Knowing the goals of advertising, you can draw up an effective program for promoting the product, which means that you fully recoup the costs of its promotion, attract the attention of customers and gain a stable position in the market.
main idea
To understand and realize the goals of advertising, it is necessary to imagine what kind of object it is. Promotion is an important element of the marketing strategy developed by the enterprise with the aim of strengthening its market position. Advertising is not just an attempt to attract attention, but also an investment method. The correctly formulated goals of such a program, well-chosen methods of achieving the desired are the guarantor of project effectiveness. Having unsuccessfully defined goals, there is a high risk of losing large sums without the slightest benefit to the company. In the worst case, serious losses are possible, including loss of reputation, creating a bad image in the eyes of customers.
Experts recommend forming a promotion strategy, focusing on 4 basic advertising goals - this approach has been tested for years and has proven to be effective. They include:
- creating needs;
- building up the information base;
- the formation of the image of the product at the consumer;
- acquisition initiation.
Where to begin?
The first goal of advertising is to give the consumer an understanding that he needs the proposed product. The communication effect through which the buyer realizes the need for a product is a way to create primary demand. Correctly creating a need is a particularly important task when promoting a product that belongs to one of two categories (or both at once):
- exceptional innovation;
- goods that are not among the vital, extremely necessary.
If the company focused on the manufacture of products that are not among those necessary for the general population, you need to be prepared: consumption will not become regular. The main purpose of advertising in this case is to remind potential customers about the existence of the product and the need to purchase it.
If the manufactured object for your industry is a novelty that has no analogues, you need to be aware that the potential buyer still does not know that he needs this offer. It is important to convey to him the characteristics of the product and the benefits that a person will receive by possessing it. The marketing strategy will have to be directed to forming needs, stimulating the curiosity of the client. Advertising specialists need to invent approaches that would give a potential client the desire to purchase a product.
Maximum information is a good result.
One of the main goals of advertising and types is to provide the customer with a body of knowledge about the product. However, there are disadvantages. Information comes primarily about the category of goods, while no associative chain is created with a specific manufacturer. If an enterprise is forced to compete with other companies that have large resources, produce a huge variety of items that work on the market longer, it is likely that the consumer, realizing the need for a product category, will turn to a well-developed competitor, and not to the goods of a new company.
Choosing the main marketing goal of advertising to create the need for a category, you will have to take responsibility for the formation of a consumption culture. The company will have to teach the customer how to use the product correctly, appropriately, to explain where, how often to do it, what methods to apply. Formation of needs in a category is a campaign aimed at simultaneously promoting a product, raising the level of public awareness. To some extent, this is an educational program. To successfully implement it, you will have to invest a lot of money and time. The advertising campaign will drag on for a long time, otherwise it simply will not be possible to convey large amounts of information to the client. The program needs to explain the essence of the category, product features, to form a logical connection between the category with a specific manufacturer.
Everyone must know about us!
The purpose of advertising is to inform the audience about the brand. In this case, the task of the company is to decide in favor of the strategy. There are two options for abilities that can be stimulated by the client:
- remember the promoted product;
- find out the product.
Each of them has its own unique features, which means it requires different approaches. The ability to recognize a product at the time of purchase implies stimulation of the buyer who saw the advertisement to correlate the store assortment with the knowledge acquired before. Remembering that the brand will come to the client’s mind at the moment when he realizes that he needs a product from the brand category.
Sometimes both directions are the goal of advertising the enterprise, but the most accepted approach is considered to be such an approach when the optimal channel for interaction with the buyer is chosen for each direction. By conducting two advertising campaigns in parallel, you can configure each of them as flexibly as possible, which means you get a good response.
Friend or foe?
Considering what are the goals of advertising, it is necessary to pay attention to the aspect of the customer’s attitude to the brand. A product is not just a set of qualitative and quantitative parameters, but also an image, associations, images. The objective of the marketing strategy is to create in the consumer’s head a clear relationship between the product and the life situation, style, daily life level of the potential customer. Any advertising campaign involves the formation of a consumer relationship to the brand. In some cases, this is the main goal, but sometimes it becomes secondary. Choose, based on the realities, the characteristics of the situation.
A possible purpose of advertising is to form the characteristics of the image in relation to the promoted commodity position. If the images are already ready, you will have to work on strengthening them. In most cases, focus on:
- effectiveness;
- universality;
- reliability;
- professionalism.
Stimulation
One of the goals and functions of advertising is to promote the product and stimulate its acquisition by a potential client. It so happened that many people equate the initiation of an intention with a buyer with the very fact of the acquisition, which is fundamentally wrong. Intention is only a mood, confidence in the need to conclude a deal. Based on the results of contact with the marketing message, the buyer must decide for himself what he wants, wants; firmly believe that the time has come to purchase the goods presented.
