Business marketing and advertising has evolved into a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week concern for modern companies. With the proliferation of websites, blogs, online videos and webisodes, the marketing options on the Internet alone have increased the sheer number of places that a company can advertise its products or services. Add on traditional venues such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines and trade shows, and a company's advertising and marketing departments have their work cut out for them.This makes a carefully crafted ad development and marketing plan more important than ever.
Instructions
1. Define the objective. Every company needs to pinpoint the purpose of their ad development plan. Improving sales is too generic of a goal. The ad team has to pinpoint a specific segment of the population, like increasing awareness and purchases to younger consumers, women or professionals. Another company objective may be to increase sales in a particular region. Introducing a new or improved product may be another advertising objective.
2. Study market trends. In order to reach a target market and maximize profits, a company should study the economic climate and industry trends. The firm's advertising and marketing strategists should analyze what products are popular with consumers and why. By looking at both successful and failed products in their industry, the advertising team can pinpoint what consumers like and dislike in similar merchandise. Using this information, the ad and marketing team can determine what niche their product fills and market it to the appropriate the consumer segment.
3. Develop media strategy. Once the marketing staff has studied trends and defined objectives, the next goal is to determine use media to reach the prospective customer. Analyze use banner ads on websites, public relations (getting product reviewers to sample the product), radio and television commercials, print ads and other advertising venues to portray the product. Choose a creative approach and media outlet that resonates with your core objective. A company wishing to market a new brand of sneakers to women would look at advertising on a TV network like Oxygen or Lifetime instead of ESPN.
4. Organize a budget. The creative department must develop commercials, ads and other marketing strategies within budget constraints. The marketing and financial departments should go over ad plans in advance to ensure that spending stays in check.
5. Test the marketing plan in small doses. Releasing a TV commercial or sending a company representative to trade shows or conferences in a particular city or region will give the ad and marketing staff a chance to fine tune the idea before spending large amounts of money on a national or international campaign.
Tags: advertising marketing, marketing staff, team pinpoint, trade shows