Advertising and Promotion in Business

This document explores the scope of marketing communications, the role and importance of advertising in an integrated promotional strategy, and below-the-line techniques and their use. It discusses the communication process in advertising and promotion, organization in advertising and promotions, regulations of promotion in the UK, current trends in advertising and promotions, and the impact of ICT. It also covers the role of advertising in an integrated promotional strategy, branding and its usage in a business, the creative aspects of advertising strategy, and ways of working with an advertising agency.

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Advertising and Promotion in Business
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Advertising and Promotion in Business
Contents
Task 1..........................................................................................................................................................3
LO 1 Scope of Marketing Communications................................................................................................3
1.1 Communication Process in Advertising and Promotion.....................................................................3
1.2 Organization in the Advertising and Promotions...............................................................................4
1.3. Regulations of Promotion in the UK.................................................................................................5
1.4. Current Trends in Advertising and Promotions, Impact of ICT........................................................6
LO2 Role and Importance of Advertising....................................................................................................7
2.1. Role of Advertising in an integrated promotional strategy...............................................................7
2.2. Branding and its usage in a Business................................................................................................7
2.3. Creative aspects of Advertising Strategy..........................................................................................9
2.4. Ways of working with Advertising Agency......................................................................................9
Task 2........................................................................................................................................................10
LO3 below-the- line techniques and its use...............................................................................................10
3.1. Below-the-lines techniques and its usage for Amazon....................................................................10
3.2. Evaluate other techniques of below-the-line promotion strategy....................................................11
LO4 plan integrated promotional strategies...............................................................................................12
4.1. Formulation of Budget for an integrated promotional strategy.......................................................12
4.2. Development of a promotional plan for a business product............................................................12
4.3. Integration of promotional techniques into the promotional strategy for a business or product......13
4.4. Some techniques for measuring the campaign effectiveness...........................................................14
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Advertising and Promotion in Business
Task 1
LO 1 Scope of Marketing Communications
1.1 Communication Process in Advertising and Promotion
Communication is a process through which one can share or exchange some ideas, information
with the other. In a communication process, a large number of the audience s involved. Source,
Sender, Channel, and Receiver – are the four required elements of communication (Polgár and
Kazinci, 2013). Sender gets data from the source and sends it to the receiver with the help of a
channel or medium. Thus a communication process happens. Sharing or exchanging information
with the help of mass media is called Mass Communication. There are some types of
Communications, i.e.: Intra-Personal Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Group
Communication, etc. Advertising and Promotion is one of the means of Mass Communication.
Advertising and Promotion help to rebuild a brand's image by improving its quality. It has a
significant role in the repossession of an organization (Polgár and Kazinci, 2013). The
communication process in advertising and promotion works dynamically, which helps to brand a
product or service. Communication process's purpose is to decode the message of the promotion
in an easier way so that a consumer can understand the same. This type of communication has
some components that have a meaningful message. The message must be presentational and
market-based. Not only the message but the professionals related to this field has to be educated
in a proper way. They have to be convincing so that consumers can trust their words. Apart from
these, there are some symbols that make the message effective (Polgár and Kazinci, 2013). Amazon
does their promotion in a very creative way. They use daily newspaper and magazines to push
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the features of the products, On the other hand, they also use television, radio and digital media
to interpret their messages.
1.2 Organization in the Advertising and Promotions
In a case of advertising and promotion, Amazon's main aim is to create their promotional
activities to answer their consumer's queries and impress them with the service (MacRury, 2014).
There are some groups in the organization from advertising and promotion industries. They are
as follows:
 Organizations which generalized. This type of organizations is for conventional
advertising like the – design a logo, branding a product or service for marketing
(MacRury, 2014).
 Organizations which has in-house advertising deals with every single audience. It is also
called the individual to an individual business.
 Organizations which copes with television and the internet are quite popular. They are
also very interactive in publishing their advertisements in social media. That's why this
kind of advertisements attracts more audience.
 There are some organizations which are specialized. They are bound to deliver financial,
entertainment, industrial advertising (MacRury, 2014). They bring the advertising in an
attractive way with utmost care.
Amazon does their advertising and promotion with the help of these significant
organizations. Newspaper, Magazines, Tabloids, Internet, Websites, Banners, and Hoardings
are the means of communication that used by Amazon. The organization itself is the sender
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and audiences or consumers are the receivers in this promotional communication process of
Amazon. But there are some scopes of feedback too (Mitchell and Makienko, 2014). When a
product or service does not make a customer happy, feedbacks being sent from their ends.