The intention of acquiring is not the main goal of advertising, although for many it is extremely important. At the same time, there is a large selection of examples when the stimulation of the decision to conclude a transaction was not included at all by marketers in the list of advertising goals. This goal is most relevant if the company needs to push the client to make a trial acquisition.
The nuances of the problem
The goals and objectives of advertising are, first of all, the promotion of a product, the result of which will be an increase in demand for it, an increase in the volume of transactions. But it’s not so simple. Any modern person, feeling himself an object of external influence, seeks to resist him. When it comes to advertising, the product is perceived to be imposed. The marketing strategy is regarded by many as an attempt to intervene in private life, thereby violating the freedoms and human rights associated with his will, expression of will, the ability to choose and control his opinion, means. The purpose and task of advertising is not only to draw attention to the product, but also to do it as correctly as possible so as not to provoke a negative response to the offer.
As numerous studies show, currently many people do not pay attention to advertising in print media, and during the block of such announcements on radio and television turn off the sound or switch to another channel. Specialized studies on this issue were conducted by American scientists. It turned out that most of all in the residential areas of cities they spend water at the time of commercial breaks. Consumption increases if high-rated programs are shown on television and channel breaks are synchronized with each other.
However, even advertising to attract attention conveyed to the viewer may be ineffective. Among those reading and listening to such announcements, many are biased against all information provided by manufacturers. Viewers believe that there is no truth in advertising messages, literally not a word can be trusted. There is another logic of reflection: the worse the product, the more actively you need to praise it, which means that advertising is a clear indicator of poor quality.
Psychology and Promotion
One of the goals of the use of advertising in fact is the covert management of the masses. Open methods have long been proven ineffective, pressure on the layman leads to strong resistance, so you need to look for more effective methods. The task of the marketer is to identify the processes that control the decision-making of the target audience, to develop a strategy that would help to control them.
If the advertising campaign is aimed at deep influence, it will work well even with a simple form. But conscious reasoning, which it is customary to resort to, has proved to be ineffective: a person tries to comprehend the message, compares it with the existing knowledge for truth, after which he analyzes his needs about the proposed product. Towards the end of this chain, many are already forgetting what initiated it.
Consciousness is an exceptional human feature, and it is precisely the influence on it that allows the manufacturer to achieve the desired response from the client. In the framework of training in marketing tricks, the goals of advertising, the concept of consciousness is always considered in detail, because it is thanks to this feature that human behavior becomes reasonable, aimed at a specific goal, due to an understanding of the laws and rules that control the world. Consciousness gives you the opportunity to think about actions before committing them, plan an action strategy, formulate goals, needs, strive to achieve them, assuming the final result.
Subtle approach
The purpose of advertising for the consumer, ideally, is to provide information in such a way that a person perceives the information, realizes and makes a decision that fully meets the interests of the manufacturer. In practice, many marketing campaigns are built on an attempt to impose an opinion on a customer - and these rarely succeed. When making a decision for a client, one should not expect a positive reaction on his part. The buyer will never believe that the seller knows better than he does, how much and what kind of product is needed, how to use it and what benefits can be obtained through this. More than once, world-renowned advertising experts have appealed to those interested — you should not consider a buyer foolish. Underestimating a customer is a direct path to his loss.
The goals and means of advertising are selected and formulated taking into account the recognition that the buyer knows what he needs, what he wants to buy, what he intends to buy. Psychologists specify: although most people know what they need, few think why they want this. The marketing specialist using the hidden management method allows the client to realize the desire to purchase a product. It is this approach that gives the best results.
Covert management does not provoke a negative response from the client. The addressee believes that it was he himself who made the decision to conclude the transaction, there was no imposed opinion from the side here. The initiator of such a program is the creator of the advertising campaign, the client, the consumer becomes the addressee. The most promising methods are currently channels that affect the subconscious of a potential client. Psychologists are convinced that it is the subconscious that is responsible for making the final decision regarding sympathy, trust in the product, its presentation.
And if more?
Information for advertising, according to professionals, should first reach the subconscious. This term is used to denote such processes occurring in the psyche that a person does not realize, does not suspect them. The most effective method of interacting with the human subconscious is through visual and sound channels. For a marketing campaign to be effective, particular attention needs to be paid to these two factors.
In the framework of hidden management, it is customary to talk about disguised influence, while the goals of this are hidden, first of all, from the addressee. The idea that seems attractive to the client is brought to the forefront, which means that it allows him to consciously make a decision, which the program as a whole was aimed at.
When developing such a campaign, you need to be able to separate the target audience and the total mass of layers consuming the advertising product. In the first case, we are talking about those who can buy goods, the second group - everyone who can hear the advertisement.
