This is a BITE College Advertising Promotion Business Assignment in which we discuss promotional and advertisement role and concept in business. 

Introduction

Advertising is the process of targeting the customer to learn about a product and encourage them to buy the product or service. The effective use of advertising and promotion is the basic requirement for a brand or product to succeed in the market (Belch, 2008). Consistency is a key element of promotional strategy and it helps to ensure that brand name and brand image should not differ. Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is the coordination of consistency and other promotional strategies to effectively reach out to the target consumer. This paper is meant to focus on various aspects of advertisement and promotion for Lundy Ltd business. The paper describes the marketing communication process, current trends, integrated promotional strategies and impact of ICT that is applied to advertising and promotion.

Task 1:Scope of marketing communications

1.1 Briefly state three communication theories, using one of the theory analyse how marketing communication process is applicable and important to marketing and promotion of business; and state how ICT has impact on communication process

The one who practice branding, advertising, promotion, sales etc are referred to a marketing communicators. There are three communication theories:

• Commonsense theory: This communication theory is developed by personal experience of an individual. This theory is often the basis of most of the decisions on communication. This type of communication is often developed from hints from colleagues (Mohr, 1990).
• Working theory: This communication theory is a generalized and the best technique. This theory is more systematic than commonsense theory. This theory is an agreed on process of doing things. Working theory of communication is based on behavior rather than systematic representations (Mohr, 1990).
• Scholarly theory: This theory is a better researched theory. Scholarly theory undergoes a systematic research and presents accurate and thorough details of communication. However this theory is quite complex but it provides foundation of improving the understanding of communication process (Mohr, 1990).

For a company like Lundy Ltd it is of utmost importance to get communication right. The best communication theory that can be applied is scholarly theory. The main idea and advertisement is presented before customer to attract them. The scholarly theory of communication is the best way to achieve the effective promotion and advertising. Efficient communication process is the key aspect of marketing strategies as it enables the consumer to understand the benefits and necessity of the products and encourages them to buy.

ICT impact on communication process

Information and communication technology (ICT) has been proved crucial to most business and is crucial for Lundy Ltd as well. Current trend of ICT is the usage of Internet, telemarketing, direct mailing, and promotional presentations etc.  ICT had developed information and communications process in marketing, advertising and promotion (Brady, 2002). The marketing communication is now close to consumers not only through television and magazines but also through internet and telemarketing. Electronic advertisement display at public place is major attraction to the customers. Tele marketing allows the sales personnel to directly contact the potential customer for promoting and marketing.

1.2 Mention the core factors in choosing a suitable advertising and promotion agency and identify three regulatory bodies, examine how they regulate advertising and promotional activities.

Choosing a suitable advertising and promotion agency is very crucial for the brand reputation and growth of the company. There are some factors to consider while choosing an advertising and promotion agency:

• Coverage factor: The organization should choose for advertising and promotion agencies only after considering their own ability, market coverage and the confidence in the market. The advertising and promotion agencies should have available means to reach out to the all targeted markets.
• Reputation factor: The advertising and promotion agencies should have better team to handle the job and they should have a track record and market reputation and success up to the expectation.
• Size of Agency: The size and scope of the advertising and promotion agencies matters a lot. Size of an agency refers to the size of the number of customer and their size of their distributor and wholesaler.
• Market research and public relation: The advertising and promotion agencies should have sustainable corporate image in the market.
• Level of control: The advertising and promotion agencies need to overcome communication barriers such as laws, social mores such as gestures, tradition and cultures, etc. The agency must be one who can have the ability to prevent any interference with the message in order to achieve the expected results.

There are some regulatory bodies that have laid down some policies to and rules in the advertising codes. These are Advertising Standard Authority which regulates advertising and promotion and includes codes of Advertising, Direct Marketing and Sales Promotion. Children's Advertising Review Unit is responsible for advertising the children in media who are under the age of 12. The National Advertising Division (NAD) is responsible for evaluating and monitoring the accuracy in national advertising. It examines the product quality and advertising claims.

Task 2:The role and importance of advertising

2.1 Consider the following: Advertisement has played important role as a strategy for promoting a business or product – Discuss using one global brand

The role of advertisement in the promotion of business or product marketing strategy is to inform the potential customers. It describes the benefits, functions and price to attract the customer and encourage them to purchase. Among the four P’s of marketing mix, Advertising lies in the ‘Promotion’ segment.  Advertisement and promotion of one’s business is the key factor for the success of the business. A good advertisement and promotion strategy of a product which is good, beneficial and affordable give a greater chance to the product to be understood buy the customer and will help the business to make their way to the top as a brand (Meenaghan, 1995).