Even if the customer needs any information about any of the products or services that he is
going to purchase from Amazon, two-way communication occurs (Mitchell and Makienko,
2014). Apart from that, some noise being made from both the sides due to any technical issue
or misinterpretation. But Amazon avoids these by creating a dynamic communication
process. Thus Amazon recovers their brand image, and they are very dedicated to
maintaining the same. There are also some strategies used by Amazon to sustain their
popularity, like creating online short-film, Point of purchase, Advertising Campaigns,
Endorsement, keep updating the website, etc. (Mitchell and Makienko, 2014).
1.3. Regulations of Promotion in the UK
Three steps are required to complete development, like:
 In the first step, promotions stay in pre-development condition, where promotion is being
carried out to the market before launching the method. This stage brings the customer's
attention and interest in a proper way. Amazon gets the required feedback and
suggestions at this stage.
 In this stage product or service’s information are shared in a detailed manner. Amazon
does the same when the product is yet to be launched in the market. In this phase,
organizations get to know whether consumers will be attracted towards the service or not.
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Advertising and Promotion in Business
But in this stage, Amazon ensures if the imparted information is obvious or not. This is a
very effective stage in Promotions.
 In this era, Amazon follows a certain duration of starting during the promotion. Amazon
believes that this stage helps them to improve their sell. They also think that this strategy
increases the number of consumers by informing them the offers. But according to the
market research, this is an offer oriented phase.
Thus promotions are regulated in the UK. Amazon is focused on expanding by increasing both
the service and product offerings. Amazon advertises its wares through online marketing
channels like Direct Sales, Portal Advertising, E-mail Campaigns, and Sponsored Research, etc.
(Mitchell and Makienko, 2014).
1.4. Current Trends in Advertising and Promotions, Impact of ICT
Recent trends in Advertising and Promotions of Amazon is mainly media oriented. There are two
types of general accomplishments that effect the advertising and promotional activity of
Amazon. The Main object is to make new clients and keep the old ones satisfied with the goods
(Semenik, 2012).
Online promotions are very popular among the audiences. It helps the audiences to stay updated
about the products. Even if the consumer is willing to have any information regarding the new
items, then Amazon provides the same in the current trends of advertising and promotions.
Media plays a very significant role in this trend. Here Amazon also pays attention to client’s
interest. According to the recent market research, the current trends of advertising and promotion
helps to improve customer interest towards the special offers or deals, and also to make sure if
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the habit is lucrative while using those special offers. During the past several years this
organization's sales have grown dramatically. With the help of this recent advertising and
promotion trends, Amazon's net sales have increased by 20% due to higher sales from North
America in 2015.
LO2 Role and Importance of Advertising
2.1. Role of Advertising in an integrated promotional strategy
Advertising might be another element of marketing communication, but it is an integral part of
any promotional strategy. As mentioned before, advertising is a kind of mass communication.
But there are many types of advertising can be seen in the recent times. Marketing can be a part
of Advertising, but advertising differs in its own way. To explain advertisement, some tools like
sales promotion, direct marketing, digital marketing, personal selling and public relations are
required. Advertisements can make an organization able to reach consumers on a large scale.
Every product has its own audience. The owners of that product make advertisements to reach
their target audience (Semenik, 2012). To reach audiences organizations uses newspaper,
magazines, leaflets, promotional films, the internet, etc. as the medium for their promotional
activity. To place a product properly, organizers needs to select the medium sincerely. Because a
wrong selection can spoil a brand image and decrease the sales of an organization too. That’s
why Amazon always ensures whether they are using proper means of communication or not. If
sources are to be believed, Amazon also makes personal relationships with their clients with the
help of their promotional activities.
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2.2. Branding and its usage in a Business
Branding is a procedure creating a unique name for a product. It helps to create an image of the
product or service in the consumer’s mind. It consists of a particular theme, a title, symbol or
design, or a set of all these components to identify a product or service. Branding can be created
through the advertising campaign. With the help of this process, a product ensures its presence in
the market and attracts consumers.
Branding keeps on retaining the relationship between an Organization and its audience. The
basic object of branding is to differentiate a product and helps its organization. Sometimes
branding can help to classify an item, and sometimes it can be recreated to recover the item’s
image among the consumers (Semenik, 2012). In the time of creation, branding sets an
expectation of a customer. It's an organization's responsibility to meet those expectations of the
consumers. Similarly, Branding provides a competitive advantage to Amazon. Usage of
Branding are as follows:
 It makes a product reliable.
 Branding helps Amazon to maintain their accountability and improves customer’s belief.
 If the branding process was thoughtful, then it can increase consumer's loyalty towards
the organization.
