Understanding Advertising Theories And Strategies For Effective Marketing

Media Buying

Discuss about the business persons and organizations can succeed in a competitive environment by applied efficient advertising strategies.

Over the past years, businesses have been employing various advertising techniques to persuade customers to develop an interest in their products. These strategies have experienced a consistent improvement as many theories and strategies have come explaining and challenging the currents theories and practice. It has therefore been a difficult encounter for organizations in selecting the most advertising theories and strategies that will work efficiently to make the organizations meet their goals and objectives. This has been forcing companies to use many strategies as well as employing a number of theories in their practices. According to (Bowen, 2013), advertising ae the means of communication between a businessman and organization with the users of a product or a service offered. These firms send advertising messages using various platforms and techniques in making the potential and existing public be aware of the existence of certain products in the market.

Advertising theory, therefore, is simply the strategies proposed and recommended, and which are extensively used in day to day marketing of products by different organizations(Percy and Elliott, 2016, p.46). The five theories which have been discussed in this theories have both advantages and disadvantages. In this report, therefore, we will examine the various theoretical advertising theories stating their merits and demerits and suggest recommendations for any organization which wishes to employ the specific strategies.

Media buying is the acquisition of media real estate for the most benefits spaces and timeslots(Arul, 2014). Purchasable media options span from newspapers and ads to prime TV slots. This happens through networking where media purchaser has to develop and nurture relationships with different channels. It follows by investigation of appropriate venues for distribution and negotiation of fair prices for media slots. However, in this strategy, finding appropriate venues is not an easy task. Organizations end up hiring inexperienced agencies that have not developed any network and industry. This strategy is one of the most expensive in advertisements. Numerous stations which cover all areas and which suffer from poor listening, difficult to monitor and non-tangible. Use of newspapers usually experiences a waste of readership, non-target, reproduction limitations and lack of prominence. TVs also have long-range media plans and are usually in demand making the cost to be higher than normal due to the demand. For this case therefore many businesses prefer traditional means of advertising which are less expensive and flexible(Hair, Wolfinbarger, Money, Samouel, and Page, 2015).

Creative Strategies

Creative strategies usually give the results of a team of one or more copywriters, an art director, and a creative director. Creative strategy explains how advertising campaign can be used to meet the advertising objectives of the organization. These strategies can be found in any employee, regardless of the job description when properly managed. Many of the existing strategies have posed great challenges as advertisers have a range of less-than-ethical yet legal tools at their disposal(Koinig, Diehl, and Mueller, 2017). A lot of subliminal advertising with emotional appeals have taken advantage of the less civilized society by spreading propaganda. On the other hand, the strategies used in advertising have been an area of concern. For advertising to be said to have been effective, the tactics used MUST always bring the general organization goals to fulfillment. This has made businesses fall into a dilemma of which is the best tactics to use and whether to use traditional or digital advertising.

Consequently, with an increasing technology and introduction of social networking. Organizations have devised social networks as advertising tools, these sites have many challenges one of which include cyberbullying (Brandtzæg, 2010, p.1106). These strategies have been explain with aid of various theories. The theories advertising suggests that the efficiency in advertising is dependent on major practices which are usually carried out. These practices include repetitive advertising and exposure towards the brands. The theories that have been proposed have been aimed at decreasing the challenges organizations face during actual advertising practice. These theories make the best use of content specification, competitive actions, and the product/service characteristics and include the following:

THe hidden message

This theory states that ads are created in a way in which they have the ability to mislead and unconsciously manipulate the minds of the customers or viewers. It states that advertising is a dangerous activity as it utilizes psychology to create emotionally loaded and hidden messages. Since this messages are hidden, the viewers cannot critically detect the bad side of the products. For instance, when a doctor is used to advertise a certain drug and encourages the viewers that it is the best people can use because he uses the same, people will tend to follow the message and use the product since it is recommended by a specialist regardless of whether it is the best or not. In this technique, the critical thinking of the users are greatly compromised with these ads and have a great effect on the product purchases.

Social Networking

The Magic of meaning theory

According to (Kolko, 2011), advertisements are usually meant to influence the values and fundamental beliefs of the viewers and consumers on various products. This theory describes how and why ads have gone beyond the frontier of selling their products and services by becoming involved in shaping the social values of customers. Ads are used to infuse meanings of the products to users and are regarded as a kind of organized magic which conceals the real nature of consumption of these products. This ends up affecting the social goals and public attitudes. In this theory, advertising is what is put in the streets and has the power to command the services and products which viewers ought to buy.

Theory of Imitative desire

This theory argues that ads tend to play a game with the tendency of people desiring what others desire. Since other people have role models or person who they emulate, the will always tend to become them. They will eat what they eat and dress what they dress. In this case, the viewers desire are kept alive and influence them fully towards the products they purchase. Additionally, these ads acts as interactive rituals rather than a mere one way message. This means that people place themselves in groups that entirely depends on others lifestyles. Therefore, people end up wanting specific product just because they are desired by other people who they know of.

