Planning a marketing campaign

15 February 2010

We are surrounded by advertising in our every day lives; we are, or we think we are, saturated by it. Viral online campaigns infiltrate the internet. Such is the dependence of some magazines on ad spend that editorial content is shaped to mesh with advertising it carries. Advertising supports whole radio stations. Few public spaces appear untouched by it.

You would imagine, then, that such is advertising’s ubiquity, such is its alleged influence, that this is a marketing strategy of almost unconfined power and reach. In the main, this might be true. The cumulative effect of advertising is indeed pervasive if not always persuasive. Online ads, commercials, press ads, posters, radio commercials do make a difference to the way people consume. Successful brands are built on and sustained by intelligently thought-through, well-planned advertising.

But what you never hear about, however, are the individual ads that simply vanish unnoticed, unread, unremarked and unresponded to. For despite the omnipresence of advertising, much of it misses its target and drops harmlessly from view. How a business can avoid such a fate for its advertising is the subject of this article.

Advertise to grow

Unless it has a secure customer base already – one that won’t desert it – or unless it can rely on word of mouth recommendation, a business will need to advertise even if it is in no more sophisticated way than a listing in the phone book or a sign on the side of a van. Otherwise it will remain invisible. The fact that businesses need to advertise doesn’t mean, of course, that all businesses have to advertise in the same way. For some online ads will make sense; for others a leaflet may be enough.

In its most basic form, an ad is a firm’s way of talking to and persuading its customers to buy its product. Advertising, whatever its form, must fulfill three fundamental requirements. It must promote the benefits of a product or service in a tone of voice that will appeal to its target audience; it must appear in an environment where it is likely to be seen and noticed by those potential customers; and it must do so cost effectively. Advertising that forsakes these three principles may be a waste of resources.

Deciding how to advertise

The size of a business and the spread of its customers are likely to determine how it should advertise. If its custom is localised, then obviously it should advertise in a localised way. An ad in the local newspaper or business directory; a bus side; door-drop leaflets; a local radio spot; an eye-catching van side. The greater the geographic spread, however, the more far-reaching the advertising must be. This usually means grabbing some online space, appearing in general or specialist magazines, or even on television (it’s not always as expensive as is imagined).

Advertising and communications agencies

In the same way that a business would get an IT specialist in to help set up its computer system, so it makes sense to appoint an advertising agency to conduct its advertising. People whose profession is to conceive, put together and manage advertising campaigns are, if they have survived the natural selection of market forces, going to know better than anyone how to communicate with and reach a target audience. Not only will they have the requisite skills to plan and execute the advertising, they should also be able to buy media space at a lower cost than a business could negotiate on its own behalf.

Choosing an agency

A small business is far more likely to get an attentive, cost effective service if it approaches a similarly small, but hungry agency. Many smaller agencies are run by creatives and executives who have worked in larger agencies, so there is a reasonable chance that their people will be experienced as well as talented.

An agency will have a portfolio of past work. This will give a business an excellent idea of the calibre of creative thought of which the agency is capable. It is also important, however, to get a broader picture: the reasoning, for example, behind the creative approach and the tone of voice adopted; the media in which the advertising appeared; the overall spend; and the measured effectiveness of the campaign. The fuller the case history behind each campaign, the easier it will be for a business to judge the level of service it will get for its money.

It is advisable to see a number of agencies. Although past work is a useful guide, a more critical factor is going to be how closely the agency seems able to identify with the product it will be selling. Not having past experience of a particular sector may not be as much of a handicap as it first appears. Inventive, strongly conceptual agencies, well versed in research and media planning, are adaptable entities and can learn quickly. Intuition about an agency’s feel for a product might not sound scientific but can be a surprisingly successful way of choosing the right one.

Agencies will ask about budget. This is not necessarily gratuitous. An ad spend will determine the sort of work an agency will think about producing for it.

Should the budget they intend spending justify such a request, some businesses will ask a shortlist of agencies to make creative and media presentations. If they agree – that is, if they consider the business is worth chasing – the agencies will come up with outline creative work and a plan indicating in what form the work will appear and where. This will offer a business as clear a measure as is possible of just how insightfully an agency is thinking about its product or service.

The agency approach

All good agencies begin from the same point. Before so much as a headline is minted, they will interrogate the product or service. They will ask questions of its market position; they will isolate its benefits and separate them from its features; they will assess it against the competition; they will analyse the market for its trends and the audience for its expectations; they will map out the most efficient route to that audience; they will investigate whether the company has a brand identity and how this may be created; and, most importantly of all, they will produce a proposition or series of propositions. Propositions are those points that best and most immediately exemplify a product’s benefits. Only then will they set about turning those propositions into a piece of communication, the results of which they will measure and judge to the client’s satisfaction.

Cost

Regarded by some as branches of the entertainment industry, advertising agencies have a reputation for profligacy and over-ambition. This is largely not true. Most agencies charge reasonably. But they do, of course, charge.

Entrusting an advertising budget to an advertising agency is usually the most sensible thing that can be done with it. If, that is, it is affordable. The problem for some smaller businesses is that while they have money to spend on advertising, they do not have the money to spend on an advertising agency. In which case, they may wish to manage their own advertising.