.
end of season sales, special offers, everyday low process. McDonald’s Happy Price Menu
campaign is designed around this appeal.

2. Feature Appeal

The major traits or attributes of the product/service dominates the message. Such ads tend to
be highly informative and try to build a favorable attitude for the attributes to trigger a rational
purchase.

L’oreal’s Total Repair ad campaign featuring Aishwarya Rai talks about the product’s
effectiveness against 5 hair problems.

3. Competitive advantage appeal

Ads featuring this appeal directly or indirectly include competitor’s product/service and
compare specific attributes.
4. News appeal

Announcement or news about the product/service dominates the ad’s message. Many
educational institutes use this to position themselves as leaders in the market.

News appeal is also used to show a proof which can appeal to customers directly.

5. Product/service popularity appeal

This emphasizes the popularity of a product/service by pointing out the buyer base. Times of
India is often found reiterating its “India’s Number 1 English daily” status.

The advertising channel or the integrated marketing communications used also leaves an
impact of the appeal on the customers.

6. Emotional appeals

Although this category includes many different feelings and needs on a personal level (safety,
security, love, affection, joy, nostalgia, pride, achievement, pleasure, sorrow, self-esteem,
actualization etc.) and social level (recognition, status, respect, rejection, approval etc.), the
two common ones include:

a. Fear Appeal

This is where an element of fear is part of the appeal and influences the customers to
understand the benefits

b. Humor Appeal

Humorous ads are often the best remembered as they can hold consumers’ attention and put
them in a positive disposition towards the product.

7. Brand/Status Appeal
This is the appeal where the customers associate a particular status value with the product.
BMW or Mercedes as cars have become status symbols across the globe because of their brand
appeal.

Example of Advertising Appeal

Apple as a brand has become a status symbol in the society. An apple smartphone is sought
after in various countries. Whenever a new model of iPhone is launched, people aspire to buy
it. Many who buy it feel a sense of achievement. Same is true for other major smartphone
flagship brands. This is an example of brand appeal.

Many causes have emotional appeal. There are many examples where the campaign an
inspirational story of someone who has overcome hardships to achieve certain milestones. This
appeals a lot of people at emotional level and motivates them.

Hence, this concludes the definition of Advertising Appeal along with its overview.

This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team. It has been
reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for
educational & academic purpose only.

Browse the definition and meaning of more similar terms. The Management Dictionary covers
over 2000 business concepts from 5 categories.

What Is Ad Copy? (Plus Effective Ad Copy Examples

Ad copy is content that encourages a potential buyer to take action and purchase a product. By
invoking an emotional response, communicating value and addressing doubt, effective ad copy
can increase a company's sales and profits. If you're an advertising or marketing professional,
you may want to learn more about how ad copy can improve your strategies. In this article, we
discuss what ad copy is, how it's used, ways to use it and examples of effective ad copy.

What is ad copy?
Ad copy, or advertising copy, is a form of branded content that aims to convert a potential lead
for your business into a customer. Successful ad copy takes the place of the traditional
interaction between a potential buyer and a salesperson by highlighting the key benefits of a
product or service and addressing any issues the potential buyer may have. Compelling ad copy
communicates to the consumer how the company's product or service can solve their
problems. These are some techniques that ad copywriters use:

Compliments: This kind of ad copy works by implying that the people who purchase the
product are smarter or better than those who don't.

Cost savings: When writing cost-savings copy, you emphasize how investing in the product
or service can save the consumer money long-term.

Discounts: Offering deals like buy one, get one or discounts like half off regular price can
encourage potential buyers to make the purchase.

Free trials: If you're selling a service, ad copy that promotes a free trial can entice your
potential leads into signing up.

Influencer: Depending on the budget you're working with, you might write copy
communicating that influencers love your product or service.

Options: In this kind of ad copy, you show that your product offers more customization and
control for the consumer than a competitor's products.

Scarcity: This kind of ad copy updates the viewer on how many of the items you have in stock,
showing them that if they wait too long to purchase, they may lose their chance.

Testimonials: Ad copy that includes testimonials shows how other customers have enjoyed
your product and communicates value to the consumer.

Time savings: When writing time-savings copy, you focus on demonstrating to the customer
how investing in your product or service can save them time.

How is ad copy used?

Professionals use ad copy in the digital marketing space to encourage the viewer to take action
by purchasing the product or service the ad is trying to sell. You can use ad copy to create a
sense of urgency or emotional response in the potential buyer, and there are many tactics and
techniques you can try to accomplish this goal. Marketing professionals may also use ad copy to
improve their organization's engagement, profit and conversions.

Ways to use ad copy

These are some various ways marketing and advertising professionals may use ad copy in their
strategies:
Social media advertisement

Because social media offers precise advertising algorithms that can target your ideal customer,
it has become an efficient way to promote your brand or product. Many people use social
media daily, making it a useful platform for finding and converting potential buyers to
customers. Marketing professionals use ad copy on social media to encourage people to visit
their site or take advantage of special offers.

Traditional ad copy in print

Advertising has a long history in print, and through digital marketing has become more
prevalent, print ad copy is still useful. Whether in magazines, newspapers or journals, ad copy
can promote a company's brand. Depending on the size and specific product or service, some
companies may find that their ad copy is most successful in print. Because different
demographics subscribe to each form of print and some demographics prefer print materials
over digital, identifying your audience is an important step in deciding how and where to use
your ad copy.

Email campaign ad copy

When potential leads visit your website, you can prompt them to join your email subscription
list to receive a discount or free downloadable content. By subscribing to an email campaign,
your potential buyer can receive ad copy in their inbox periodically. This method of ad copy
delivery can be very effective because it ensures that your company stays relevant in the
consumer's mind.

Ad copy for the sales page

Ad copy can even be useful on the sales page to prompt the potential buyer to follow through
and make their purchase. Using ad copy that communicates a limited supply, limited time offer
or exceptional quality can influence the customer to make a purchase.

Examples of ad copy

Different companies use different ad copy techniques and language when communicating to
their target audience. Here are four examples of ad copy to consider:

Example 1

Ocean Lotion is a body-care brand that specializes in skincare for ocean lovers. To capitalize on
their branding, they incorporate puns and casual language in their ad copy. They market to
those who love swimming in the ocean but hate the uncomfortable after-effects.
Advertising Campaigns - Meaning and its Process

Advertising campaigns are the groups of advertising messages which are similar in nature. They
share same messages and themes placed in different types of medias at some fixed times. The
time frames of advertising campaigns are fixed and specifically defined.

An advertising campaign is a specifically designed strategy that is carried out across different
mediums in order to achieve desired results such as increased brand awareness, increased
sales, and improved communication within a specific market. All of this is accomplished
through advertising.

Many entrepreneurs think carrying out an advertising campaign means simply creating an ad.
However, they are mistaken. For advertising to yield the best results,

it’s crucial to be well organized right from the start.

If you’re considering launching an advertising campaign, we recommend you get in contact

with a specialist in the medium you're interested in. An online advertising agency specifically
geared towards digital marketing is your best bet and the best way to achieve your desired
results.

Furthermore, you’ll be able to both optimize your budget and access metrics related to the
evolution of actions.

The very prime thing before making an ad campaign is to know-

Why you are advertising and what are you advertising ?

Why refers to the objective of advertising campaign. The objective of an advertising campaign is
to

1. Inform people about your product

2. Convince them to buy the product
3. Make your product available to the customers
 The process of making an advertising campaign is as follows:

1. Research:
2. first step is to do a market research for the product to be advertised. One needs to find
out the product demand, competitors, etc.
3. Know the target audience:
4. one need to know who are going to buy the product and who should be targeted.
5. Setting the budget:
6. the next step is to set the budget keeping in mind all the factors like media,
presentations, paper works, etc which have a role in the process of advertising and the
places where there is a need of funds.
7. Deciding a proper theme:
8. the theme for the campaign has to be decided as in the colors to be used, the graphics
should be similar or almost similar in all ads, the music and the voices to be used, the
designing of the ads, the way the message will be delivered, the language to be used,
jingles, etc.
9. Selection of media:
10. the media or number of Medias selected should be the one which will reach the target
customers.
11. Media scheduling:
12. the scheduling has to be done accurately so that the ad will be visible or be read or be
audible to the targeted customers at the right time.
13. Executing the campaign:
finally the campaign has to be executed and then the feedback has to be noted.

14 Set a Campaign Goal

Typically, when we think about ‘goals’ most people tend to think of sales. But the
truth is that there are many other advertising objectives to focus on. The most
common goals include acquiring new clients, promoting current products, a nd
launching new products. You can also create an advertising campaign designed to
improve brand awareness or to help associate a certain brand with certain emotions.
Whatever your goal may be, it’s important to identify it before proceeding.

15 Define a Target

Part of a campaign’s success is directly tied to your target audiences. If you have a
well defined target market or audience, it is much easier to accomplish and measure
your goals. Defining points like age, sex, social class, marital status, education
level, likes, habits, and hobbies will help you understand who you’re trying to reach
through your advertising campaign strategy.

Mostly used media tools are print media and electronic media. Print media includes newspaper,
magazines, pamphlets, banners, and hoardings. Electronic media includes radio, television, e-
mails, sending message on mobiles, and telephonic advertising. The only point to remember is
getting a proper frequency for the ad campaign so that the ad is visible and grasping time for
customers is good enough.

All campaigns do not have fix duration. Some campaigns are seasonal and some run all year
round. All campaigns differ in timings. Some advertising campaigns are media based, some are
area based, some are product based, and some are objective based. It is seen that generally
advertising campaigns run successfully, but in case if the purpose is not solved in any case, then
the theory is redone, required changes are made using the experience, and the remaining
campaign is carried forward.

Three Faces of Effective Advertising: Motivation, Method &

Measurement

Many people consider marketing a dark art. Deliver the right creative alchemy at the right time,
on the right channel, and … magic. The fact is that marketing is becoming more data-driven
each year. Digital channels, in particular, are oblivious to the sentimental hunches of
advertisers. Data simply reports the truth. The goal of advertising is to drive consumers to
adopt a product or service. Conversion either happens or it doesn’t.

Breaking down the consumer’s journey of completing a purchase can increase your odds of
success. At XAPPmedia, we consider three primary elements that allow advertisers to capture
new customers: motivation, method and measurement.

1. Motivation – Capturing Consumers’ Attention

Physics tell us that an object at rest will remain at rest unless a force acts upon it to create
movement. Thus it is with consumers. They will go on merrily, not buying your product or
service unless motivated to do so. The first step is to motivate action. This involves advertising
creative that breaks through the clutter and captures consumers’ attention. It also includes
targeting the right consumers, at the right times, through the right channels. But, it doesn’t
stop there.
Again, like in Newtonian physics, you can motivate a consumer to move in the direction of a
product purchase, but another force, friction, may block the conversion. What many people
don’t recognize or simply ignore in marketing is the friction to conversion. Friction in conversion
is the extra effort required to complete the transaction. A lightly motivated consumer cannot
overcome a lot of friction, such as remembering an 800 number or URL or driving an hour to a
retail store to later claim an advertised offer.

Beyond motivating consumers, advertisers must ensure that friction to conversion does not
exceed the motivation level. All advertising will reach consumers that represent a spectrum of
motivation. Some will be highly motivated by the offer, while others will be lightly motivated or
somewhere in between. The lower the level of friction to convert, the more of those consumers
will be captured. This is where method comes into play.

2. Method – Reducing Friction for Conversions

Amazon is famous for both motivation and method. It motivates purchases by showing how
popular specific items are, providing reviews that offer consumer endorsements on products
and suggesting items that may fit a consumer’s interests. However, Amazon is also laser
focused on methods to reduce friction. The most famous of these is one-click ordering. The
subject of a controversial patent, one-click ordering is designed for spontaneity and
convenience. If you want something, a single click will execute a purchase and begin the
shipping process. There are no forms to fill out. You’re free to get on with your day.

Conversion methods are less exciting to marketers than the creative process and often involve
other stakeholders to execute them effectively. With that said, conversion friction is ignored at
your peril. High friction in the conversion process reduces customer acquisition. The question
for every marketer should be: “What methods are you employing to reduce conversion
friction?”

In audio advertising, conversion friction remains high. For terrestrial radio, the only way for a
consumer to engage with an advertised offer is to stop what they are doing and consciously
take a step to do something else suggested by the ad. Internet radio reduces this friction
somewhat by having an on-screen tile to click. However, with 79% of listeners now using
smartphones, consumers still must take the smartphone out of their pocket or purse, key in
their PINs, open the app and then click. It is not exactly convenient or spontaneous.

XAPP Ads provide audio advertisers the lowest level of conversion friction available by enabling
“voice clicks.” If a consumer is interested in an ad, they simply say the prompted phrase and the
offered connection is delivered. Whether it is an app download, a coupon, a streamlined
purchase or a phone call, it is automatic and instantaneous. The connection is made hands free
and eyes free.

3. Measurement – Prove and Adjust

“Half of my advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” This quote is
attributed to John Wanamaker from about 100 years ago, but marketers can still relate to it
today. If marketers are attempting to motivate consumers to engage with their advertised
offers, how do they know when conversions actually occur? How will they know which ad
creative and formats have the best conversion rates?

In the physical world, other than differentiating 800 phone numbers by ad campaign, the data
has been elusive. In the digital world, performance data that tracks the source and flow of
activity is a byproduct of the solution. As a result, you can analyze not only which ads convert
most often, but also what the conversion rate was, how long consumers interacted, what the
revenue impact was, and break it all down by ad unit, creative, format, geography, time of day,
demographics, duration of ad run and more. XAPP Ads go beyond conversion by telling you
precisely what is working and how well. John Wanamaker would be smiling.