Last decade had shown a significant rise in the advertising and promotion strategies and has made most of the products extremely popular and successful in the market. For example, McDonalds, the fast food chain, with better advertisement and promotion has established in the global market in very less time. McDonalds’ products are very popular within the consumers around the globe. In earlier times, a business with limited advertisement resource has to work hard to establish them as a brand in the global market. Hard work, good quality of product and customer satisfaction for years was required for a business to attract more and more customers. In the present era of advertisement, customers are more vibrant and are attracted to a product which is affordable and to a brand that provides better offer.

2.2 Identify and explain the major ways of working with an advertising agency and highlight three creative aspects you will introduce in any chosen advertising agency

Most of the companies from small sized to big works with advertising agencies to reach to the customers in the best possible ways. Working with an advertising agency requires that the advertising agency should be clear about what is expected from them. This requires the information exchange between the organization and the advertising and promotion agency. An advertising agency does not know the organization very well with which they are working. Thus the exchange of information is very important. Advertising agency is solely not responsible for the success of a business. The business need to be flexible and open to various possibilities and opinions. The expertise of technical end is with advertising agency. With all the required information about the organization they know what is the best possible promotion but the organization should have knowledge of technical aspect to ask for a change if the advertisement is not meeting the discussed requirement (Athey, 2009).

Creativity is the art of presenting an idea to others in a way that audience is attracted to it. There are some creative aspects that can be introduced in advertising agency.  The idea or the theme should reach to the customer in an attractive way (O'Barr, 2001). In this process the advertisement should be cost effective and good enough to connect with the people. The best example of the cost effective and well-presented advertisement is the Vodafone advertisement. It reduces the cost of location and actors as well as the message are conveyed efficiently to the customers.

Another way of creative advertisement is to add a cause with the product. It affects the consumer’s emotions and encourages them to contribute to the cause. Introduction of technology in advertisement is very important. In simple words, technology is creative. Looking into the overall picture, technology cost less and has always been able to attract people and connect with them in a better way (Athey, 2009).

Task 3:Below the line technique and their usage

3.1 Identify three primary advertising techniques which companies use as integrated promotional strategies and examine why most companies prefer the below-the-line technique

Advertising techniques

There are various advertising and promotional techniques:

• Association: This is the commonly used technique by advertising agencies to link product with famous personality, attractive jingle or desirable emotion that creates a strong psychological connection with the customer. Product based companies use famous movie stars, sports companies use successful sportsman or athlete, automobile companies advertise their cars in front of mansions and likewise. This advertisement creates an emotional response in the consumer (Friedmann, 1988). The advertisement makes the product attractive through change.
• Claims: This type of advertising strategy promotes claims and special feature of the product. These advertisement claims about the successful results of the product. The advertisement informs or educates the consumer about the specialty of the product. The claim that the advertisement is proposing could be a fact or merely hype. The claims could be misleading because mostly the weasel words used in the promotion are meaningless (Schrank, 2006). For example, some advertisement call a product best when there are other similar product which gives same results.
• Promotions: Promotion is so far the best way to attract customers and encourage them to purchase the items. The promotion technique in advertisement offers numerous deals, various coupons, gifts with purchase, sweepstakes and games with prices. Participation in these schemes encourages the customer to connect with the sponsoring services (Kim, 1992). The excitement in the customer about these schemes and the attraction to receive free rewards has made this technique a success. This promotion strategy is a limited time offer which compels the customer to avail this promotional offer as fast as possible.

Below-the-line technique

It has been observed that below the line technique is mostly preferred by the companies. Below the line promotional technique includes door to door selling, coupons, rebates, promotional pricing, loyalty program, free sampling and various other offers.  This promotional technique is more preferred by the organizations because the control over offers and promotion is in the hands of the organization itself (Kim, 1992). Moreover below the line technique reaches to the customer more directly. This includes variety of effective ways to reach to the target customer and attract them to avail the offer.