CA is a percentage of the population with a high degree of probability capable of completing a promoted purchase or transaction. The success of any promotion project depends on the correct definition of target audience and the choice of communication technologies that will most effectively reach this group. To identify CA, it is customary to analyze general indicators - gender, age category, interests. But you should not expect that CA will become 100% consumers of products - it is extremely rare to create a program that would make it possible to convey data to all interested parties.
Covert management: where to start?
Since the main goal of online advertising, print, visual and in audio format is to stimulate acquisition, the manufacturer, when developing a strategy for attracting attention, must understand who his client is. To do this, you need to collect as much information about him. The more accurate the perception of the consumer, the easier it is to manage. When planning a sale, you need to analyze all the information about the customer and the product. It will not be superfluous to organize observations and studies. Responsibility for them lies with the marketing departments.
Knowing the characteristics of the client, it is possible to determine the impact targets, that is, the desires and needs, the emphasis on which will allow the manufacturer to sell the product. By acting on them, you can stimulate the decision of the client. Sometimes targets are universal, for example:
- desire to be successful;
- desire for comfort;
- awareness of excellence;
- pleasure;
- benefit;
- self-esteem;
- health.
You can resort to base desires, aggressiveness, instability - such targets also occur. It is allowed to tempt the client with power, money, appeal to his desire for glory. It is important to do this so as not to cause a negative impression of the product.
Using everything available
To make it easier to achieve the goal of an advertising campaign, you can use the bait. These are such tools through which the marketer attracts the attention of the client, leaving the fact of management “behind the scenes”, that is, the consumer does not understand that his actions are under strict control.
In psychology, there is one important concept that has found application in advertising. We are talking about the attraction, which originally denoted the phenomenon of attraction of one individual to another. At the same time, an attractive image is formed, due to which a person begins to trust the one to whom he is drawn. Applied to advertising campaigns, attractions have become a tool to lull the customer’s vigilance.
Using these approaches, you can divert attention from the main goals pursued by marketers, but influence the buyer by stimulating behavior that is beneficial for the enterprise. Attraction involves the formation of location. It has long been known that the volume of transactions of a trusted company is higher - this is an expressive example of an attraction. Sometimes it is formed as a result of prolonged functioning in the market, but can be achieved by different tricks - compliments, the behavior of characters in commercials, and the appearance of the product.
Step by step
The purpose of social advertising and marketing is to stimulate action on the part of the addressee of the program. The steps described above are only a preparatory part, while compulsion is the center, the “heart” of the program. It is necessary to analyze all the information about the product and the audience, to understand what methods of presenting information will be the most effective, which psychological tricks are applicable in a particular case.
Creating a strategy, formulating optimal images for the presentation and promotion of a product, do not forget about semiology, semiotics. , , , . , – . , , , . , , , . , .
As can be seen from statistical studies, mostly people of mature and old age listen to the radio, and not everyone has televisions at home, and those who own them do not often turn on the equipment. Among all communication channels with the outside world, for the modern inhabitants, the Internet is gradually becoming the most important and relevant. Through it, you can get information about what is happening, get acquainted with the news of the cultural world, purchase goods. Of course, the Internet is a huge space for advertising a wide variety of products, and not just commercial ones. Currently, the World Wide Web is a field for both regular and social advertising. Its purpose in any of the options is to encourage the user to perform some action.
The easiest promotion method is using SEO technology. But do not forget about the individual characteristics of the case. The advertising campaign should be formulated based on the goals pursued by the customer. So, if the buyer is looking for some product to order immediately, the retargeting program will not be useful, it simply will not work to “catch up” with the client. But for products that require a long selection, this option is suitable.
There are many opportunities
Through the Internet, you can reach the largest layers of the audience. It is important to be able to choose the right one for which the advertisement is designed. The hardest thing is for those whose supply demand has not yet been created. To ensure maximum efficiency, experts advise to resort to different types of advertising at the same time, combining sound messages, visual images and text blocks. Social networks should not be neglected - in recent years, they have become one of the most important tools for advertising enterprise products on the Web. At the same time, the ability to choose the target audience can reduce costs, since you do not have to pay for the presentation of advertising to those users who are not interested in it by default.
One of the goals of a virtual marketing campaign is to make a brand recognizable, memorable. To do this, you need to reach the audience as fully as possible, that is, vague criteria are set for targeting. The advertiser’s task is to ensure visibility, that is, really numerous potential buyers should see the product promotion video.
Another aspect is increasing loyalty. In recent years, sites have become widespread on which users can publish their opinions on products and services. The popularity of such resources has led to the fact that it is the reviews on the company’s activities, the quality of its products - the first that a potential buyer is looking for. If the company does not monitor the opinion of it on the Internet, and its competitors are not asleep, there is a high probability of loss of reputation, it is quite possible that it is completely unreasonable. One of the goals of an advertising campaign is to prevent such an omission and take action if loyalty is reduced.