Reducing Friction and Measuring Results

We introduced XAPP Ads to reduce conversion friction and make consumer interaction simple,
spontaneous and convenient. XAPP Ads are a tool for marketers and agencies to take great
audio ad creative and deliver higher conversion rates through reduced friction. By measuring
the results, you can also determine which creative is having the biggest impact by channel or
which ads need to be replaced. Whether you are using XAPP Ads or other ad formats, make
sure you consider how to reduce conversion friction when planning your next campaign.
Otherwise you may be cheating yourself out of new customers.

Consumer Behavior - Motivation

Needs are the core of the marketing concept. The study of Motivation refers to all the
processes that drives in a person to perceive a need and pursue a definite course of action to
fulfill that need.
What are Needs − Every individual has needs that are required to be fulfilled. Primary needs
are food, clothing, shelter and secondary needs are society, culture etc.

What are Wants − Needs are the necessities, but wants are something more in addition to the
needs. For example, food is a need and type of food is our want.

What are Goals − Goals are the objectives that have to be fulfilled. Goals are generic and
product specific in nature. Generic goals are general in nature, whereas product specific goals
are the desires of a specific nature.

Needs and fulfillment are the basis of motivation. Change takes place due to both internal as
well as external factors. Sometimes needs are satisfied and sometimes they are not due to
individual’s personal, social, cultural or financial needs.

Theories of Motivation

Maslow’s Theory of Need Hierarchy

Based on the notion of a universal hierarchy of human needs Dr Abraham Maslow, a clinical
psychologist formulated a widely accepted theory of human motivation. This identifies five
basic levels of human need which rank in order of importance from lower level needs to higher
level needs.

This theory signifies the importance of satisfying the lower level needs before higher level
needs arise. According to this theory, dissatisfaction motivates the consumer.

Following are the levels of human needs −

Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory

Physiological Needs –

Food, clothing, air, and shelter are the first level needs. They are known as the basic necessities
or primary needs.

Safety or Security Needs –

Once the first level needs are satisfied, consumers move to the next level. Physical safety,
security, stability and protection are the security needs.

Social Needs –

After the safety needs are satisfied, consumers expect friendship, belonging, attachment. They
need to maintain themselves in a society and try to be accepted.

Esteem Needs –

Then comes esteem needs such as self-esteem, status, prestige. Individuals here in this stage
want to rise above the general level as compared to others to achieve mental satisfaction.

Self-Actualization –

This is the highest stage of the hierarchy. People here, try to excel in their field and improve
their level of achievement. They are known as self-actualizers.

Motivational Theory and Marketing Strategies

Marketers have to understand the motives of their potential customers to enjoy good sales. A
buyer has several motives and each change with various elements. In such cases the marketers
can readily help their customers by changing their marketing strategy so that the conflict is
resolved. Following are the major conflicts that may arise −

Approach Conflict –

This conflict arises when a consumer has two different choices of similar products or services.
He gives equal importance to them, but is unable to choose one over the other.

Approach Avoidance Conflict –

This type of conflict happens when the consumer decides in favor of a product, but is unhappy
with a particular feature of the product and wants to avoid it. Under such circumstances, the
marketer may come up with few modifications in the existing product and make it suitable for
the consumer.

Graphic Design In Advertising:

Why Is It Important
Graphic design plays a vital role in advertising, yet most marketers don’t know how to leverage
it. To make matters worse, most graphic designers don’t know much about advertising. So,
whether you’re a marketer or a graphic designer, in this post, we’ll show you everything you
need to know about graphic design in advertising.

What is Graphic Design in Advertising?

Graphic design in advertising uses visual elements to convey a message or promote a product.
It involves strategically using color, imagery, typography, and layout while considering customer
needs to create compelling ads that bring in new customers and sales.

In the following example, you can study dozens of designs competing with each other for the
attention of the people. Which one grabs your attention? Now, analyze why.

How are Graphics Used in Advertising?

Graphic designs in advertising and marketing are used throughout the brochures, packaging,
logo creation, website design, display ads, and billboards. The primary goal is to create a
visually appealing graphic that emphasizes the product or service being offered.

What are advertisement graphics?

An advertisement graphic is any visual creation used to influence the sale of a product or
service, either through advertising or eye-catching packaging. An often overlooked promotional
graphic is the logo, which helps build brand identity but to which most companies don’t give
proper attention.

5 Reasons Why Graphic Design Is Important for Advertising

1.Increased conversions

2. Brand recognition

3. Effective communication

4. Getting attention

5. Makes it memorable
1. Increased conversions

Graphic design is important because it helps improve the conversion rate of your advertising
campaigns. When you advertise your products and services, you need to make sure that they
appeal to potential customers. To achieve this, I recommend developing a graphic design
strategy.

If you create eye-catching graphics, you can attract more people who want to buy your product.
Your advertising should also be clear and concise. If your message is unclear, your customer
won’t understand what you’re trying to tell them. They might think you’re trying to sell
something else or that you’re being misleading. So if your ad is confusing, it can lead to a poor
conversion rate.

2. Brand recognition

Brand recognition is one of the essential aspects of corporate advertising. It takes a lot of effort
and investment to build a strong identity. That’s why forward-thinking companies spend a lot of
money and resources developing their brands.

The easiest way to do this is to hire graphic designers who can bring the brand’s style to visual
communication. The main goal is to make their clients’ products recognizable to a broad
audience. Therefore, they need to make sure that all the company’s materials are consistent.

A graphic designer must integrate every aspect of the product into a unified style. The designer
must understand what the client wants to convey through their advertising to achieve this goal.
Then, they should implement each element to convey the same massage.

3. Effective communication

Advertising is communication that uses images, words, sounds, and movements to persuade
people to buy products or services. So graphic design plays a vital role in effective
communication. We help companies get their message across through various media, including
print, television, radio, billboards, websites, and social media. The goal is to get people to take
action and buy products or services.

Design isn’t limited to traditional forms of advertising such as print and TV. It’s also used in
digital marketing. Examples include websites, blogs, email newsletters, social media posts,
video ads, and infographics. So, modern advertising relies on graphic design to convey a
company’s brand identity and drive sales.

4. Getting attention
Graphic design is also essential to attract attention. Whether you’re designing a logo, a website
banner, or any other advertisement, a good design will help attract customers’ attention. If you
want to stand out, you need to look professional and put effort into your design.

You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on fancy software or hire a designer who charges
$100 an hour. To attract the attention of potential clients, you should use clear and concise
text. Keep the designs simple. Avoid using too many colors, large images, or complex
typography. Use white space to separate and structure your message. And always remember
that the goal of your design is to attract attention.

5. Makes it memorable
Graphic design plays a big role in making advertising memorable. The right combination of
colors, shapes, typography, photography, illustration, and animation helps convey a message
and make it stick in people’s minds.

Graphic design accounts for almost half of advertising agencies’ total budgets—at least it
should. The average cost of television advertising is $3,500 per second. So make your design as
memorable as possible because failure doesn’t come cheap.

Design
Advertising design is the intersection of marketing and design. It refers to the visual artwork
created specifically for advertisements (or, simply, “ads”). Ad design, which is usually used
synonymously with graphic design advertising, differs in the fact that its sole purpose is to sell
products and services.

an you define advertising design? Companies all around the world ensure their work is
communicated throughout the globe. Since it is an age of globalization, communication,
technical advancement, and support are not limited and confined. The communication
gap has diminished, and people have been exposed to facilities, products, and concepts
than ever before. As a result of the changing dynamics, every day in our lives, we come
across millions of advertisements available on television, newspapers, magazines, and
even billboards.

Advertising design meaning

Advertising design is defined as creating and producing artwork, visual content,
and written materials organized to broadcast a certain product, service, or motto.
They are also called ads, and it involves perceptive and intelligent concepts of
graphic designing and visual data organization to highlight a particular idea or a
manufactured article. It uses a range of techniques and practices to bring forth
philosophies and newly unveiled products to the attention of the public eye for
the sole purpose of persuading people to respond in a constructive way towards
that targeted product. It uses illustrations, colors, animations, and videos, and
the advertising departments and companies are exclusively responsible for this
purpose.

ostly, various enterprises engage and employ advertising interventions and companies
to generate resourceful content on the company’s behalf. There are advertising
departments of well-reputed and established companies that offer graphic and visual
designing insight in other scenarios. They work under their umbrella to produce adverts
through brochures, flyers, and technological apparatus such as direct mails, web ads,
and print ads. There are several regulations and parameters to follow and consider in
the field of advertising. It usually comprises elaborate lettering and working, captivating
artwork, cartoons, figures, graphics, photographs, and symbols.

Advertising designing is typically considered identical to graphic designing. Graphics

plays a crucial role because advertising is founded and established on the graphical
representation of theories and ideas. Graphic designers are also professional as they
exhibit results through their skills to represent a brand. Whereas advertising design
consists of two aspects, marketing and the other are design and creativity. Graphic
design focuses more on graphics and visuals. Their major role is to create logos,
typography, and signs, and they also represent a company or a business. However,
advertising is a more converged approach as it attempts to sell a business idea or a
product.

Advertisements are generally broadcasted to influence people. It revolves around

appealing and engaging the conventional spectators. If a particular product is
advertised, certain dynamics must be respected, such as the audience’s nature, sex,
preferred inclinations, and age. Regardless, eventually, it all comes down to a
captivating strategy, a credible communication power, and an influential implementation
of ideas. Hence, designing is the most crucial aspect of advertisements. If the idea and
proposal are well-put and the execution has a well-thought layout, then it has an
impressive effect on customers, thus, allowing an inclination towards a certain product.
However, it is imperative that graphic designing and advertising go hand in hand. The
graphics should stand out but at the same time maintain the significance and
transparency of the main program. The right graphic can intensify good traffic and
augment the likelihood that the audience will buy the product.

Apart from private companies and businesses, governmental and non-governmental

establishments understand their philosophies through advertising. They formulate their
new policies and strategies that increase social awareness in return. Graphic design
that is accurate and appropriate plays a vital role in message transformation. The
appropriate and effective use of color is as important as the message. It aids in visual
appeal and aims to reach a higher level audience. The right kind of colors, font, and
even the symbols used plays an essential role in message communication. The visuals
are the backbone of advertisements as they are intentionally planned and engineered to
appeal to the general audience’s sentiments thinking directly.

Human beings undoubtedly exhibit strong emotional skills, so just focusing on the
intellectual level does not help sell the message. This is where the knowledge of
graphics and visual designing kicks in. They twist the content that interests the
emotional and intellectual level of human beings. The use of graphics adds significance
to the underscoring message and purpose, and this is how they sell the content. No
matter what the age or inclination is, the message is mostly convincing if there is
designed to it. The symbols and figures used are more prone to persuasion and can do
more work than a thousand words. No matter how strong the message is or how many
words are used in the advertisement, it is only effective if there is an exceptional graphic
design piece. If humor is accompanied by inspiring visual artwork, it is bound to leave a
perpetual mark on our minds. This way, the message can reach a larger audience as
friends and families are taught about it too.

Marketing and advertising go hand in hand, but there is an additional aspect of

psychology that steers the entire direction and notion of advertisements. The
psychology of advertisements is the amalgamation of multiple interests and variables
that predict consumerism’s psychological trends. Advertisements are billboards,
newspapers, or television ads, but it is practically everything we come across. The
assignment of products in departmental stores and the coloring and font designing of a
certain product and its attractiveness are advertising. The purpose is to stand out and
be matchless. The result is based on an individual’s differences, including stimulus,
specific partialities, and preconceived notions towards a projected idea. Psychology in
advertising means getting to know about people’s characteristics and inclinations and
benefiting from their product preferences.

Whenever we go grocery shopping, we tend to buy more things than the listed items;
this is where we become the targets of psychological advertisements. We buy more
than one item because of a certain slogan or an image; this strategy is known as
psychoanalysis. Similarly, another tactic to play with the minds of the audience is
persuasion. It believes in comparing attributes and features with the other similar items and
allows a certain product to appear notable and first-rate than the previous one. This mainly
feeds on creativity and personal intuition. Another one is the advertisement using projection. It
focuses on the cultures and lifestyles of a subject. It highlights products that are in comparison
to a person’s individual opinion and interest. Lastly, there is a suggestive technique that aids in
advertising. They use an individual’s anxieties and stress and make them believe that there is a
magic product for them that will counter their negative thoughts and feelings.

Design principles in Advertising

Design Principles to Master for Better Display Ads

Structure. The foundation of a good display ad is structure. ...

Color. In design thinking, color is vital as it's used to grab people's attention and evoke emotion.
...

Typography. ...

Simplicity. ...

Custom Images & Graphics.

1. Structure
The foundation of a good display ad is structure. And there are best practices you should
follow when mapping out your ad. The Interactive Advertising Bureau says that display
ads need to be “distinguishable from normal web page content and the ad unit must have
clearly defined borders and not confused with normal web content.”

They also say that ad sizing should be flexible as people may view your ad on different-
sized screens.

So, you need to make sure you have a strong yet flexible structure to fit each format,
paying special attention to the top performing sizes.

To do this, think about the fundamental elements of a display ad. Every ad should contain
four main components:

1. Your logo or company name

2. A value proposition

3. An image or visual representation of your service

4. A CTA button
2. Color
In design thinking, color is vital as it’s used to grab people’s attention and evoke emotion.
People also associate your color scheme with your brand. When you think about Coca-
Cola, you’re always going to think red, for instance.

The psychology behind color is fascinating and something you need to pay attention to
when designing ads. For example, men and women have different color preferences. One
study showed that the most popular colors among men are blue (57%) and green (14%);
while women are into blue (35%) and purple (23%).

