Effective Advertising Campaign
Good advertising doesn’t happen in a vacuum, nor by accident; and it’s much more complex than simply creating attractive ads, coming up with some clever copy and slogans, and throwing some money at the media. Good advertising is the product of planning, targeting, evaluating feedback, and timing. You can do virtually everything right in developing a campaign, but if you make one critical error, your entire investment probably will be squandered.
A company’s advertising dollar will go much further if it’s supported by an effective lead-response agenda, efficient communications technology, the showroom advantage, a smart express catalog and price list, and motivated sales professionals. It makes a whole lot more sense to have these things going for you before embarking on any advertising campaign than not having them ready in time or never getting to them at all.
Reach,Frequency and Continuity
The three functions of advertising: to create or maintain awareness, gathering information, create business; “Reach, Frequency, and Continuity,” three components critical to the success of any advertising understanding.
“Reach” means how many people get your message at any given time. “Frequency” measures how many times that same audience gets the same or similar message within a designated time frame. “Continuity” means that your advertising message spread across the various media maintains consistent thematic integrity throughout its execution in the ways your message is seen, read, or heard.
To understand continuity a little better, say your company runs a print ad in the local business journal with a bold border and a picture of your company’s mascot, a cartoon pelican wearing a T-shirt. It follows that your ads in the Chamber of Commerce Gazette, the Yellow Pages, and every other print medium maintain the look, the typography, and the mascot to reinforce the association of those images with your company’s identity. As an advertiser, your company’s consistent continuity is the factor that over time builds a consumer’s ability to associate your company with specific attributes about your products and services, your positioning statements and themes, your people, and whatever other elements you incorporate into your message.