 Amazon delivers its content clearly with the help of Branding.
 Branding of Amazon motivates the consumers. According to the Amazon professionals,
motivations are the best reason behind their branding process.
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The Kindle, Kindle Voyage are the latest in Amazon's Kindle e-readers. This reinvents by
Amazon, helped them to increase the number of digital readers and set a new milestone of
success. Thus usage of branding strengthens a business like Amazon.
2.3. Creative aspects of Advertising Strategy
As defined before, a dynamical process is used advertising. Hence creativity can attract a large
number of an audience (Polgár and Kazinci, 2013). Creative aspects of advertising motivate
consumers to pay for a product, service or idea. The main aspects are as follows:
 Make a product or service reliable to the customer
 Fulfill the commitment that has been made during promotion
 Keep the brand message short and clear
 Place the product in the center of advertisement
Amazon uses these strategies to make the consumers aware of their service. But these strategies
needs to be created in a positive way so that it will create a good impact on customer's mind.
2.4. Ways of working with Advertising Agency
There are so many ways of working with advertising agencies. Some of them are mentioned
below:
 Before launching a product, there must be some objectives. These objectives need to be
clarified between the agency and the organization. If the goals or objectives are not
maintained in an organized way, then the product may not create any impact on
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consumer's mind, and it might affect the organization's reputation. So before set free the
product in the market, some goals or objectives should be set.
 One of the important ways of working with an agency is, make a budget plan for the
particular advertisement. This plan must be set between an organization and the agency.
Budget planning is a very important part of a promotion. Each and every part of costs
should be well planned and clearly mentioned between client-partner.
 Client-partner relationship also plays a significant role while working with an agency.
Here public relations has its own significance which cannot replace anything. After one
assignment, the organization should stay in contact with the agency. To maintain a good
relation agencies should also be very sincere, and they should meet all the expectations of
an organization.
These are the ways working with an advertising agency. Selection of an agency is an important
part that Amazon knows about. This selection though depends on Amazon's basic requirements
of advertising (Polgár and Kazinci, 2013).
Task 2
LO3 below-the- line techniques and its use
3.1. Below-the-lines techniques and its usage for Amazon
When an advertisement completes the communication process without any medium, it's called
Below-the-Line Promotion. These techniques are largely used in an integrated promotional
strategy of a business like Amazon. The techniques are as follows:
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 Cost promotion, also known as ‘cost discounting' is one of the below-the-line techniques.
Providing more service in low cost, or giving the discount and attractive offers are types
of cost promotion. Sometime it attracts a large number of people, but sometimes it also
affects the organization's reputation in a negative way. Hence this technique needs to be
applied sincerely (Gibbons, 2015).
 Sometimes Amazon pays to hire professionals temporarily. Those professionals are hired
to increase sales growth or to promote any particular product for a short period. This
technique helps a company to improve their image in the market, and make them more
reliable to the clients.
 Amazon sometimes rewards their clients or consumers. It helps to motivate the internal
and external public of an organization. This motivation largely effects their business.
3.2. Evaluate other techniques of below-the-line promotion strategy
Some other below-the-techniques are:
 Providing some coupons to the customers. Coupons can be of many types. Sometimes
coupons provided after purchasing any service or item, but sometimes coupons provided
to attract more people towards the service.
 Amazon uses another technique to make their client's happy. They give various kinds of
gifts to their clients. This technique helps to build a strong relationship between client-
organization. Some beauty salons, departmental stores or restaurants apply this technique
and provide the gifts to children.
 Sometimes organizations provide loyalty gifts to their standard clients. Amazon is also
very familiar with this process. It helps them to get the client's attention easily. Not only
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that but this technique also makes the clients interested in the organization (Gibbons,
2015).
 User incentives, Money refunds, lucrative vouchers are the other tools of this strategy
used by the organization.
LO4 plan integrated promotional strategies
4.1. Formulation of Budget for an integrated promotional strategy
Different methods can be followed while making a budget plan. But the approach should be very
professional and logical (Gibbons, 2015). To attract consumers a certain budget needs to be fixed
by the advertising professionals.
Operating budget approach is the most effective idea while planning a budget for promotion.
There are three steps to follow:
 First one needs to set an approximate budget for the whole promotional process. Here in
this stage, all marketing aspects of production, medium, etc. need to be calculated
properly.
 In the second step, costing gets done. Transactions are being made between the
organization and agency.
This is the final stage of budget planning. Here the final costing needs to be compared with the
primary budget formulation. If the final costing is higher than the planned budget, then the whole
budget formulation needs to be created again (Mullins and Walker, 2013). And if the final costing
is similar to the planned one, then one can continue with the process and look for further
implementations.