3. Typography
Typography is another design element which draws your eye to the most critical
information, like the speech bubbles in a comic book. Unbounce designer Ainara
Sáinz says,

“The most important thing to have is a clear and legible typographic hierarchy. It doesn’t
matter if you have amazing visuals — if your audience can’t read or understand your
message, they won’t click on your ad.”

4. Simplicity
Ever heard of the KISS principle? No, it’s got nothing to do with the 70’s rock band. KISS
stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. The phrase originates in product design but can be
applied to design in any context.

Display ads are obviously compact. You’re not going to fit your entire brand story in a
300×250 ad. So, you have to keep it simple (stupid). You have to get your message across
clearly and quickly.

5. Custom Images & Graphics

You should never use images to simply fill up space. Or because you think that you’re
supposed to have images in your display ad. You know that images are essential in
marketingWhy is this the case? Images communicate valuable information. That speaks to
why they’re so important in marketing. And why you shouldn’t just use images for the
sake of it. They should serve a purpose.

MEDIA PLANNING
Today’s marketers are often tasked with balancing campaign efforts across a range of different
media platforms and assets. This can make it challenging to effectively track each tactic’s
success and overall impact on the business’s bottom line. With a thorough media planning
strategy in place, teams can more accurately and holistically monitor campaign success and
make informed decisions about how to optimize performance in the future. Let’s take a look at
some of the key considerations to keep in mind when building a media plan:

What is Media Planning?

Media planning is the process by which marketers determine how, when and where an
audience is given the selected advertising message. Media planners analyze the advertisements
and strategize the most efficient way to communicate it to the intended audience.

In today’s competitive marketing landscape, marketers need to serve consumers with the right
message, at the right time, on the right channel in order to see engagements. Media
planning is where marketers determine what these “rights” are.

What is a Media Plan?

An effective media plan will result in a set of advertising opportunities that target a specific
audience and fit in with the organization’s marketing budget. When establishing a media plan,
marketers will often factor in the following considerations:

1. Who does the ad need to reach?

2. What is the marketing budget?
3. Conversion goals
4. Frequency of the message
5. Reach of the message
6. How to define success

Media planning is most often done by media planners at advertising agencies. Media planners
must work with media buyers and the client organization to develop a strategy to maximize
ROI on media spend. Media planners are required to have a firm understanding of the
organization’s brand and target audience, various media platforms and developing media
trends.

Media planning is more involved with formulating a strategy, evaluating its effectiveness, and
adjusting, while buying is the execution of the strategy.

As noted, the media planner will evaluate brand and audience to determine the correct
combination of messaging and media mix on which to advertise in order to reach consumers in
a positive, impactful way.
 Types of Media Planning

To create an effective media strategy for your brand, you must decide what types of media
(traditional or digital) will be cost effective and bring in sales. There are 3 main types of media
that are considered when building a media plan:

Paid Media –

Paid media refers to advertising that is the result of paid placement from the brand. This
includes pay-per-click advertising, display ads, and branded content. This is the most common
way for brands to get exposure and boost sales.

Owned Media –

Owned media is content that is owned by your brand, i.e. blog posts and social media
accounts. By increasing the use of the company’s owned media, you can increase your
customer reach and increase brand awareness.

Earned Media –

Earned media refers to the publicity the brand gets from outlets other than their own company.
For example, customer reviews, media coverage, and word-of-mouth are all forms of earned
media. This form of media is valuable because it often comes directly from consumers. This
feedback can also help improve the quality of the product or service you are offering.

By weighing the cost and benefits of each platform, your company can decide what resources
and forms of media will fit best into your media plan.

What Are the Benefits of Media Planning?

Today’s modern marketing often requires marketers to leverage multiple forms of media, and
a data-driven media plan provides marketers with centralized information across all platforms.
This helps to optimize campaigns and messaging, as well as streamline the campaign review
process.

What are the Objectives of Media Planning?

Media planners need to identify the combination of ads to achieve a specific result. Their
objectives generally align with business goals, such as long-term growth and improving ROI.
Media planning will often utilize a wide range of tactics to increase brand awareness, generate
leads, or drive conversions to help their organizations accomplish these goals.

Media Planning vs. Media Buying

Media buying is the process of purchasing ad space across various channels and platforms in
coordination with the agreed-upon media plans and monitoring campaigns as they run. This
means evaluating platform formats and rates to ensure they coincide with the plan, negotiating
costs, keeping abreast of media trends and building relationships with counterparts at various
channels and platforms. Media buying often leverages one of the following popular strategies:

1. Manual bidding
2. Direct buys
3. Programmatic buys
4. Real-time bidding

Challenges of Media Planning

Media planning can be challenging because there are so many contributing factors that must be
accounted for, and because many believe that media planning strategies and processes have
not modernized along with marketing.

Challenges include but are not limited to:

Consumer-Level Targeting: The media plan must understand consumers at a granular level
to determine what types of messages resonate with them, requiring in-depth marketing
analytics.

Platform Preference: Brands must also know the various channels and platforms that target
audience members engage with and when. This will allow them to effectively choose media on
which to run campaigns. All of this must be done with budget and media spend in mind.

Heavy Budget Focus: Media planning continues to revolve around budget rather than
customer engagement. There is limited flexibility in a budget and plan to allow marketers to
course correct as campaigns run and new insights are discovered. Modern media planning
requires the flexibility to allocate budget to different channels if they prove to be more
successful.

Integrating Measurements: Because there are so many channels online and offline, it has
become infinitely more difficult for marketers to measure the success of these campaigns
alongside each other to determine which are most effective and which should be updated.
Today, media planning has to adapt to focus on the consumer experience using flexible budgets
and real-time, unified measurements that allow for media plan optimizations in-campaign.

How to Write a Media Plan for Advertising

Creating a media plan is a detailed process that requires planners to consider the needs of
target consumers as well as the goals of the business. Here are the essential steps and
considerations marketers must make when creating a media plan.

Step 1. Determine Media Goals and Objectives

It might be easy to assume that the goal is to drive conversions or engagement; however, that
would oversimplify this step. Goals may vary by department, or there might be multiple
objectives for one campaign. For example, for the sales team and sales goals, increased
revenue is the objective. However, marketing objectives might be to increase brand
awareness. Knowing the main goal of the campaign will determine how it runs, as well as
messaging.

Once clear goals are established, media planners must conduct research into market trends and
the competitive landscape. This research will offer visibility into where similar brands and goals
have achieved success in the past, informing planning decisions. For example, perhaps a brand
has long relied on email campaigns but research reveals that competitors have had greater
success with native ads. This demonstrates how the organization should shift its plan.

Of course, when determining goals and setting objectives, media plans must factor in budgets.
However, marketers should try to avoid assigning strict dollar amounts to specific channels.
Rather, a flexible approach to marketing budget will allow for optimizations to be made as
campaigns run.

Step 2. Determine Target Audience

Marketing today is driven by creating positive customer experiences. This means that when
developing messaging and selecting where to display those messages across the media mix,
marketers need to be focusing on specific audience needs.

First, marketers need to examine which segment of the overall audience they are trying to
engage. From there, marketers need to look at attribution measurements and engagement
analytics to understand the types of ads these users engage with, which creative is most
effective, and importantly, which channels these consumers use. While marketers often utilize
demographic information such as age, location, general interests, etc., they should be sure to
incorporate person-level data gathered through a unified measurement approach to get the
most tailored results.

Step 3. Consider Frequency & Reach

Another key component of a media plan is considering reach and frequency. Reach refers to
how many people the campaign will be in front of over a specific amount of time. Frequency
refers to how many times the consumer will be exposed to the ad over the course of the
campaign.

There are a few popular approaches that marketers take when selecting frequency.

Continuity: This approach to frequency means that ads will run on a consistent schedule over
the course of the campaign: for example, two ads per week. This strategy is often used for
goods that are not seasonal and require regular reinforcement to stay top of mind.

Flighting: “Flights” refer to internment or alternating periods of advertisements followed by

pauses in advertising on the channel altogether. This strategy works well for seasonal products
or for those with less ad budget. For example, when there is a pause in a flighted television
campaign, marketers may choose to run print ads instead.

Pulsing: This is a combination of flighting and continuity. Pulsed campaigns will incorporate
low-intensity consistent advertising that is augmented by flights of higher-intensity ads during
times when additional messaging can have a high impact.

Step 4: Analyze and Optimize Campaign Performance

One of the most important steps to building a media planning strategy is to continuously
monitor, track, and analyze performance. Marketing campaigns are not “set-it-and-forget-it,”
instead, they require ongoing management to drive maximum ROI. This hands-on approach
allows teams to identify opportunities to optimize performance in real-time based on what is or
isn’t working for each campaign.

Selecting the Right Media Channels

There are a variety of online and offline channels for marketers to choose from, and they must
use the information they gathered in the research and goal-setting phases to determine which
channels will bring them the most success.

Here are some of the most popular channels that marketers choose when media planning,
along with their attributes.
 1. Offline Media

Magazines: Magazines have a long shelf life and often stay in a consumer’s possession for two
to four weeks after being read. Information in this medium tends to be retained longer, since
people read faster than they can listen. Research has shown there is a higher amount of trust in
magazine ads than in other forms of media (60 percent of readers trusted the
advertisements they saw in magazines).

Consumers are also less resistant to these kinds of advertisements, as these often tie in with
their interests. Publications tend to be very targeted (e.g., running magazines or cooking
magazines). They reach a secondary audience in addition to the target audience, since they are
passed along to family and friends.

2. Newspapers: Advertising with local newspapers is a great way to ensure a brand’s

message stays local. When selecting this medium, marketers can choose which section
of the newspaper ads are placed for further targeting. If they want to target those
interested in fashion, they can select that section of the newspaper for their ad.

Additionally, newspaper readers are more likely to have higher education and 7 out of 10 of
households earning above $100,000 read the newspaper. This can be important when selecting
ad space based on demographics.

3. Radio: Radio ads have a local appeal, allowing you to target specific areas or regions of
the country. It is also an easy medium to build frequency with your target audience, and
is considered a lower-cost medium.. According to research, exposure to a radio ad and
time to purchase is the shortest of any medium. Additionally, if paired with other forms
of media, the overall campaigns were more effective.
4. TV & Cable: This media is highly visual and can demonstrate products in everyday life.
For example, if you sell a cleaning product, consumers can see the benefits of your
product and how these can be applied in their home. This medium is very prevalent, as
the average American watches approximately five hours of television a day.
5. Out of Home: Media such as billboards are large and get attention. In a busy area,
your message can reach 10,000 people in a month. Out of home isn’t limited by
billboards, only your creativity is. Out-of-home is also an extremely mobile option.
(e.g., using displays to advertise luggage at an airport).

Online Media
Digital Publications:
Many digital publications have opportunities for you to email their database through a
personalized email or newsletter. They can track open rates and understand conversion rates to
your site or asset. These are often specialized publications, making it easy to reach your target
audience, and are great tools for lead generation campaigns.

PPC:

Advertisers can capitalize on search intent. Advertisers can retarget people who have visited
their site. PPC is an extremely cost-effective medium.

Social Media:

Like PPC, social media is an extremely cost-effective medium. It is also extremely targeted,
allowing marketers to target by interests, age, marriage status, etc. Social platforms are
constructed on a basis of community, which allows your brand to connect more personally with
consumers. It also gives your brand the chance for content to go viral.

Programmatic Advertising:

Programmatic advertising is extremely targeted, using an algorithm to find and target specific
audiences across digital platforms. When looking into this, there are two methods to consider:

Programmatic Bidding –

uses demand side platforms to buy ads on the digital market based on target audience.

Real-Time Bidding –

allows advertisers to bid on impressions to their target audience. If their bid wins, the ad is
displayed right away.

Tips for Building a Media Planning Strategy

As marketers begin to strategize on new media plans, they should keep these ideas in mind:

Reach: Select outlets and times that will best reach your target audience. For example, buying
ad space during a live televised event (such as a sports game) ensures that viewers will be
watching the program live and not fast forward through the commercials.

Establish clear goals: Is this a branding campaign, or are you looking to generate leads? How
many people are you looking to reach?
Engagement: How do you encourage people to talk about your brand? Make sure your ad has
a clear direction on what would resonate with this target audience based on demographics and
viewership. Additionally, make sure you have a way to test the effectiveness of your ad.

Attribution Models: Make sure that your team is using a marketing attribution model that
can effectively track offline and online media. Using the right attribution model can ensure your
team is making choices that make sense when planning media.

Media Planning and Marketing

Since the pandemic began, more customers have started shopping in an online space. 77
percent of online “window” shoppers make impulse purchases. Since this number is only
expected to grow, it is important to have an effective media strategy. This means separating
your budget appropriately between print, digital, video, and broadcast ads. To ensure that your
brand is saving money and delivering content to the correct audience, it would be wise to know
the costs and importance of using each form of advertising. From here, your company can
delegate the correct amount of resources to each campaign to increase website traffic and
brand awareness.

Source of Media Information

Reference Books

 Include facts, figures, addresses, statistics, definitions, dates, etc.

 Useful for finding factual or statistical information or for a brief overview of a particular topic.

