Download ADVERTISING PLANNING AND STRATEGY

ADVERTISING PLANNING AND STRATEGY
Advertising is both an art and a science. The art comes from writing,
designing and producing exciting messages. The science comes from
strategic thinking.
Strategic Planning - is the process of determining objectives (what you want
to accomplish, your destination) deciding on strategies (how to accomplish
objectives, the route to the destination) and implementing the tactics (which
make the plan come to life).
PLANNING DOCUMENTS
I Business Plan
II Marketing Plan
III Advertising Plan
IV Creative Plan
I Business Plan - sometimes is for the whole business or for units or
combinations of units.
Includes a Business Mission Statement - supports the corporate mission and
includes the broad goals and policies of the business unit. It answers
questions such as: Does the business want to pursue long-term growth,
short-term profits, or technological leadership?
The Business Plan examines opportunities and threats. An opportunity is an
area where the company could develop an advantage over its competition. A
threat is a trend or development that could erode business.
The Business Plan defines specific objectives and goals.
The Business Plan outlines specific strategies to meet the objectives/goals.
The Business Plan lays out the tactics - the programs to implement the
strategies.
II The Marketing Plan - is a written document, usually updated once a year
that proposes strategies to achieve marketing objectives. The marketing plan
parallels the business plan.
The marketing plan begins with a selection of objectives, they could be
percentage of market share, unit sales, store traffic or profit. Using research
and objectives, the plan must identify and evaluate market opportunities.
The marketing plan defines and selects its target markets. It defines what
segment or segments - a group of people having one or more similar
characteristics - it is going to target.
The marketing plan includes the promotions/marketing communications
plan. This year with this specific budget we are going to use public
relations, advertising, special events and outdoor to accomplish our
communications objectives.
III The Advertising Plan - states what audience/segment is going to receive
what message in which medium.
Whom are you trying to reach? Target Audience
What do you say to them? Message Strategy
When and where do you reach them? Media Strategy
An advertising Plan outline would look something like this:
1. Introduction - summary of the plan
2. Situation analysis - background the making sense of all the collected data.
Identify the problems and opportunities. Advertising can solve only
message-related problems such as image, attitude, perception, knowledge of
information. It cannot solve problems related to price, product, quality,
availability. However a message can speak to the perception that the price is
too high. It can portray a product with limited distribution as exclusive.
3. Key strategy decisions - what the advertising message must accomplish.
The target audience - create a profile of the typical audience member’s
personality and lifestyle. Can include a feature analysis - comparing your
products and the competitions products by relevant features. Include the
personality of the brand or the positioning relative to the competition in the
target audiences mind.
4. Budget - how much you have to spend to implement the plan.
Types of budget methods:
a) Historical - based on last years budget with an increase for inflation
b) task-objective method - looks at the objectives and determines the costs
accomplishing each objective.
c)percentage of sales compares the total sales with the total advertising (or
marketing communication) budget during the previous year or the average of
several years to compute a percentage.
d) Competitive - use competitors budget’s as benchmarks
e)All you can afford - whatever is left over gets allocated to advertising.
IV THE CREATIVE PLAN AND COPY STRATEGY
Planning individual ads - creative platform or blueprint that copywriters use
to develop the message. The blueprint includes problems, objectives, and
target markets.
Message Strategies
Information advertising - is straightforward, fact filled and often focuses on
news. This approach works for high involvement products or in a case
where consumers are searching for information to make a decision.
With low involvement situation, advertising is more likely to focus on
establishing an image or touching an emotion.
Selling premises - how you approach the prospect - either product centered
or prospect centered.
Product centered messages center on the product itself. They look at
attributes, also called features and build a selling message around them.
Sometimes they make a claim about the performance - how long the product
lasts, how much it cleans, how little energy it uses.
In benefit messages the product is promoted on the basis of what it can do
for consumers.
A benefit statement that looks to the future is called a promise. It says
something will happen if you use the advertised product.A reason why you
should buy something is another form of benefit statement.