What are The Advantages of Advertising?

Advertising is a form of communication which helps influence the behaviour of a target audience, towards purchasing the product or service offered in the message.  Usually employing paid means, advertising is the act of promoting products, brands or services, with a view to create a favourable market for the same.

Advertising is primarily conducted to create awareness and subsequent demand for the products or services, primarily highlighting the positive features of the advertised. It is one such activity which is incredibly beneficial to the manufacturers, sellers (wholesalers and retailers), consumers and the society as a whole.

Let us discuss how advertising is helpful to one and all :

  • ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING FOR MANUFACTURERS :
  1. Creation of Market for New Products :Advertising helps introduce a new product in the market and boost its demand. It encourages people to purchase the product advertised by providing information about the product, emphasizing on the positive aspects of the product endorsed.
  2. Maintenance and Expansion of Existing Market :Advertising allows the manufacturer to expand his current market by exploring new markets for the product and retaining the existing ones. Advertisements help spread the message to customers even in remote areas.
  3. Helps Increase Sales Volume :Advertising promotes sales by making people aware of the products and their features. Awareness causes people to look for these products in the market and ultimately purchase them for use. As sales increase due to good advertising campaigns, the selling expenses also come down.
  4. Enhancement of Goodwill :Constant advertising and good quality of product ensures the popularity of the manufacturer and the product. This helps create a brand image and enhance the goodwill for the manufacturer.
  5. Helps Survive Competition :Continuous advertising is necessary to ensure that a product survives the competition posed by competing brands or products. People will choose the product offering them a better quality at a more reasonable price, and better features and advertising ensures a product stands out on these parameters.
  6. Higher Profits due to Elimination of Middlemen :Advertising helps create a direct link between the manufacturer and the ultimate consumer, thereby reducing the middlemen involved, resulting in higher profits for the manufacturers.
  • ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING FOR SELLERS :
  1. Supports Salesmanship :
  1. Supports Salesmanship: Advertising helps people become familiar with the products advertised. This reduces the work of salesmen who need less efforts to sell the products if people are already aware of them through advertisements.
  2. Increases Stock Turnover: Advertising causes the stock turnover rate to increase by popularising the product and creating demand for the same. 
  3. Establishes Good Relationship with Customers: Sellers are able to establish good and permanent relationships with their customers on account of good quality products and services provided.
  • ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING FOR CONSUMERS :
  1. Consumer Education: Advertising acquaints customers with new products launched in the markets and their varied uses or with new uses of existing products. Thus advertising is highly educational in nature.
  2. Quality Products: Advertising helps an organisation become a brand. Branded products assure standard quality to consumers and hence help build confidence in the product.
  3. Encourages Thriftiness: Advertising promotes thriftiness among people and makes the audience aware of their responsibility towards their dependents. Various forms of insurance policies promoted through advertising have helped protect families from extreme poverty.
  4. Enables Comparison: Advertising helps consumers make rightful comparison between similar products or services on the basis of features advertised.
  5. Lower Prices due to Elimination of Middlemen: Customers get products at the lowest possible cost as there are no middlemen involved to charge higher prices to make secret profits for themselves. Advertising creates a direct connection between the manufacturer and the ultimate consumer.
  • ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING FOR SOCIETY :
  1. Rise in Standard of Living: Advertising helps raise the standard of living of people by stimulating their desire for a variety of new products and services or by providing them with alternative uses of existing products.
  2. Creation of Employment Opportunities: Advertising helps generate employment opportunities for many talented people such as artists, singers, photographers, cartoonists, painters, models, actors, musicians and other technicians involved in the advertisement making process.
  3. Promotion of Art and Talent: Advertising allows promotion of art and talent by employing various artists in the advertisement creating process.
  4. Public Education:Advertising is educative in nature and helps educate people through facts, figures and slogans used in various advertisements.
  5. Helps Create Public Awareness :Advertisements are useful for spreading general messages to the common public. They help protect people against deceptive products by making them aware of true facts and figures.
  6. Reduction in Selling Price of Newspapers :The expenditure on publishing the newspapers is largely met by the advertisements published in them. This results in bringing down the per unit cost of each newspaper.

The 10 Commandments Of Effective Advertising

The very purpose of advertising is to create awareness – be it a product, service or an event. An advertising campaign should ideally aim at reaching out to the maximum strength of potential customers, at the lowest possible cost, without compromising on the quality of the subject being advertised. If executed correctly, the advertising campaign can boost your business manifold by attracting new customers; if not, the campaign can turn out to be a heavy expenditure for no feasible results.

Given the importance of proper advertising for any advertiser, it is important to have a look on the possible factors to be kept in mind while planning the campaign:

  • Clear Objectives to Target Audience :

The primary objective of the advertisement should be to attract customers. The advertisement should be designed in such a way that the goal of the advertiser is expressed, revolving around the target audience as the main element in the story. Audience connect and respond to advertisements only when the advertisement speaks the language of the target audience.

  • Leverage of Relative Advantage :

It is important to showcase the positives of the advertising company in order to survive the competition posed by other competing companies. Without highlighting the pros of the subject being advertised, there is little to low possibility for people to take interest in the advertisement, or even consider the subject for usage.

  • Building the Brand Image :

The brand image is how people identify different companies. Advertisements play a very vital role in building up brand consciousness. It is important to keep building on the brand image, through interviews and media interactions, as this directly influences the choice of potential customers. The brand must be news in itself.

  • Planning the Advertising Budget :

It takes money to advertise, and lack of funds in the advertisement campaign might just lead to the campaign turning flop. This would, in turn, adversely affect sales and bring down more financial problems for the company. Hence, it is best to choose an advertising program which does not fall short of funds whenever required.

  • Selecting the Ideal Advertising Medium :

Choice of the advertising medium is crucial to the success of an advertising campaign. It is important to first conduct thorough research on the target market and thereafter plan for the medium best suited for the purpose of advertising for that relevant market.

  • Flexibility in Budget Caps:

Advertising expenses can be estimated, but cannot be determined in advance. It is, therefore, recommended that the advertising company has flexibility in their advertising budget, so that there is neither a dearth of funds if and when need arises, nor is there a wastage of money in trying to advertise at a point of time when advertising will not bear any fruits. 

  • Experiment and Expand:

Companies should ideally be experimenting with different forms of advertising media for different purposes and different target audiences. Working on the same fixed guidelines, though safe, may create monotony and might not go down well with the changing tastes and preferences of potential customers.

  • Be Specific to Specific Audiences:

Each person behaves differently under different circumstances. Similarly, one advertisement shall not appeal to one and all alike! It is important to keep in mind that you should plan a campaign for a specific target market, and they are exactly the people to be taken into consideration – their wants, desires and beliefs – in order to make the campaign successful. Different approaches need to be adopted while designing advertising campaigns for different target audiences.

  • Conduct Pre-Testing :

Pre-testing of the advertisement, if funds and time permits, can be conducted in advance in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign on the potential customers. The advertisement should focus on hitting the right chord by spreading the exact message intended by the advertiser to the customers. Pre-testing can help ensure if the communication process is doing just fine, or any changes need to be made.

  • Tracking the Advertisement Campaign:

By monitoring the advertisement, you can ascertain which elements of your campaign are working in your favour and which are not working for you. It is necessary to evaluate the performance of the advertisement and decipher the most profitable avenues for your advertising campaigns in the near future.

An advertisement campaign planned and executed with the utmost care is bound to generate results in the form of new customers and higher revenue numbers. If planned improperly, the results might be disastrous. The advertisement speaks for the product/service being advertised and should directly connect with the target audience to be a successful campaign.