 Examples: dictionaries, encyclopedias, directories

Newspapers (News sources)

 Provides very current information about events, people, or places at the time they are published

 Useful for information on current events or to track the development of a story as it unfolds

Magazines

 Include articles on diverse topics of popular interest and current events

 Articles typically written by journalists or professional writers

 Geared toward the general public

 Examples: Time, Newsweek, National Geographic

Academic Journals (Peer-reviewed or scholarly journals)

 Include articles written by and for specialists/experts in a particular field

  Articles must go through a peer review process before they're accepted for publication

 Articles tend to have a narrower focus and more analysis of the topic than those in other types of
publications

 Include cited references or footnotes at the end of research articles

Books

 Cover virtually any topic, fact or fiction

 Useful for the complete background on an issue or an in-depth analysis of a theory or person

 Can take years to publish, so may not always include the most current information

 TV

 Radio

 Traditional media

 On line media

 Social Media

Media Strategy in Advertising

Every work to be done needs a plan of action so that the work is done in a desired and correct
manner. Media Strategy plays a very important role in Advertising. The role of Media Strategy is
to find out the right path to transfer or say deliver the message to the targeted customers.

How many people see or hear or read all the advertisements or promotional offers and buy the
product or service? The basic intention of media strategy is not only procuring customers for
their product but also placing a right message to the right people on the right time and of course
that message should be persuasive and relevant. So, here the planners of the organization decide
the Media Strategy to be used but keeping the budget always in mind.

The Media Strategy process has three “W”s to be decided. They are

 Where to advertise ?
 When to advertise ?
 What media type to use ?

Where is the place for showing or delivering advertisement.

In short it means the geographical area from where it should be visible to the customers who use
or are most likely to use the product or services offered. The place does not mean only TV or
radio but it can also be newspapers, blogs, sponsorships, hoardings on roads, ads in the movie
break in theatres, etc. The area varies from place to place like it can be on national basis, state
basis and for local brands it can be on city basis.

When is the timing to show or run advertisement.

For e.g. you cannot show a raincoat ad in the winter season but you need to telecast ad as soon as
the summer season is coming to an end and rainy season is just about to begin. The ad should be
delivered with perfect timing when most customers are like to buy the product. The planners
need to plan it keeping the budget in mind as the maximum of 20% of revenues of the company
can be used in the advertisement section. Different products have different time length for
advertisements. Some products need year long ads as they have nothing to do with seasonal
variations e.g. small things like biscuits, soaps, pens, etc and big services like vehicle insurance,
refrigerators, etc. Some products need for three or four months. E.g. umbrellas, cold creams, etc.
So the planners have to plan the budget according to the time length so that there is no short of
money at any time in this process.

What is what type of media is to be used for delivering the message.

There are basically two media approaches to choose from.

 Media Concentration approach

 Media Dispersion Approach

In media concentration approach, the number of categories of media is less. The money is spent
on concentrating on only few media types say two or three. This approach is generally used for
those companies who are not very confident and have to share the place with the other
competitors. They don’t want anyone to get confused with there brand name so this is the safest
approach as the message reaches the target consumers.

In media dispersion approach, there are more number of categories of media used to advertise.
This approach is considered and practiced by only those people who know that a single or two
types of media will not reach their target. They place their product ads in many categories like
TV, radio, internet, distributing pamphlets, sending messages to mobiles, etc.

Selection of Media Category

Whichever category is selected by the planners of the organization, they should select a proper
media to convey their message.

If the product is for a big amount of customers then a mass media option can be selected like TV,
radio or newspaper. The best examples for this type are detergent ads, children health drinks and
major regular used products such as soap, shampoo, toothpastes etc.

If the planners want to change the mind of people doing window shopping or just doing shopping
for sake of name, then point of purchase type can be opted by the company. This helps the
company to explain their point to the buyers and convince the buyers to go for their product.
If the planners want to sell their product on one to one basis, then the third option is direct
response type. Here, the company people directly contact the customers via emails, text
messages, phone calls or meeting for giving demos. The best example of this type of media is the
Life cell Cord Blood Banking. They go to their customers, explain them what it is all about and
try to convince them.

Advertising Budget Definition

An advertising budget is an amount set aside by a company planned for the promotion
of its goods and services. Promotional activities include conducting a market survey,
getting advertisement creatives made and printed, promotion by way of print media,
digital media and social media, running ad campaigns etc.

Advertising Budget Basis

The advertising budget of a company is based on the following factors:

1. Type of advertising campaign that it intends to run

2. Selection of target audience
3. Type of advertising media
4. Company’s objective of advertising
5. Process of Creating Advertising Budget

Following steps are followed to set up this budget –

1. Setting advertising goals based on the company’s objectives.

2. Determine the activities that are required to be done.
3. Preparing the components of the advertising budget;
4. Getting the budget approved by management;
5. Allocation of funds for activities proposed under the advertisement plan;
6. Periodically monitoring the expenses being incurred on the advertising process;

Advertising Budget Methods

Most common methods are discussed as follows:

Percentage of Sales: Under this method, the advertising budget is set as a percentage
of either the past sale or expected future sales. Small businesses usually use this
method.

Competitive Parity: This method advocates that a company sets an advertising budget
similar to the one that is set up by its competitor to yield similar results.

Objective and Task: This method is based on the advertising objectives under this
method. Once the objectives are decided, the cost is estimated to complete those
objectives, and accordingly, a marketing budget is set.

Market Share: In this method, the advertising budget is based on the market share of a
company. For a higher market share, less marketing budget is set.

All available Funds: This is a very aggressive method under which all available profits
are allocated towards advertising activities. This method can be used by start-up
businesses that need advertisements to attract customers.

Unit Sales: Under this method, the cost of advertisement per article is calculated and
based on the total number of articles, it is set.

Affordable: As the name suggested, the company sets its budget based on how much it
can afford to spend.

Factors Affecting Advertising Budget

Existing Market Share: A company having a lower market share will require to spend
more on its promotional activities. On the other hand, companies with larger market
shares can spend less on their promotional activities.

Competition level in the industry: If there is a high competition level in the industry
in which the company operates, then the advertising budget would be required to be
set on a higher side to get noticed by audiences. In case monopoly exits or where there
is the least level of competition involved, the company will need to invest less in
marketing.

Stage of the Product Life Cycle: It is a well-known fact that in the initial introduction
stage and growth stage of a product or service, more amounts would be required for
advertising. While in the later stages of the product life cycle, the need for advertising
will decline.

Decided frequency of Advertisement: Advertising budget will also depend on how

frequently a company wants to run its ads. Frequent ads will call for a greater budget.

Strategies

Let us have a look at some strategies a company can follow.

Social Media Marketing: One can start by making profiles of the businesses on social
media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, which can help to reach out to larger
audiences in a cost-effective manner.

Referral Benefits: In this strategy, you ask your customers to refer your business pages
to their friends and family. You provide referral benefits and points when such referrals
are buying the products. This way, your customers do the marketing for you.

Content Marketing: Start a blog and update interesting content that attracts your
audiences. This strategy, combined with other strategies, will draw benefits to the
business.

Email Marketing: This strategy will depend on how strong and relevant your database
is.

Pay per click ad: In this strategy, you pay per ad which you run on social media
platforms. Based on your selected target audience, the ad is run and reaches the
audience.

Advantages

Let us have a look at some advantages a company can follow.

1. It helps to understand the requirements of advertising and allocating

budget toward each necessary activity.
2. The overall advertisement expense of the company remains monitored,
and it ensures that actual expense remains within a prescribed limit.
3. When the budget is followed, it is ensured that the advertisement activities
are done as per advertisement goals only, and no unnecessary expense is
incurred.
 4. Each advertisement activity is kept under supervision and remains
controlled well within budget.

Disadvantages

1. An inaccurate budget can attract unnecessary costs since the target of the
budget would not be met.
2. It may be a costly affair for companies.
3. Since advertising costs will also be ultimately recovered from the customers, the
prices of the products will increase.

Importance of Advertising Budget

Ever wondered why companies spend so much on running advertisements? Well, the
company intends to attract the audiences towards their brand name by way of
advertisement. Advertisement helps a company to reach out to larger audiences and
introduce them to the company’s products and services. Because of this, the sales
increase, which enables the company to earn more profits. It is important that before
setting the advertising budget, the company’s objective is understood.

Use these 5 tips for more engaging client presentations

Whether you are pitching a prospect or showcasing account results and initiatives to an existing
client, crafting engaging and relevant presentations is crucial. The presentation allows the vendor
to prove the value of its work to the client in a digestible way. Especially for prospects, the
presentation is the main takeaway and could very well determine if the two entities work
together. Creating presentations shouldn’t be a task, but rather an opportunity to impress your
audience.

For this post, I’m defining the presentation as both the actual PowerPoint and the delivery. Not
only do you need to provide good content, but you must present it in a way that won’t bore your
audience. Here are five tips you can try to make your presentations more engaging.

1. Ask the client for input before beginning

Before you create the presentation, ask the client what should be in it. It sounds like an obvious
statement, but too often, presentations lack focus and the correct initiatives because the content is
wrong. You will lose your audience if the material being presented doesn’t speak to their
concerns.
Let’s take an example of a client who tells you that the main goal is to expand into other
channels. You can touch on performance and past initiatives, but the tone of the presentation
should focus on growth. You may speak to:

 new channels to test.

 how performance of the new channels will be judged.
 what you will need for new channels (e.g., creative, messaging and so on).

Instead of a presentation that showcases many ideas but lacks focus, tell a story based on the
client’s input. The presentation will be tailored to that client and address their specific needs.

2. List the key takeaways at the beginning

You should tell a story through your presentations, but you should also include a summary at the
beginning. This summary can be bullet points or quick-hit items that give an executive-level
overview. The purpose is to give a 30,000-foot view of what’s going on to anyone who only has
time to digest the key takeaways.

Using our example regarding growth, here’s what a key takeaways slide may look like.
Remember that each of these items will be discussed in greater depth later in the presentation,
but for brevity’s sake, we’re summing each up in a sentence.

 The current attribution funnels will be analyzed to determine how much each
channel and source is assisting in the conversion journey.
 Based on what we know about our audience demographics, we propose
expanding into Facebook and Pinterest to begin.
 The minimum performance requirement for each new platform is to break even
with a clear focus on user engagement.

As you deliver these takeaways, be prepared to give a short oral explanation as a follow-up.
Again, it doesn’t need to be long, since you will be discussing more later, but be prepared. For
example, after the third bullet point, I may say:

“Though expanding into new platforms is a good opportunity, we understand that the return still
needs to break even at the very least. We’ll be reviewing our attribution funnels to make sure
each platform is contributing somewhere in the process. We’ll also pay attention to engagement
metrics such as post reactions and shares. Even if we aren’t seeing last-click revenue, we want to
be interacting with our consumers.”
3. Ensure your slides aren’t too busy
This tip isn’t unique to client presentations, but it is especially relevant for this format. Often,
slides contain too many bullet points, an influx of images, or graphs/charts that aren’t clear. It’s
not that the information isn’t relevant, it’s that it gets overlooked.

A good strategy with your slides is to adhere to the philosophy that more is better. If you have a
slide with five bullet points, break it into two or three slides. Similarly, if you have three graphs,
consider breaking them out into three slides. Your presentation may end up being 50 slides
instead of 40, but that’s OK. You are making it easier for the client to understand and interpret as
you go through the slides. You’ll most likely send the presentation over to the client once
complete. Then they can review it if there are further questions.

4. Include only the data that matters, and put everything else in the
appendix
In any presentation, it makes sense to include data. You may be including metrics around past
performance or stats that speak to initiatives you want to try. No matter the case, some form of
data will inevitability be in your presentation. The question becomes, what data matters?

You should use your best judgment as to what data you think the client needs to see. If the
presentation is a review of past performance, it makes sense to include metrics around client
goals.

If we again use our example of growth, it would make sense to have data speaking to the reach of
each platform. The bottom line is that the most important data, however this term is defined,
needs to be in the presentation. That doesn’t mean the rest of the data can’t be included in some
form.

By including an appendix at the end of the presentation, you can include all the data you want
without having to tell the client to explicitly look at it. This way, the data can be reviewed on the
client’s time if they are so inclined. And, if for nothing else, including an appendix shows the
client your thought process while you were collecting data and then distilling it to them based on
what you believed to be most important.

5. Encourage your client to speak

After spending a significant amount of time and effort creating a presentation, you want to
impress the client with your findings and recommendations. It’s good to have the desire to
impress, however, make sure you pause every so often to let your clients ask questions and share
their feedback.

Some clients will speak up no matter what, so you don’t need to worry as much about being
cognizant of breaks. It’s the more introverted clients who need a cue to speak. Every couple of
slides, it’s good to ask questions such as:

 Do you have any questions so far?

 Do the trends shown here correspond to what you are seeing in other channels?
 What is your interpretation of the data?

Even though you are presenting, you want to encourage client feedback. It will allow the client to
be more involved while also giving you further information that you may not have received
otherwise.

Media Scheduling

What is Media Scheduling?

Media Scheduling refers to the pattern of timing of an advertising which is represented as plots
on a flowchart on a yearly basis. The plots in the flowchart indicate the pattern of periods that
matches with favorable selling periods. The classical scheduling models are commonly known
as continuity, fighting, and pulsing.

Media scheduling depends upon a number of factors such as:

• The nature of product- whether it is consumer usable, durables or industrial

• The nature of sales- whether the sales is seasonal or regular

• The product lifecycle- whether the product introduction is in growth, maturity or decline

• The pattern of competitor’s programs

• The entry of new competitors in the market

• The availability of funds for advertising and marketing campaigns

Continuity

This model is primarily valid for non-seasonal products and some kind of seasonal products.
Advertising usually runs steadily with little variation or change over the campaign period. There
might be short gaps between advertising at regular intervals and also long gaps, for instance,
one advertising every week for 12 months and then pause for a while. This pattern of media
advertising prevalent in service and packaged goods requires continuous reinforcement on the
customers for top of mind recollection at point of purchase.

The advantages are as follows -

• It works as a reminder.

• It covers the entire purchase cycle.