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4.2. Development of a promotional plan for a business product
Promotional plans mainly design by depending if it is a new product or an old one. Some
important elements of a promotional plan are to set an objective, set a target, set a time limit to
meet those targets, create accountability, and budget planning. Sometimes companies keep
suspense before launching any product. To implement a promotional plan organizations follows
some steps, like:
 At first, they chalk out an image which they want to create in consumer's mind. In a case
of Amazon, they first let their consumers know about the business they have globally.
After that they make their consumers believe that Amazon is an online giant, which has a
great impact on e-commerce market.
 The next step of their development is to set target audience. Organizations create their
promotional plans depending on target audience. Because if the promotion fails to meet
the expectations of the target audience, then the implementation could not build any
reputation in the market.
 Organizations need to clarify all the details of a product or service. They should inform
those details to the customers. So that the clients can make a proper action towards the
product.
 Making a budget and allocating the funds properly could be the next step the
organizations should follow.
 Last but not the least, selecting a proper medium is imperative. Because if the medium is
not appropriate, then the message of the promotion might not reach its customers. No
action will be taken, and the implementation process will remain unsuccessful. Hence
brand image gets affected.
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These steps need to be followed sincerely to develop a promotional plan. These makes a
promotion perfect (Mullins and Walker, 2013).
4.3. Integration of promotional techniques into the promotional strategy for a business or product
Integrated promotional techniques depend upon market needs, the condition, need for price
incentives and consumer's reaction towards it, an elasticity of demand, etc. An online giant such
as Amazon may use this kind of technique to innovate new business features. Not only giving
offers but setting high prices could also help a promotion to impact positively on a customer's
mind. But the whole process needs to be communicated properly. Or else the brand message will
be misinterpreted by the consumers (Mullins and Walker, 2013). Consumer's needs should be kept
in mind always. Overlooking a customer's need could cause damage to the whole promotional
process. Hence the whole plan needs to be monitored by experts. All the queries of the
consumer's needs to be clarified properly. The careless attitude should be avoided.
4.4. Some techniques for measuring the campaign effectiveness
To find out the effectiveness of the campaign, we can consider five points (Whyte and Harnan,
2014). But after fishing the campaign, we need several weeks to know about the effectiveness.
The five points are as follows:
 Profit: After 4 or 5 weeks the organization gets an idea about how much profit they have
made after finishing the campaign. If the profit is greater than the promotion, it means the
campaign was effective. If not then promotion might have unwanted results (Piyapong,
2012).
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 Sales: It is quite natural that sales get high soon after finishing a campaign. But
organizations need to check if the sales rates are constantly high after some days of
finishing the promotion or not (Piyapong, 2012). If it is then the undoubtedly the campaign
was effective. If not that means promotions were not that effective.
 Persuasion: Persuasion means how much the clients gets convinced by the promotion. If
the number of clients has raised, then the promotions were convincing for sure, if not
then the promotions were not able to influence the client's mind.
 Communication: If the number of client’s approach is more than the previous, it means
the whole promotional period was communicated properly.
 Attention: If the campaign was good, then numbers of the visitors will raise on the
website or at the point of purchase. But if the customer's amount is just like before, then it
means the promotions were not effective.
Promotional techniques are also dynamic like advertising. This is one of the greatest ways to
communicate with the consumers. So before a promotional campaign, market requirements and
company's resources needs to be followed (Whyte and Harnan, 2014).
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References
Gibbons, T. (2015). Dome songs. 1st ed. [Tuscaloosa, Ala.]: [University of Alabama
Libraries].
MacRury, I. (2014). Advertising. 1st ed. London: Routledge.
Mitchell, T. and Makienko, I. (2014). Beyond the Return on Advertising: Elasticity of
the Return on Advertising as a Diagnostic Metric to Maximize Profit. Journal of
Promotion Management, 20(2), pp.250-265.
Mullins, J. and Walker, O. (2013). Marketing management. 1st ed. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Piyapong, J. (2012). The effectiveness of the 100% motorcycle helmet use campaign
in Thailand. Injury Prevention, 18(Suppl 1), pp.A193.1-A193.
Polgár, P. and Kazinci, F. (2013). Process communication in medical software
development. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, 26(3), pp.313-320.
Semenik, R. (2012). Advertising and promotions. 1st ed. Mason, Ohio: South-
Western.
Whyte, S. and Harnan, S. (2014). Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an
awareness campaign for colorectal cancer: a mathematical modeling study. Cancer
Causes & Control, 25(6), pp.647-658.
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