The Advantages of an Increase in Promotion & Advertising
Promotion refers to all marketing and communication tactics used to convey messages about your company or brand. Advertising is a major component of promotion, and includes all messages you pay to deliver through mass media. Increasing investment in advertising and promotion doesn't guarantee success, but effective increases can lead to positive results.
A starting point with promotion and advertising is to create awareness. For a new company or brand, the basic objective is increased traffic at the store or website, or greater demand for the product in stores. Traffic is vital to creating sales, but more importantly, to gaining commitment and loyalty from customers. Without the generation of traffic and demand through advertising, you may have a valuable and worthwhile product or service offering that goes undetected by the marketplace.
From a tangible business perspective, advertising is intended to ultimately lead to increased buying activity and greater demand. This can allow your business to charge higher price points, which in turn leads to higher profit margins. High profit margins are critical to long-term business success. Additionally, advertising and promotion success is measured by return on investment, which means you need to boost your profit performance to cover the money you invest in promotion.
The long-term benefit of increased advertising and promotion is the development of a strong brand reputation. This is done by selecting the right message strategy and reaching your customers through the right media. Presenting a strong value proposition by emphasizing your core brand benefits is the effect of consistently effective ads. Repetition over time is important. Quality, service, family-friendly, wholesome, green-friendly and value-oriented are among brand traits companies use to separate themselves from competitors. Effective branding gives increased weight to the effectiveness of your product selling efforts.
"Share of voice" refers to the percentage of promotional dollars you spend within your industry. Generally, companies try to spend an amount on promotions roughly equivalent to their market share percentage. In other words, if you have a 10-percent market share, the general rule is that you should spend 10 percent of the industry's advertising dollars. By increasing your investment beyond your requisite position, you assume a greater share of the industry's voice with customers. This amplifies your message and gives you greater potential to grow your market share.