• It helps in achieving cost efficiencies in the form of large media discounts.

• It helps with positioning advantages within media.

• It incorporates a program or plan that helps identifies the media channels used in an
advertising campaign, and specifies insertion or broadcast dates, positions, and duration of the
messages.

Flighting

Flighting involves intermittent and irregular periods of advertising, alternating with shorter
periods of no advertising at all in media scheduling for seasonal product categories. For
example Halloween costumes are purchased mainly during the months of September and
October and not the entire year round.

Advantages:

• For a relatively shorter period of time, the advertisers buy heavier weight than competitors.

• It results in little wastage, since this type of advertising concentrates on the best purchasing
cycle period.

• The series of commercials as unified media campaigns appear on different media vehicles.

Pulsing

By using low advertising all the year round and heavy advertising during peak selling periods,
Pulsing combines both flighting and continuous scheduling. The product categories that
experience a surge in sale at intermittent periods are good candidates for pulsing product
categories that are sold year round. For instance, under-arm deodorants, sell all year, but more
during the summer months
Advantages:

• It covers different market situations possible

• It combines advantages of both continuity and flighting possible

Weighting your Media

Weighting your media refers to determining the potential exposures of your

marketing message to your target audience that each of your chosen media can
produce. Basically, by weighting your media, you are trying to determine how much
advertising is enough to reach your objectives. To do this, you'll come up with a total
number of gross rating points. To do that, you need to understand a little bit about
reach, frequency, and impressions.

Media weight
Media weight is a term used in advertising to refer to the size of the audience reached by an
advertising campaign. Media weight is determined by the number and placement of
advertisements in media such as television commercials, online ads, or billboards.

Media weight is usually expressed in the form of GRP’s (Gross rating Points), AOTS (Average
opportunity to see) and reach of target audience. The main use of media weights is to monitor
how well the goals of a communication plan are being reached. There are different ways to
measure media weight.

Weighting your media refers to determining the potential exposures of your marketing
message to your target audience that each of your chosen media can produce. Basically, by
weighting your media, you are trying to determine how much advertising is enough to reach
your objectives. To do this, you'll come up with a total number of gross rating points. To do
that, you need to understand a little bit about reach, frequency, and impressions.

Impressions are the number of times your audience sees your advertising message.

Reach refers to the number of individuals within your target market that are exposed to a
specific ad over a specific period of time. This number is expressed as a percentage of your total
market.

Frequency refers to the number of exposures those individuals got to your specific ad over the
same specific period of time.
To get your Gross Rating Points (GRPs), just multiply the percent reach (% of your total market)
by the frequency.

For example, if your marketing strategy is to reach 70% of your market for a specific campaign,
and you know you want to reach them at least 10 times in order to convince them to act, then
you would need a schedule that would give you 700 GRPs.

Each medium will have a slightly different calculated GRP, so go through each and determine
those numbers before you begin planning your media schedule. As a general rule, just make
sure you are calculating the percentage of your target audience as a part of the total
circulation, exposure, etc., and then multiply that by the number of insertions, or ads you run
should.

To help you estimate the total GRP needed to reach your sales goals, here are some rules of
thumb:

Try for a reach of 50 to 90+ of your total market.

Assume it will take at least three exposures for your target audience to act on your offer.

New products will need more frequency than established products.

Complex products will need more frequency than simple products.

Products with a lot of competition will need more frequency.

An average GRP goal for a typical packaged product is 1,000 to 5,000 in a year.

An average GRP goal for a service or retail establishment is 2,000 to 10,000 in a year.

An average GRP goal for business-to-business is 600 to 4,000 in a year.

Determining these numbers isn't easy. There are some resources on the Web that might help.
Check out the last page of this article for some sites that offer calculators and guidelines.

Other things to consider when planning and scheduling your media include:

Your media vehicle's Cost per Thousand (CPM). This is useful because it helps you compare
the values of different vehicles. For example, you may have two publications you are
considering. Both reach your target audience, and all other aspects are equal. One, however, is
more expensive than the other. Determining the CPM can help you decide which is the better
vehicle for your advertisement. You can get the CPM by dividing the total number of
subscribers that fall into your target market by the cost of running an ad. This is expressed as
the cost per thousand impressions.

Strive for a good balance of various media. In other words, don't put all of your eggs in one
basket.

Don't forget new media, such as the Internet and other interactive media like CD-ROM.

Look at the strengths and weaknesses of each medium as it would effectively carry your
marketing message and product positioning. Some media can't effectively communicate certain
information. For example, a complicated product would not make good use of a billboard or
other "quick" impression media.

Don't forget to consider the seasonality of your product and geographic concentrations of your
audience when selecting and scheduling your media.

Remember that the percentage of your target audience that a particular media vehicle reaches
will not be the number that actually see your message. Many will skim, change channels, or just
miss it. So keep your expectations realistic in this respect.

What is Media Buying?

Media buying is a process used in paid marketing efforts. The goal is to identify and purchase ad
space on channels that are relevant to the target audience at the optimal time, for the least
amount of money. Media buying is a process relevant to both traditional marketing channels
(television, radio, print) and digital channels (websites, social media, streaming). When done
effectively, media buyers achieve maximum exposure among their target market for the least
amount of spend.

What is a Media Buyer in Marketing?

Media buyers oversee the media buying process, with input from the media planning team.
With an understanding of marketing goals and target audience preferences given by the media
planning team, media buyers execute the actual purchase of the advertisement space. A huge
part of the media buyer position is negotiating with the sites, networks, and other channels
they want ads to appear on. They must ensure they are purchasing the correct placements at
the correct times, for the correct duration, all within strict budgets.
Media buyers should also use marketing performance tools to track key performance metrics
and delivery to ensure the ad is placed in accordance with the agreement and that it is meeting
campaign goals.

What is the Difference Between Media Buying and Media Planning?

While media buyers and media planners certainly work closely together, their roles are very
different. In short, media planning is the first step. Based on the conclusions and strategies
determined by this team, media buyers execute on the media plan – placing the agreed upon
ads on the appropriate channels.

Media Planning
The process of media planning is focused on establishing an audience, conducting market
research, establishing a budget, and building out goals. Media planners work with their clients
to understand who the target audience is for their offering, which channels that audience uses
and at what times, and what type of messaging that audience is most likely to engage with.
With this information the planning team will select which channel they want to purchase ad
space on, and for what price.

Media Buying
With the media plan established, media buyers connect with their counterparts across the
agreed upon media sites. These are often sales / account executives, whose responsibility it is
to find relevant advertisers. These two parties negotiate placement, time and cost. Media
buyers often use the following tactics to execute on media plans:

Manual bidding: Bidding on ad space and managing bids directly through an ad platform such
as AdWords.

Programmatic buys: AI and algorithm enabled real-time bidding on ad space that matches
consumer profiles (e.g. fashion designers leveraging a platform that will automatically bid on
and place ads on fashion-oriented channels).

Direct buys: When a media buyer negotiates ad rates and run times with a specific advertiser
(e.g. fashion designers working directly with the Vogue team to place ads on their site /
magazine).

Why Media Buying is Important

Effective media buying goes far beyond the actual transaction of money for ad space. Media
buying teams can create impactful relationships with media owners that result in greater reach
with less investment. This enables marketing teams to increase conversions and
demonstrate high ROI to clients and stakeholders.

There are a few key benefits that come with using an experienced media buying team and
process.

Get the Best Deal

Media buyers often have a wide network of relationships, which they can leverage to maximize
the value of your investment. Media buying professionals are well versed in negotiation
techniques and common industry standards, such as the average cost of leads or what brand
exposure should cost. Media buyers can also help extend the benefits of an agreement. In
advertising the terms “value added” or “added value” refer to ad space or impressions tacked
on to an agreement without charge. Experienced media buyers can negotiate prices to increase
reach or frequency and can often get value added at media channels they have worked with in
the past.

Get the Best Slots

Media buyers understand where your advertising dollars should be spent, and which
placements tend to get the most engagement. Media buyers stay aware of trends and world
events (such as the Olympics or political campaigns) that may influence ad availability and
negotiate ad placements directly into the contract to ensure ads are delivered as promised.

Plan Campaigns with Best Practices

Media buyers understand what strategies will best lead to conversions (for example: placing
ads at a certain time of day). Media buyers have experience working across publishers and
channels. They bring the best practices they learned in previous campaigns and can apply them
as they negotiate ad placements for maximum returns.

Challenges of Media Buying

As with all marketing initiatives, investing in experienced media buying teams and processes
means demonstrating value. To do this, media buying teams need analytical capabilities that
allow them to attribute conversions and KPIs back to a specific ad. They also need access
to real-time metrics in order to make in-campaign updates to ads that are underperforming.
The top challenges when it comes to media buying are:

Marketing Measurement

When it comes to spending media dollars, it is important for media buyers to understand
which campaigns are working. They can then better allocate budgets. However, many
companies struggle with applying an attribution model that accurately represents their
entire media mix. This makes it difficult to know when a certain ad placement has
performed as desired, triggering a specific conversion.

Optimize Campaign In-Flight

Another challenge for media buyers is optimizing ads mid-campaign. Most marketing
results aren’t available until after the campaign, making it too late to adjust advertising
spend. To rectify this, marketing teams must invest in marketing platforms with the
processing power to deliver granular insights on marketing performance while the
campaign is active.

Avoiding Ad Fraud

Ad fraud occurs when an organization pays for ad space on a fraudulent site, or when
organizations have to pay more for an ad based on clicks/impressions from bots or click
farms. This is especially prevalent in programmatic advertising. Programmatic buying can
be beneficial for real-time ad placements, but can also result in ad fraud as there is
minimal review of the sites where ads are being purchased, resulting in mismanaged
dollars.

Clear Contracts

Contract negotiations can be another challenge in media buying. Media buyers need to
be sure that everything negotiated is stated clearly in the contract to ensure specific
expectations are met. For example, if an advertiser only wants to target leads in the US,
this should be clearly stated. When this step is overlooked, companies may waste money
on a target audience that doesn’t fit.

How to Negotiate Media Buys

The most important role of a media buyer is that of the negotiator - this ensures that clients are
getting the most value for the ad space they purchase. This means working with media
companies, leveraging best practices on how to get the most return for an ad placement, and
developing specific contracts. As media buyers execute on media plans, there are a few
negotiating tips they should keep in mind.

Do Your Research

Research is not just part of media planning. As a media buyer, you should have expertise in the
factors that will impact the success of each campaign, such as:

1. What do leads usually cost in your industry?

 2. What is the cost of standard ad placements on various sites?
3. What types of ads, display sizes, etc. perform the best on specific sites?
4. Understand How Much You Are Willing to Spend

Begin each negotiation with a detailed plan for budgeting and where you might be willing to
make allowances for premium spots. Before beginning negotiations, be sure you have answers
to the following questions:

What is your overall budget?

How can you get the most out of that budget?

Are there certain publications that you are willing to spend more on (based on past results or
target audiences)?

Have a Backup Plan

The strongest playing card in any negotiation is a backup plan. There may be a publisher or
television network that you would really like to work with, but you discover they are fully
booked or out of your price range. Media buyers should always prepare additional options to
ensure fast solutions to unforeseen purchasing issues. Furthermore, know when you are willing
to back away and work with the other options. This gives you more leverage when negotiating
price or placement.

Establish an Anchor

According to Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Kahnemann, people base initial estimates off of an
anchor. By this he means that prices are often arbitrary and are generally influenced by a
user’s initial encounter with it. For example: Homeowners from different states may have
different anchoring points. A homeowner in New York is typically willing to spend more on a
home than a homeowner in Florida, even if the New Yorker moves to Florida. Understanding
this principal can be helpful when leading a negotiation. If you are aiming to target a campaign
at $100 per lead, this should not be your first bid. It should be lower, so that publishers can in
turn negotiate.

Lead Generation

Consider all the filters you would like on your leads before beginning the negotiations. Don’t
assume that you can adjust these after the negotiations.

Negotiate Value Add-Ons

Ask for value add-ons when negotiating. This could include banner ads for an email campaign or
an extra airing of a radio ad. This will get you more exposure for your budget.

Get It In Writing

As with all things, get what you have negotiated directly into the contract. If your account
director changes or emails get lost, media buyers need a clearly agreed upon set of
expectations they can point to.

Type of Negotiations

There are two main types of negotiation tactics, though integrative negotiations are what is
most often used in media buying.

Zero-Sum Negotiations: In these negotiations, one or both parties are not willing to
compromise on the agreement. While often glorified in TV and film, this negotiation style
strains or ruins the relationship with the media company.

Integrative Negotiations: In integrative negotiations, both parties work together and

compromise to ensure each side is getting a good deal that is aligned with their goals. As media
buying is based in relationships, this negotiation tactic is typically the most effective.

Factors to Consider when Negotiating Media Buys

There are many different channels that advertisers can purchase space on, as well as different
ways of making those purchases, each of which have different best practices. Consider the
following:

Programmatic/Direct Buy

Programmatic advertising describes a media buying process that relies on technology, such
as AI, to automate and optimize all media buys. These purchases often take place over
channels like Facebook or Google. This type of media buying focuses on the persona rather
than the media itself, asking “who do I want to reach?” instead of “where do I want to place
media?” In practice, programmatic media buys work like an instant silent auction - just set who
you want to target, say how much you’d like to pay per click or impression, and provide the
advertisement you’d like to show - then AI will do the rest of the work for you.

Ad Placement for TV

Purchasing ad space for TV typically takes place during upfront season, during which networks
pitch media buyers on the benefits of purchasing time on their network. This is typically done
during in-person meetings.
When buying ads for TV, make sure to negotiate that your ad cannot get bumped from the
agreed upon optimal time. It is especially important to be aware of events for this reason. For
example, if a political campaign is happening, candidates’ ads can bump yours even if you have
paid more. Candidates always get the lowest rate for commercial time.