Advantages of below the line promotional technique:

• Intelligent: Market research has allowed the organization to understand the target audience accurately. Social perception, marketing forces and economic need differs from country to country. Segmentation of the market enables this technique to target the potential customers.
• Directly engage with customers and quick: Personalised email or mail is a method to directly communicate with the customer and offer then various deals. Telemarketing allows having one to one communication with the customer. This is a way to gather information and enables the follow up communication and deal offering.
• Cost effective: The campaigns are designed to be cost effective. Various promotional prices, discount coupons and free gifts with purchase attracts customer and suits the budget of the customer and objective of the company.
• Flexible and trackable: Telemarketing and email promotional campaign offers time and cost flexibility. Below the line promotion campaign allows the company to test the advertising efficiency before deploying it fully. Also, the responses to the telemarketing and email are easily trackable through direct response to mail or through some web analytics.

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Task 4:Ability to plan integrated promotional strategies

4.1 Highlight the necessary process for formulation of an organizational budget to carry out the development of an integrated promotional strategy

The success of advertisement campaign depends on the effective planning and creation of integrated promotional strategy. Developing an integrated promotional plan includes steps:

• Identifying the customer: The initial step is to identify the target customer. We need to identify the requirement of the customer whom we are targeting to attract to the promotional plan. A successful promotional strategy starts and ends with customer. The market research is necessary for this phase and it requires some expense. However this is very necessary for the success of the promotional campaign. We need to design our marketing strategy around them.
• Interdepartmental coordination: Effective communication and information flow between departments like sales, marketing and customer care is very important for promotional strategy. We need to work together as a unit with commitment for profitability.
• Database communication: Different department have different database that have raw data and valuable information about customers. Creating a new integrated database for promotional campaign is costly. Instead we will create communication path between departments to share key information which is less expensive.
• Promotion: The key information about the targeted customer enables a direct to the customer. Various promotional offers and deals for the product could be sent to the customer through email and telemarketing instead of using association technique or claims technique which arenot very cost effective. The deals offered should connect with the customer as well as should be cost effective. More the sale of the product more will be the profit of the company.
• Returns: The expected returns from the investment are the priority of developing promotional strategy. Any activity that does not increase profit is wastage of resource. One of the ways to increase the sale of the product is to associate the product with social cause. This has some advantages such as it will connect with the customer emotionally, increase the rate of purchase of the product and most important it will helpful for social institution.

4.2 Use the integrated promotional marketing techniques to analyse how to build a promotional campaign strategy for a business and state the need to measure campaign effectiveness

Increasing customer engagement is a key aspect of advertising and promotion strategy. We can use various methods to engage with the customers such as interacting in an e-commerce site, loyalty program, promotional price offers. Social media like facebook and twitter offers numerous ways to conduct a market research. By conducting market research like hashtag search in twitter we can receive instant messages whenever a customer uses the term (Mangold, 2009). Using social media requires only investment of time. Marketing techniques differ from country to country. The marketing slogans, themes and images should be chosen carefully and it should not hamper the trust, belief and religion of any person. At the end the one thing with is very much required for customer satisfaction is the quality of the product. The promotional strategy should not affect the quality of the product as it will set up degrade the reputation of the brand or company in the market.

Need to measure campaign effectiveness:

• Measuring campaign effectiveness gives us the clear idea about the status of the promotional strategy in the market. It will clearly state whether the promotional strategy was able to connect with the customer or not.
• Measuring campaign effectiveness will allow us to refine our target customers and target geography.
• It will determine the resource requirement to achieve the goal and how the effort should be channeled to achieve the goal.
• It will determine the additional changes required in the promotional strategy in future advertising campaign.

Conclusion

The promotional strategy is very essential for any advertisement and promotional campaign. The promotional strategy should be customer oriented and should be able to engage with the customer. A better promotional strategy uses cost effective way to perform market research and to offer great deals to the customer. However, the brand or any company, in the race to offer better deal, should maintain the quality of product. After all customer satisfaction is the basic requirement for a brand or a company to grow.

Reference

Athey, S., &Gans, J. S. (2009). The impact of targeting technology on advertising markets and media competition. Belch, G. E., Belch, M. A., Kerr, G. F., & Powell, I. (2008). Advertising and promotion: An integrated marketing communications perspective. mcgraw-hill. Brady, M., Saren, M., &Tzokas, N. (2002). Integrating information technology into marketing practice–the IT reality of contemporary marketing practice. Journal of Marketing Management, 18(5-6), 555-577. Friedmann, R., & Zimmer, M. R. (1988). The role of psychological meaning in advertising. Journal of Advertising, 17(1), 31-40. Kim, P. (1992). Does advertising work: a review of the evidence. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 9(4), 5-21. HND Assignment help provides assignment writing service based on case study requirements in affordable prices and we are providing most flexible online assignment writing help, so book your Assignment with us.

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