All About Advertising and Promotions

Sections of this topic

    © Copyright Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC.

    Before you learn more about advertising, you should get a basic impression of what advertising is. See What’s “Advertising, Marketing, Promotion, Public Relations and Publicity, and Sales?”. Advertising is specifically part of the “outbound” marketing activities, or activities geared to communicate out to the market, for example, advertising, promotions and public relations. (“Inbound” marketing activities are geared to communicate in from the market, and includes, for example, market research to learn about customers needs and wants.) Now quickly scan the list of subtopics and their order on this page to understand even more about Advertising.
    Then scan the subtopics and their order in the topic Marketing, to better understand the relationship between advertising and marketing.

    Sections of This Topic Include

    Basics of Advertising and Promotions

    Preparing for Advertising and Promotions

    Various Methods of Advertising and Promotions

    Evaluating Advertising and Promotions

    General Resources

    Also consider
    Related Library Topics

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    In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to advertising and promotions. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

    BASICS OF ADVERTISING AND PROMOTIONS

    Advertising Law

    Basics and Planning

    Introduction

    Advertising and promotions is bringing a service to the attention of potential and current customers. Advertising and promotions are best carried out by implementing an advertising and promotions plan. The goals of the plan should depend very much on the overall goals and strategies of the organization, and the results of the marketing analysis, including the positioning statement (these are described more in the topic of Marketing).

    The plan usually includes what target markets you want to reach, what features and benefits you want to convey to them, how you will convey it to them (this is often called your advertising campaign), who is responsible to carry the various activities in the plan and how much money is budgeted for this effort. Successful advertising depends very much on knowing the preferred methods and styles of communications of each of the target markets that you want to reach with your ads. A media plan and calendar can be very useful, which specifies what advertising methods are used and when.

    For each product or service, carefully consider:

    • What target markets are you trying to reach with your ads?
    • What would you like each target market to think and perceive about your products (this should be in terms of benefits to them, not you)? Realize that each target market might be different.
    • How can you get that target market to think and perceive that, that is, what message do you need to convey?
    • What communications media does that target market see or prefer the most? Consider TV, radio, newsletters, classifieds, displays/signs, posters, word of mouth, press releases, direct mail, special events, brochures, neighborhood newsletters, etc.
    • What media is most practical for you to use in terms of access and affordability for that target market (the amount spent on advertising is often based on the revenue expected from the product or service, that is, the sales forecast)? Use that preferred media to convey the message(s).
    • Who will communicate the messages in the most appropriate media to that target market.

    You can often find out a lot about your customers preferences just by conducting some basic market research methods (see the topic Market Research). The following closely related links might be useful in preparation for your planning.

    Also consider

    PREPARATION FOR ADVERTISING AND PROMOTIONS

    Writing Your Ad

    Before you write your ad, you should know what you want to say.

    Also consider



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    MAJOR METHODS OF ADVERTISING AND PROMOTIONS

    Using Direct Mail

    Mailing Lists

    Email Marketing

    Using Signs and Displays

    Using Classified Ads in Newspapers and Magazines

    Advertising on Radio and T.V.

    Online Advertising and Promotion

    Social Networking (Online) for Marketing, Advertising and Promotions

    Social networking involves a variety of online tools that can be used by people and organizations to quickly share a great deal of information at very little cost. Many people are now hearing of some of those tools, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Youtube.

    Experts are asserting that social networking is a must for people and organizations wanting to share information with others — after all, that’s what marketing is all about! For more information, see Social Networking (Online)

    Measuring Results of Advertising

    Also consider

    For the Category of Marketing:

    To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

    Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

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