Radio Placement

Radio ads are a great way for media buyers to reach local audiences.

When purchasing radio ad time, aim to get space that airs early in the commercial break or at
the close of the commercial break. Listeners tend to tune out of radio stations during the bulk
of the commercial breaks.

What is Media Analysis and Why Does It Matter?

Media analysis is one of the essential elements of a strong marketing strategy. To
truly understand how it works, let’s start with defining what it is and why it’s so crucial for the
success of any business.

Is media analysis a new tactic? Although it may seem so, the term “media content
analysis” was actually introduced in 1927 by Harold Lasswell. Back then, it was a
systematic method to study mass media – mostly press, television, and radio.

It has evolved over the years, and today media monitoring is a complex strategy that also
includes a thorough analysis of digital content including websites, social media, and even
visuals.

To cut a long story short, marketers have been performing media analysis for years, but they
had to spend most of their time looking for brand mentions manually. Nowadays, with
information overload and millions of websites, it would be impossible to search for company
mentions and analyze them one by one, by hand. That’s why media analysis
automation entered the game.

Media analysis or content analysis?

Content analysis is a tactic used for gathering content and Media analysis is a division of content analys
analyzing it. What’s important to mention is that “content” focuses on the media environment as it sou
is a broad term related to any message that can be combines media monitoring with interpretin
communicated. It refers to words, pictures, symbols, and evaluating the gathered data. It’s based on search
even ideas or themes. Text in this interpretation means any kind of information regarding your brand, of
anything visual. following keywords.

Media analysis is closely associated with other terms that you might need to get familiar with,
such as:

Brand monitoring – the process of tracking different channels to find mentions of your brand
and collecting that data; it shows you what people and the media are talking about, plus when
and where they are doing so.

Social listening – reacting to the data you’ve collected, evaluating and actively improving
your strategy according to insights into your customers’ behavior; it answers the question “why
are people/the media saying this?”

Competitor analysis – looking for mentions about your competitors and evaluating such
data to see how well your brand is performing in comparison; what your opponents are doing
better and how you can take advantage of their mistakes.

In a nutshell, media analysis lets you create an accurate perception of your brand
based on real data instead of just guesswork.

How to perform media analysis

As said, media analysis isn’t a new concept. However, it has evolved into one of the must-
have elements in most PR and marketing strategies with the development of
automation systems. These days, with special tools like Mediatoolkit, companies are able to
track mentions continually.

Old school ways performing media analysis

The first important thing is that before automation, media analysis was a manual
process. That meant hours of tedious work and paying salaries to people who would spend all
day long looking for brand mentions. Along with this, the probability of mistakes was much
greater – after all, we’re only human.

Of course, back then, there were also fewer media channels, so traditional monitoring was
narrowed down to:

1. Newspapers
2. Magazines
 3. Radio
4. Television

If a company wanted to streamline their media analysis, they had to outsource it to an agency.
However, not many businesses had the finances to afford this.

Both methods are linked – quantitative research gathers data that researchers are
able to interpret by qualitative analysis. That’s why it’s impossible to choose which tactic
is better – they are complementary, like Yin and Yang. By implementing elements from each of
them, you can have the best of both worlds. Combine the advantages and minimize the cons of
using just one method.

Media analysis – the new approach

The meaning of such analysis across online channels is rising with the growing influence of
social and digital media on consumer choices. In the world of Big Data, where large amounts of
information are produced daily across millions of virtual channels, a fresh solution had to be
discovered.

Here’s how media analysis is performed today thanks to robust software systems.

What are the basics of media analysis?

Like with anything in business, to perform media analysis effectively, you need to specify your
goals and the methods that will lead you to achieve them. To build such a strategy, you need to
define what phrase you would like to track and why each keyword is important to you.

5. In general, every media analysis must have a precise :

6. subject (who?)
7. time (when?)
8. place (where?)
9. goals (why am I tracking this keyword?)

Only if you set the right keywords to follow will you be able to gather relevant data, interpret it,
and use it to develop your business consciously.

Media analysis on steroids in the world of Big Data

Big Data entails large data sets that are impossible to comprehend for a single person.
Performing media analysis via software systems is the only way to find what you need in this
sea of information. It’s a vicious circle – the more mentions you get, the more data is produced
– so at the end of the day you have to gather and evaluate more information.
Software systems like Mediatoolkit allow you to follow keywords and phrases that are
influential for your business.

In case you’re wondering how the new approach to media analysis works, here it is what it
allows you to do at a glance:

10. Define various keywords (single words or whole phrases) that you would like
to follow, such as your brand name, product or service names, important people
at your company who are active in the media
11. Exclude phrases that you don’t want to follow, which is vital for the
effectiveness of this process because if you track too many irrelevant phrases
then it might be impossible to compare and draw valuable conclusions from that
data.
12. Track what your competitors are doing and what is being said about them.
13. React to positive and negative comments regarding your brand as quickly
as possible.
14. Perform sentiment analysis to better understand the emotions of
people who leave comments about your brand and react to these mentions
appropriately.

Plus, you can control every facet of the process because you set the keywords manually and the
automation system does the rest. Finally, you will obtain data about your consumers,
their behavior, and conversions.

The benefits of performing media analysis

Digital media monitoring is now crucial for any brand present in the online world to reveal
patterns and trends. It enables companies to analyze insights and eventually leads to better
decision making and improved strategic moves. This way, you can know that you base your
actions on real evidence rather than guesswork and hence mitigate the risk of throwing your
money down the drain.

Why is media analysis key?

As early as 1952, Berelson suggested the main purposes of content analysis is to:

Describe substance and form characteristics of message content

Make inferences to producers and audiences of content

Predict the effects of content on audiences.

Today we’re able to draw even more conclusions thanks to automation systems that provide us
with precise data. To name just a few more advantages of media monitoring that your
company can benefit from:

Tracking media mentions 24/7 across every existing channel on the web

Comparing data from different periods to see how well your brand performed during them and
how customers perceive it

Identifying critical issues that should be improved

Gaining a better understanding of your audience, their experiences with your brand, and their
emotions

Having an overview of your competitors

Setting standards for future campaigns because media analysis allows you not only to evaluate
previous actions but also lets you find new opportunities and eliminate threats, thanks to which
you will have better control of your marketing budget

Obtaining competitive insights thanks to Share of Voice

Preventing and responding to crises

Tracking user-generated content (crucial for promoting authenticity, building trust, and
driving purchasing decisions)

Identifying journalists and media outlets who mention your company

Combating misinformation and propaganda

Finding and interacting with influencers

Discovering how many people your campaign has really reached (for more thorough campaign
analytics)

Your reputation depends on your brand image

The media (especially digital, the so-called “new media”) has a huge impact on various spheres
of human life. They are able to change not only people’s understanding of the world around
them, but also control, challenge, or even expand it.

What does this mean to your company?

Your customers might judge your brand based on comments they read about your products or
services. Nowadays, everyone who has Internet access (and that’s a whopping 4.66 billion
active users!) can leave a review about your company. According to experts like Philip Kotler,
more people believe the opinions of others rather than the advertisers. This means that taking
care of your brand reputation is vital for building a positive company image.

Active social listening is crucial to maintain a positive brand image – according to the
studies, 54% of customers share bad experiences with more than five people, and 92% trust
recommendations from friends. Also, Word Of Mouth Marketing brings in 5 times more sales
than paid media!

Media analysis offers the answer to the question: ‘Why?’ Knowing it gives you the chance to
see what is working and what isn’t so that you can replicate successes.

Advertising Research – Meaning

Advertising research is a systematic process of marketing research conducted to improve the

efficiency of advertising. Advertising research is a detailed study conducted to know how
customers respond to a particular ad or advertising campaign.

‘Research’ is a systematic and objective investigation of a subject or problem to find out

relevant information or principles. Research may be “fundamental” or “applied” in
nature.

Fundamental research seeks to extend the boundaries of knowledge in a given area with
no necessary immediate application to existing problems. Applied research attempts to
use existing knowledge as an aid to solve the given problem or set of problems.

Marketing researches are generally conducted by the companies for their internal use.
The help of marketing research firms may also be used for the benefit of the
organisation, and for analysing complicated problem oriented marketing situations.

It is the role of the advertiser to measure the effects of communication. The component
of communication model should be studied thoroughly and evaluation should be made
on their effectiveness. The components of communications are – a) Source factors, b)
Message variables, c) Media strategies and d) Receivers of the message.

The advertising research is to be conducted to measure the advertising impact or the

result of the effort with the help of detailed study on advertising objectives, product
appeals, copy testing, and media effectiveness. The objectives of the research should
concentrate on – i) the optimum utilisation of advertising budget; (ii) the choice of
media in implementing an advertisement campaign; (iii) the effect of advertisement on
the target audience; (iv) to bring cost-effectiveness in advertising.

The formulation of advertising objectives and budget of expenditures are to be

considered in setting the goals and the objectives should be streamlined in order to
determine the tasks to be performed.

The effectiveness of an advertising campaign should be studied at different stages and

from different perspectives.

dvertising is the part of your marketing plan that uses paid, non-personal messages. These
messages are designed to reach large groups of customers and sell your products or services.

Like all forms of marketing, your advertising will be most successful if it's based on high-quality
research. This should be a regular part of your market research strategy.

Alternate names: Market research, marketing research

How Advertising Research Works

Most advertising research is conducted in one of two ways.

In-house research: Many brands conduct research internally. You can ask clients to fill out
email or web surveys or answer questions after making a purchase or track customer service
interactions. This can provide information about how they located the product or service that
the company is offering and whether an advertisement brought your product to their attention.
This type of research can also provide information on customer satisfaction.

Third-party research: Working with an advertising research firm ensures your information is
independent and unbiased. Research firms also have the resources to conduct more extensive
research. In addition to surveys, they may gather groups of customers for focus groups, show
ads to individuals, ask questions to determine what impact the advertising had, or monitor
what participants look up online after being exposed to an ad.

Advertising Research – 4 Important Types: Product Appeal, Advertising Message,

Advertising Media Selection and Advertising Effectiveness Research

The researches may be conducted as follows:

1. Product Appeal Research.

2. Advertising Message (Copy Testing) Research.

3. Advertising Media Selection Research.

4. Advertising Effectiveness Research.

Type # 1. Product Appeal Research:

The attitude of the target group towards a particular product or brand is of importance
to study the consumer behaviour. This attitude is known as the Product Appeal.

Generally, there is a stability of a set of attitude towards salient features of a product. A

consumer compares and evaluates a brand with this set of attitude, which is also known
as “back group”. It is important to study these salient characteristics of a product and
the perceptions of the consumer at different segments.

The product appeal is to be designed, considering the favourable factors of a product. It

will be the task of the marketer to change the unfavourable image of target group
towards the product or the brand presented, into a favourable one.

The features of a product should be highlighted cautiously, considering the attitudes of

the consumers. The salient features of attraction may be different in different segments
of market. An attempt should be made to reinforce the salient features in the product
advertisement.

To illustrate the product appeal, we may take an example of a brand of toothpaste in a

particular market segment. The product features of the toothpaste is to be highlighted,
considering the market segment and the product should be positioned accordingly.

Type # 2. Advertising Message Research:

Message of the advertisement is of great importance to create an impact and to project

the product in the market.

Consumers’ attitude and the effect of message may be identified and measured. The
advertiser should locate salient characteristics of a particular market segment and
should design the product appeal and the relevant message accordingly. Instead of
critising the competitor’s brand, the advertiser should highlight the positive features of
the brand advertised, through well directed message.

The techniques like depth interviews and projective tests may be conducted to estimate
and measure the spontaneous and emotional responses. Various methods of testing
techniques may be adopted to measure the effectiveness of the message.

ype # 3. Advertising Media Selection Research:

The decision making process in media selection is based on the following fundamental
issues:
i. Choice of a particular medium or combination of media viz. T.V., radio or print.

ii. Selection of national, regional or local level media.

iii. The periodicity or the interval of the media use.

Type # 4. Advertising Effectiveness Research:

There can be various alternative strategies for varying degree of effects on the target
audience. Different statistical models may be applied to measure the scale of
effectiveness and generation of motivational attitude among the prospective consumers.

Type # 4. Advertising Effectiveness Research:

There can be various alternative strategies for varying degree of effects on the target audience.
Different statistical models may be applied to measure the scale of effectiveness and
generation of motivational attitude among the prospective consumers.

Why advertising research is important?

One should conduct a full- fledged advertising research as it helps in

1. Developing creativity: when all the information is accessible, a well- formed strategy
could be designed to develop the organization further.
2. Improves your position in the field: Advertising research enables a company to
find a suitable time and ways to launch their products.
3. Rank your image: Advertising research enables comparisons between organizations.
So it helps a company to know its place in the market compared to others.
4. Predicts likely issues: Advertising research predicts forthcoming problems that an
organization might face.
5. Monitors progress: It analyzes your organization’s performance.
6. Less chances of failures: There is reduced risk of failures if the advertising research
is thorough.

Scope of advertising research

1. Increases awareness: Advertising research increases the knowledge about the

market, which helps in building a brand campaign.
2. Analyzes changing market: Knowing your customer is very important for any
business. A customer’s attitude is subject to change with the change in market
conditions. Advertising research analyzes these changing attitudes of your customers.
 3. Public feedback: Advertising research records the feedback of your audience.
4. Results: Final campaigns that are created are based on the results of the research.