Shifting loyalties

This theoretical work stipulates the way ads have an ability to play upon and also replicate clashed loyalties which keep on changing. The ads in advertisements are used to cultivate a strong sense and feeling of loyalty to an individual brand. They urge consumers to change their loyalties from their old loyalty and make attempt to a rather new thing. Consumers therefore are convinced to shift their allegiance from one brand to another basing on the fact that the ads can utilize messages packaged in a manner that they psychologically implicate products to negativity. This happens when an advertisement makes a consumer shift his consumption habit from a brand to the recent advertised brand.

The mediation of reality

This theory states that ads are persuasive in nature, they utilize the media and setting which they are entrenched in. Also, what makes the ads persuasive is the fact that they are able to make good use of the media in eliciting world of fictions as well as that of actions. The media acts as a tools of describing the excitement and addiction by extending and heightening customers’ neutral responses. For example, hem an organization realizes that people like reading stories which they have already witnessed, the media has a way of repeating the excitement that they have using their wits.

Theoretical Advertising Strategies

How Creative strategies apply in daily activities

Communication is very important in advertising before any business or organization sets up a strategy or theory which it ought to use, they MUST always know the objectives why they are advertising the products and the expected return. In order for an organization to have an effective advertisement, there must be a successful communication channel. The following diagram illustrates what an effective communication entails.

The organization for this case is the sender, it sends the message which is the advert which communicates about the product in the market. This message is transferred through a channel, this may be for instance media where it gets through to the receiver who is the intended customer or consumer of the advertised product. After a while, the customer usually has a way of reacting to the ads, he may be convinced and will, therefore, look for the products and buy them. If this occurs, then we say advertisement was successful. However, if the buyer is not influenced, there may be some barriers which may have hindered him. This barrier can be for instance noise or any other factors that have to do with the brand type.

Similarly, in daily business practice, firms can utilize creative strategies just like the simple communication model is used in business(Varma, McCandliss, and Schwartz, 2008).   For example, in the current marketing world, celebrities have been on target, they have been used to promote the various products. These celebrities may be artists or athletes or even footballers who many people are well conversant to, their skills in whatever they do have an influence on the rest and people tend to wear what they wear, eat what they eat and drink what they ought to drink. These celebrities are paid for advertising products. They can wear a shirt or t-shirt bearing a label of the brand advertising or taking a drink let’s say Coca-Cola company drinks. This strategy reminds of how the imitative desire theory can be used to ensure customers are influenced to purchase certain products. Additionally, advertisers have also employed the hidden message aspect where products are regarded to be number one. In a real sense, there is no product which has been tested either by scientific methods and proved to be number one. This propaganda usually is used and influence the purchasing f various products which are advertised. A good example is an advert which promotes Sensodyne products where a doctor is used to advertise the product. When this specialized are seen recommending the product, many customers will be convinced to change their consumption behavior in favor of that particular product. Advertisers also can hide messages about the products and only convey the positive side of the products being advertised. In doing so, and by using effective communication tools, there is a high chance of winning more customers.

Conclusion

In this report we have discussed the main problems faced in advertising, we have clearly seen how tactics have become an issue to companies in the process of advertising. This issues can be solved by employing the various advertising theories. Theories in advertising apply in day to day business practice and organizations should use all the theories for best results. The main objective of advertising is to convince customers irrespective of which strategy is used and therefore communication is very important in bringing advertising messages home.

From looking on the analysis of this report, it has just discussed a few challenges and issues in advertising, however, there are a lot of issues that affect advertising rather than brand type, tactics and the truth in advertising. It is therefore recommended that the reader goes ahead to look for more factors and gauge if he can employ the various advertising theories to deal with them. Also, models are very important aspects of advertising, these models, for instance, AIDA model have not be highlighted in this work. Organizations should at least use all advertising theories and apply them to daily business practice for best performance.

References

Arul, P.G., 2014. Media Buying Practices of Integrated Ad-Agencies to Deliver Advertisement Through TV Channels. Amity Global Business Review, 9.

Bowen, H.R., 2013. Social responsibilities of the businessman. University of Iowa Press.

Brandtzæg, P.B., Lüders, M., and Skjetne, J.H., 2010. Too many Facebook “friends”? Content sharing and sociability versus the need for privacy in social network sites. Intl. Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 26(11-12), pp.1006-1030.

Hair Jr, J.F., Wolfinbarger, M., Money, A.H., Samuel, P. and Page, M.J., 2015. Essentials of business research methods. Routledge.

Koenig, I., Diehl, S. and Mueller, B., 2017. Responses to CSR Appeals in Non-Prescription Drug Ads: Evidence from Brazil and the United States. In Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance: Concepts, Perspectives and Emerging Trends in Ibero-America (pp. 133-155). Emerald Publishing Limited.

Kolko, J., 2011. Exposing the magic of design: A practitioner’s guide to the methods and theory of synthesis. Oxford University Press.

Shankar, V., Venkatesh, A., Hofacker, C. and Naik, P., 2010. Mobile marketing in the retailing environment: current insights and future research avenues. Journal of interactive marketing, 24(2), pp.111-120.

Varma, S., McCandliss, B.D. and Schwartz, D.L., 2008. Scientific and pragmatic challenges for bridging education and neuroscience. Educational Researcher, 37(3), pp.140-152.