THE ROLE OF RESEARCH IN DECISION MAKING

In running a business, you may be more or less conscious of your limitations–you know what
you know, you’re pretty sure of what you don’t know, you’re worried about what you’re
completely unaware of but need to know. Rather than operating in a vacuum or in denial, you
can use business research as a tool to aid in making decisions to confidently direct a thriving,
viable trade. Business research, also called market research, is a tool or process of pulling
together information germane to running your operations intelligently.

Uses for Business Research

Market research can answer questions for a variety of issues, from getting a grip on industry
trends, determining new products to develop and deliver to the market, or deciding on which
site to locate an outlet, to better understanding what it takes to satisfy customers to keep them
loyal to your business.

Secondary Data

Use secondary data about an industry or market as an effective way to gain a clearer lay of the
land, or to lay groundwork for more detailed research work later. Look up U.S. Census data for
general population demographics or trade publications for industry trends. Use resources
within your community for more localized data. For example, businesses in Houston can look up
the Houston Business Archive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Greater Houston
Partnership that includes the Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development.

Primary Research

Sometimes your organization will face problems too specific to find answers in the public
sphere; you’ll need to conduct primary research. Primary research comprises "ex post facto"
studies, such as observation research or opinion surveys, and experimental designs that set up
a "lab" trial to look for alternatives to the current assumption you may be operating under. The
research may take the guise of qualitative work, such as a small number of in-depth interviews
or focus groups to get a deeper understanding of a problem, or quantitative work that projects
outcomes.

Integrating Research into Decision-Making

The information uncovered in your search should shed light on the questions management
needs answers to, but it won’t decide the course of action for you. You still need to weigh the
evidence provided by the market research against internal financial and operations data, plus
your industry experience, business acumen, even intuition to steer your business in the right
direction.

Limitations

As you look up secondary data or conduct primary research, bear in mind that errors can blunt
the effectiveness of the tool and actually do more harm than good. Planning errors can
sabotage the project by trying to solve the wrong problem, or with bad survey design.
Collection errors can survey the wrong audience, ask the wrong questions or record inaccurate
answers. Analytical error can creep in with the wrong statistical tools that merely manipulate
the response data rather than discover meaning. And reporting error can introduce bias that
misconstrues the information based on preconceived notions rather than revealing what the
facts actually mean.

Target Market Research

Would you like to know why, how, and when to apply market research? Do you want to
discover why your consumers are not buying your products? Are you interested in launching a
new product, service, or even a new marketing campaign, but you’re not sure what your
consumers want?

To answer the questions above, you’ll need help from your consumers. But how will you collect
that data? In this case and in many other situations in your business, market research is the way
to get all the answers you need.

In this ultimate guide about market research, you’ll find the definition, advantages, types of
market research, and some examples that will help you understand this type of research. Don’t
forget to download the free ebook available at the end of this guide!

Definition:

Market research is defined as the process of evaluating the feasibility of a new product or
service, through research conducted directly with potential consumers. This method allows
organizations or businesses to discover their target market, collect and document opinions and
make informed decisions.
Market research can be conducted directly by organizations or companies or can be outsourced
to agencies which have expertise in this process.

The process of market research can be done through deploying surveys, interacting with a
group of people also known as sample, conducting interviews and other similar processes.

Primary purpose of conducting market research is to understand or examine the market

associated with a particular product or service, to decide how the audience will react to a
product or service. The information obtained from conducting market research can be used to
tailor marketing/ advertising activities or to determine what are the feature priorities/service
requirement (if any) of consumers.

Three key objectives of market research

A market research project may usually have 3 different types of objectives.

1. Administrative: Help a company or business development, through proper planning,

organization, and both human and material resources control, and thus satisfy all
specific needs within the market, at the right time.
2. Social: Satisfy customer’s specific needs through a required product or service. The
product or service should comply with the requirements and preferences of a customer
when it’s consumed.
3. Economical: Determine the economical degree of success or failure a company can have
while being new to the market, or otherwise introducing new products or services, and
thus providing certainty to all actions to be implemented.

Why is market research important?

Conducting research is one of the best ways of achieving customer satisfaction,
reducing customer churn and elevating business. Here are the reasons why market research is
important and should be considered in any business:

1. Valuable information: It provides information and opportunities about the value of

existing and new products, thus, helping businesses plan and strategize accordingly.
2. Customer-centric: It helps to determine what the customers need and want. Marketing
is customer-centric and understanding the customers and their needs will help
businesses design products or services that best suit them.
3. Forecasts: By understanding the needs of customers, businesses can also forecast their
production and sales. Market research also helps in determining optimum inventory
stock.
 Market Research Guide for Advertising
Although a major subsector of marketing, advertising is often treated as a secondary task, one
with a scarce backup of data to deliver outstanding ad campaign results. To add insult to injury,
a sweeping 76% of marketers in 2020 did not rely on behavioral data for ad targeting.

This is dismal news, given the fact that despite being barraged with 1,700 ads per month, users
only view half of them. It occurs in the face of a costly worldwide ad expenditure, which is
forecasted to reach $375 billion by 2021.

Market research is therefore undoubtedly necessary. A wide-spanning umbrella term, it refers

to collecting and analyzing data about your target market and your competitors, along with the
traits, trends and changes in the overall market you serve.

Consequently, it is evident that advertising requires its own market research. This guide will
teach you how to carry out market research for advertising.

Advertising Market Research at a Glance

Advertising market research is a form of research concentrated on advertising campaigns. As

such, its ultimate aim is to identify the most effective ads within a company’s target market.

The process of market research for advertising includes pre-campaign efforts as well as post-
campaign scrutiny. This includes setting up advertising campaigns, narrowing in on your target
market, deducing which ads are best and measuring the success of your ad campaigns.

You’ll find that market research plays a critical role in each stage of this advertising
development process. Let’s get a more thorough rundown to learn how to set up an effective
advertising campaign through market research tailored specifically towards it.

Pre-Campaign Market Research: Setting Up Your Ad Campaign

We caution you to never jump headfirst into an advertising campaign. Before running a
campaign, you must set it up through planning. Pre-campaign efforts include three stages, all of
which are fueled by market research.

Here are the first three stages:

Stage 1: Acquire a deep understanding of your target market.

You cannot lay the groundwork for an ad campaign before you understand who your target
market is, along with the different segments it encompasses. By understanding these groups,
you’ll be able to create general ads that target the entirety of your target audience, along with
ads tailored more towards the different segments within your target market. Here is what you
will need to nail down both of these groups:

1.Set up a survey that covers a wide net of demographics. Ask questions to gauge which
demographics show the most interest in your brand.

2. Determine which demographics show the most favorability towards your brand, offering or
messaging. This is your target market.

3. Arrange psychographic surveys across the demographics most conducive to buying from you.
This will give you direct insight into the psyche into specific demographics, revealing the
different segments within your target market.

Stage 2: Set Up Micro and Macro Advertising Campaign Objectives

Now that you’ve nailed down your target market and have zeroed in on the different segments
within it, you can begin planning your advertising campaign. Each campaign, sub-campaign and
ad itself will require an objective.

Otherwise, you won’t know how to measure the performance and success of each component
of your campaign(s). Here are the objectives to focus on and how to do so:

1. Pin down the purpose of a new campaign. Or do so with a number of campaigns.

Typically, an advertising campaign seeks to:
2. to inform your target market about a new offering.
3. to persuade consumers to convert (either by buying, subscribing, signing up for the new
or existing offering).
4. to remind your target market where and how to access the offering.
5. Find the proper media channels to deliver your advertisements. Think about the
purpose of your campaign; can a particular channel deliver it best, or perhaps, can it do
so partially?
6. Collect secondary research on your target market. This will help you discover which
advertising channels work well across general target markets.
7. Collect primary research by creating surveys that unveil the messaging preferences of
each segment of your target market.
8. Narrow down the advertising channels for your campaign. These include:
9. Display ads (landing pages, pop-ups, banners)
a. Social media ads
b. PLA ads (via Google Adwords or Criteo)

C. Native Ads
Stage 3: Set Up a Budget for Your Advertising Campaign

The shortest stage within the advertising research and development process — although not
trivial in the slightest — setting up a budget is necessary before you do any conceptualizing.

Market Research During the Campaign

Following the first three pre-campaign, pre-planning stages, we move along to the campaign
itself. Now that you’ve done the market research on your target audience, set campaign and
sub-campaign objectives and set a budget, you can start conceptualizing the operation itself.

Here is how to proceed:

Stage 4: Create the Central Messaging Behind Your Campaign

1. Decide on a concept; it can be a theme or a central narrative to all your ads.

2. Make sure your idea is precisely targeted to your target market, along with the
segments of your target market.
3. Next, create the ads themselves. An ad should possess the following qualities:
a. Relevance to the target audience
b. Value in purchasing and using
c. Uniqueness to set yourself apart from competitors
d. Credibility — your customers should believe your ad, don’t make it seem too good to
be true.
e. Get into the nitty grid of your sub-campaigns and ads themselves
4. Decide which channels you chose previously work best for which ad type
5. Decide what to incorporate into each medium (ex: do you need a video in each medium
or only copy, etc.)

Based on the surveys you’ve run, decide which ads to expose to particular segments of your
target market. You can add more surveys for research purposes.

Set a frequency, ie, how many times your audience will receive your ads

Launch your advertising campaign

Post-Campaign Efforts

Market research doesn’t end after you launch your advertising campaign. Its performance gives
you another great opportunity to study your target market, along with your ensuing marketing
efforts.
It will also inform your new campaigns and new ads as part of your current, ongoing one. This
brings us to the final stage.

Stage 5: Keep Track of Your Advertising Performance

Tracking the effectiveness of an advertising campaign will differ based on the KPIs you set.
These will depend largely on the medium you use to distribute your ads.

Attribute several KPIs to monitor during your campaign. Here are some to consider:

1. Conversions
2. Return on Ad Spent (ROAS)
3. Cost Per 1,000 Impressions
4. Impressions
5. Cost per click (CPC)
6. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
7. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Observe these KPIs daily on a web analytics platform like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics.
Or, set up your campaign and track it on a specialized platform like Adroll.

Create surveys that target the same segments from your campaign. These can help you see how
your customer base reacts to them.

Test them on images (preferences on 1 over the other).

Ask them questions to expand and refine the current campaign.

Come up with questions for new campaign ideation.

Closing off on Market Research for Ads

After Stage 5, you should have established a familiarity with your target market and your
industry — at least to some extent. With all this data in tow, you can go about new ad
campaigns armed with this new customer knowledge. More importantly, the market research
you’ve picked up during this process will help inform all of your marketing efforts.

After all, the purpose of this research is to equip your brand with a deep understanding of your
customers to make smarter business decisions. After gathering enough market research, you
may try going bold in your next advertising venture.
 Product Positioning Research

While research into segmentation aims to identify who the customers are, Product Positioning
Research helps identify what to say to them.

Product Positioning Research is carried out to understand the position of a product or a brand
in comparison to a competitor can also be used to measure perceptions of a brand or product
compared to a competitor, this ensures they can be effectively positioned in a target market.

Product Positioning Research is also seen as an essential part of sales strategy for businesses, it
is particularly useful in making sure the right people and businesses see the product, by doing
Product Positioning Research it safeguards products and brands being pitched to those which it
is most appropriate.

While research into segmentation aims to identify who the customers are, Product Positioning
Research helps identify what to say to them.

When carrying out this type of research it is important to promote and highlight the differences
of a product to differentiate from competitors – therefore is important for businesses to
research the target market. Qualitative research might be used in the form of focus groups to
find important and differential features and benefits, carry out concept tests, and identify a
language that resonates with the target market. A laddering technique is often used when
identifying opportunities in this type of qualitative research – it helps identify the features and
benefits of a product or service.

Common questions used to aid the positioning research include:

1. What attributes are important and of value to the target market?

2. Are the right attributes emphasised?
3. How is the product or brand seen by the target market?
4. Does the product or brand have a competitive advantage?
5. Can the product or brand be expanded into new markets if different attributes were
promoted?

What is positioning and why is it so important? Product positions are based upon customer
perceptions and reflect the characteristics most important to them. These perceptions are
often reinforced through advertising, branding and product packaging and are what
differentiate your product from those of your competitors.

In today’s global marketplace, companies need effective strategic positioning because

customers have access to more choices than ever. If you don’t stand out in that sea of choices,
you lose. Successful positioning will ensure you a spot in the minds of those who purchase or
recommend your product or service.

1.The current position of your products

2. The position of competitive products

3. Where your products should be positioned – and how you can get them there

4. Strategies for creating a positive image or identity in the minds of your target market for your
products, brand, or organization

5. How to design your marketing efforts to satisfy the specific needs and tastes of consumers
and buyers in a target market segment

6. The most effective way to differentiate your products from your competitors

Pre –test and Post-Test Research

Research can be conducted to optimise advertisements for any medium: radio, television, print
(magazine, newspaper or direct mail), outdoor billboard (highway, bus, or train), or Internet.
Different methods would be applied to gather the necessary data appropriately.

There are primarily two broad types of advertising research viz. Pre-testing and Post-testing.
Pretesting is testing the advertisement before running it so that the likelihood of preparing
most effective ads, by allowing an opportunity to detect and eliminate weaknesses or flaws
increases. Post-testing is done after the advertisement is run on the media. This is more
expensive and elaborate but most realistic as well because the advertisements are tested in
real life setting.

In another way of advertisement research can be classified into two types of research,
customised and syndicated. Customised research is conducted for a specific client to address
that client’s needs. Only that client has access to the results of the research. Syndicated
research is a single research study conducted by a research company with its results available,
for sale, to multiple companies.
 Pre-testing:
Pre-testing, also known as copy testing is a form of customised research that predicts in-market
performance of an ad, before it airs, by analysing audience levels of attention, brand linkage,
motivation, entertainment, and communication, as well as breaking down the ad’s Flow of
Attention and Flow of Emotion. (Young) Pre-testing is also used on ads still in rough form – e.g.,
animatics or ripomatics. Pretesting is also used to identify weak spots within an ad to improve
performance, to more effectively edit 60’s to 30’s or 30’s to 15’s, to select images from the spot
to use in an integrated campaign’s print ad, to pull out the key moments for use in ad tracking,
and to identify branding moments.

Pre-testing thus is undertaken to:

i. Establish whether the advert ‘says’ what it was intended to

ii. Assess the likelihood of getting a response from the reader

Some of the commonly used Pre-tests are as follows

Pre-tests for Print Media Advertisements:

Consumer Jury Test:

Few consumers form a group and act as jury to show their preferences for one or two ads out
of several being considered. The jury members rank the ads and respond to the questions like
which was the most impressive ad or which ad provoked you most to go ahead and buy the
product or which ad did you notice first and so on.

This test is conducted by two methods namely Order of Merit Rating and Paired Comparison
test. In the Order of merit rating test the jury the jurors rank the advertisements as per their
preference. The consensus emerges about the best ad copy at the end. But the best may be the
best amongst the worst ones.

In the paired comparison test at a time two ad copies are compared one-to-one. Every single ad
is compared with all others. Sources are recorded on cards. They are summed up. The winner
gets the highest score. This technique is easier than order of merit. Till ten copies, there is good
accuracy; which later decreases. The number of comparisons one is required to make with the
help of the following formula:

n. (n-l) / 2

Where n= the number of ads to be rested.

Portfolio Test:

Along with the regular advertisements some dummy copies are kept in a folio. Then the
consumer-sample sees the folio. The consumer is then asked about what he has seen in each
ads. The ad giving minimum playback is considered the best. But then it is necessary to observe
whether the chosen advertisement is dummy or regular. If found dummy the actual one is
improved on the same lines.

Mock Magazine Test:

Unlike the above method of keeping the advertisements in a folio, test ads are introduced in a
real magazine to an experimental group to read. The control group is also exposed to the same
magazine, but is without test ads. Later a recall test is conducted to assess the effectiveness о I
test ads.

Direct Questioning:

A consumer jury is formed and either the whole ad or its different elements are tested by
asking direct questions. Sometimes there is one single question only and sometimes an
elaborate questionnaire is prepared to assess attention strength, read-through strength,
affective strength and behaviour strength of the ad. For each component the copy is allotted
some points. Each ad is rated from the best to the worst.

Some Other Pre-Testing Techniques:

Sales Experiment:

Before a product advertisement is launched nationally, a small ad campaign of one or more

advertisements is run. Two or more test centres are selected to do so. The ads are run for a
fixed period say one to four months and then the sales responses are noted. It is a very useful
and effective measure for FMCG items and those ads who aim to motivate buyers to take an
immediate sales action.

Direct Mail Tests:

A group of prospects are selected from the mailing list randomly and are sent different test ads.
Then to measure the response, the orders against each lot are noted.

Physiological Testing:

In this test, rather than what respondents say, what is considered more important is the
physiological reaction of the respondents. Three principal instruments to do so are:
Eye Movement Camera:

It measures how the eye moves over the layout of test ads. The route taken by the eye and also
the pauses are noted so that the areas of interest and attention can be judged.

Report Card Measures:

The first theme is the quest for a valid, single-number statistic to capture the overall
performance of the advertising creative. This search has spawned the creation of various report
card measures. These measures are used to filter commercial executions and help management
make the go/no go decision about which ads to air. (Young). The predominant copy testing
measure of the 1950s and 1960s, Day-After Recall (DAR) was interpreted to measure an ad’s
ability to “break through'” into the mind of the consumer and register a message from the
brand in long-term memory. Once this measure was adopted by Procter and Gamble, it became
a research staple.

But every thing was not that bright about these tests. In the 70s, 80s, and 90s, tests were
conducted to validate a link between the recall score and actual sales. For example, Procter and
Gamble reviewed 10 year’s worth of split-cable tests (100 total) and found no significant
relationship between recall scores and sales. (Young) In addition, Wharton University’s
marketing guru Leonard Lodish conducted an even more extensive review of test market results
and also failed to find a relationship between recall and sales. Harold Ross of Mapes & Ross
found that persuasion was a better predictor of sales than recall.

Post-Testing:
Post-testing or Ad tracking, as otherwise known, can be customised or syndicated. Tracking
studies provide either periodic or continuous in-market research monitoring a brand’s
performance, including brand awareness, brand preference, product usage and attitudes.
Advertising tracking can be done by telephone interviews or online interviews—with the two
approaches producing fundamentally different measures of consumer memories of advertising,
recall versus recognition.

Purpose of Post Testing:

The purpose of ad tracking is generally to provide a measure of the combined effect of the
media weight or spending level, the effectiveness of the media buy or targeting, and the quality
of the advertising executions or creative. Some newer forms of online tracking, separate the
issues of the quality of the creative component from the quality of the media buy and instead
focus on the relative performance of ads versus the competitive ads that are airing at the same
time. All forms of tracking data are used to provide inputs to Marketing Mix Models which
marketing science statisticians build to estimate advertising return on investment (ROI).

Some ad tracking studies are conducted by telephone while others are conducted on the
Internet. The two approaches produce very different measures of advertising awareness
because the interviews tap into consumer memories of advertising using fundamentally
different measures, recall versus recognition.

Post-Testing:
Post-testing or Ad tracking, as otherwise known, can be customised or syndicated. Tracking
studies provide either periodic or continuous in-market research monitoring a brand’s
performance, including brand awareness, brand preference, product usage and attitudes.
Advertising tracking can be done by telephone interviews or online interviews—with the two
approaches producing fundamentally different measures of consumer memories of advertising,
recall versus recognition.

Purpose of Post Testing:

The purpose of ad tracking is generally to provide a measure of the combined effect of the
media weight or spending level, the effectiveness of the media buy or targeting, and the quality
of the advertising executions or creative. Some newer forms of online tracking, separate the
issues of the quality of the creative component from the quality of the media buy and instead
focus on the relative performance of ads versus the competitive ads that are airing at the same
time. All forms of tracking data are used to provide inputs to Marketing Mix Models which
marketing science statisticians build to estimate advertising return on investment (ROI).

Some ad tracking studies are conducted by telephone while others are conducted on the
Internet. The two approaches produce very different measures of advertising awareness
because the interviews tap into consumer memories of advertising using fundamentally
different measures, recall versus recognition.

For example, with an Internet study, the respondent can be shown a few memorable, de-
branded still images from the TV ad or a de-branded version of a print or Internet ad and then
answer three significant questions:

i. Do you recognise this ad? (Recognition measure)

ii. Please type in the sponsor of this ad. (Unaided awareness measure)

iii. Please choose from the following list, the sponsor of this ad. (Aided awareness measure)
A telephone survey does not allow for visuals. Verbal descriptions are very difficult to provide
for a campaign that has several ads featuring the same character(s) in the same situation with
only slight changes. Telephone is not considered a flexible enough methodology to be used in
all situations.

The data that a post-test might provide are as follows:

a. Decision Analyst

b. Top of mind brand awareness

c. Unaided brand awareness

d. Aided brand awareness

e. Brand fit

f. Brand image ratings

ADVERTISEMENTS:

g. Brand trial

h. Repeat purchase

i. Frequency of use

j. Purchase intent

k. Price perceptions

l. Unaided advertising awareness

m. Aided advertising awareness

n. Unaided advertising message recall

o. Aided advertising message recall

p. Aided commercial recall

q. Ad wear out

r. Promotion awareness and usage

s. Market segment characteristics

t. Media habits

u. Lifestyle/Psychographics

v. Demographics

Different techniques of Post-Testing:

Among the various post testing techniques used most common ones are:

i. Penetration tests: Recognition/recall

ii. Progress tests or Sales Effects Tests.

Apart from this, perceptions, image and attitudes can also be measured to assess the
effectiveness of ads. The attitude measurement may be used in combination with penetration
(recall) tests.

Penetration Tests:

Daniel Starch had given the details of this test for the first time in his book Principles of
Advertising (Chicago- A W Shaw, 1923). These tests are also known as Recognition/Readership
Viewership tests. They are aided recall tests dating back to 1923. Since then they have been
conducted in the US by the Daniel Starch Organisation. Here, the respondents are shown the
issues of magazines they claim to have read. They are asked to recognise the ads, asked
whether they have read them. The results are put into three categories:

(i) Noted (N): A person who only remembers having seen the ad in the issue under study

(ii) Seen-Associated (A). A person who not only remembers seeing it but also claims to have
seen or read some part of it. He may even associate the ad with the product or advertiser

(iii) Read-Most (RM). The person who has read half or more of the written material in the ad.

What is audience market research?

Audience research is essentially any research conducted on a specific sample (i.e. the
audience!) in order to find out about their attitudes, behaviours and habits - i.e. to understand
them. The sample can be made up of any group of interest – whether this is nationally
representative, or focused on a particular age, gender, region, ethnicity etc. The definition of
‘audience’ is important, but changeable.
The purpose of audience research is to answer a range of business questions, such as to find
out what interests them, who influences them, what problems they have, what they think of
existing products or how they feel about branding and service. Audience understanding
research helps companies communicate with their audience and integrate their views and
opinions into their products and services.

The difference between audience research and market research

Quite often ‘audience research’ is confused with ‘market research’. The main difference
between the two is that audience research is conducted on specific audience (people) segments
to obtain information about them. On the other hand, market research is conducted to gather
information about the market within which the product or service aimed at the audience
operates in. It can include competitors, pricing, PEST analysis etc. However, the phrase ‘market
research’ is commonly used as the term to encompass both types of work.

udience understanding vs audience research

Audience understanding and audience research is, in effect, one and the same. It can come in
many guises with audience understanding being the bed rock of techniques such as customer
discovery programmes, customer insight programmes, influencer mapping, UX or customer
experience reviews, innovation research and so on.

Reviews of non-users is also considered to be audience research or understanding.

Importance of audience research

Audience understanding - Conducting audience research will enable you to get a better
understanding of your audience, which in turn will help you connect with your customer and
help your company grow. It enables you to be customer-centric, rather than product led in your
thinking, for example.

Decision making - Audience research can help you prioritise how best to meet their needs or
decide who to focus on, how to reach them, or what to offer them.

Proving hypotheses – It can also help provide evidence for marketing claims that you may want
to make but (as yet) have no evidence to support.

Defining the audience research problem

When designing an audience research project it’s always useful to distil your business problem
into a single sentence and check that each question goes some way to answering it.

Types of audience research methods

Primary research – First hand research conducted by you or your agency

Secondary research – Reviewing information from sources already published, also called
desk research. Data journalism is a form of this.

Types of primary and secondary research

Quantitative audience research – Research focusing on statistics and facts rather than
emotions, for instance questionnaires/surveys.

Original information – typically collected in ad hoc online or telephone surveys, but can also
be longitudinal in nature, collecting answers to comparable questions over time. Exit
interviews, eye tracking, diary studies, large hall tests and omnibus surveys are further
examples of ad hoc or longitudinal surveys.

Transactional data reviews – this could be identification of behavioural segmentation

patterns within website visits and e-commerce transactions. Typically the data is collected
without the overt questioning style of a survey. However, the data collected within registration
databases (for example) are more of a survey style of data collection. Transactional information
is often internal information held by a brand and not directly collected for audience research
purposes.

Web analytics – Similar to transactional information and good for monitoring online
behaviour. Often tends to be held outside or on the edge of brand’s domain signposting paths
to digital interactions

Qualitative audience research – More open research in the form of telephone, face to face
or Skype interviews, often focusing more on feelings and emotions rather than collecting
numbers. These techniques are more in depth compared to surveys

Focus groups or individual in-depth interviews (IDIs) – This is a form of qualitative

research, it consists of a group of people sharing their thoughts and information about a
service, product, campaign or a topic. This is particularly useful as body language can be
observed.

Case studies – A qualitative, ethnographic method for studying the complex interactions
between an individual, product or system within in the context of its environment. Although
case studies are particularly useful in situations where a variety of research methods are
needed, a disadvantage is that case studies inevitably rely on the interpretation of the
researcher, hence potentially effecting the validity of the findings.
Social media analytics – A post on social media can reach millions of followers within
seconds, hence observing the analytics of your social media feed is useful. This can be both
quantitative and qualitative in nature. Quantitative in terms of the sheer scale (an example of
big data) and qualitative in terms of ‘free range’ responses to any given question.

Bulletin boards or chat room/forums - This can also be both quantitative and qualitative
in nature. Quantitative in terms of the sheer scale at times (either by virtue of length of
programme, or number of members) and qualitative in terms of ‘free range’ responses to any
open questions.

Psychological Research
Here are just a few of the most common psychological principles used in advertising today:
The Reciprocity Principle. This social psychology principle describes the give and take
relationship between humans. ...
Commitment. ...
Consensus. ...
Authority. ...
Liking. ...
Scarcity. ...
Verbatim Effect.
The Psychology of Advertising

Chances are you specialize in marketing, not psychology, so this area may be a little…
fuzzy. So what is the Psychology of Advertising? Psychology explores human nature,
the psyche, and why people behave the way they do. Advertising explores the art of
influencing human behavior to make certain purchase decisions. It's no surprise that
these two areas converge.

Psychology explores human nature, the psyche, and why people behave the way they
do. Advertising explores the art of influencing human behavior to make certain purchase
decisions.