Advertising is a creative field and one of the components of marketing. Advertising has become so big that many people get confused about the differences between marketing and advertising. Nonetheless, the objectives of Advertising are entirely different from Marketing.
In a nutshell, advertising aims to communicate between the brand and the customer. Before the adoption of digital marketing and advertising, most communication between the brand and the customer was one way. However, nowadays, even digital advertising, like sponsored ads, has a chance for two-way communication.
In this article, we present to you the 13 objectives of advertising and the goals which advertising can achieve for a business.
1. Introduce a Product
The most common reason Advertising is used to introduce a new product in the market. It can be done by existing brands as well as new brands. Look at the latest iPhone in the market or Nothing Phone 1, and you will find many advertisements for these new products. The objective of advertising here is to inform customers – “Here is the new product we have launched.”
2. Introduce a Brand
Many startups are in the market today, and many are services based. Services are generally marketed as a brand rather than marketing their single product.
Therefore, Uber will market its brand and introduce that Uber has started servicing customers in a new market. The same goes for Oracle or Accenture – Companies that market their brand and their presence in the market rather than marketing an individual product.
3. Convince Customer
Convincing customers to perform a particular task is the primary objective of advertising. The tasks may involve buying or trying the products and services offered, forming a brand image, developing a favourable attitude towards the brand etc.
4. Customer Retention
This is aimed at companies that want their previous customers back. Those who have migrated to another brand products or services. Advertisers use different methods to keep customers back such as discount sales, new advertising, some work done on the packaging, etc.
5. Build Awareness
According to the AIDA model, the most important job of advertising is to get attention which is nothing but building Awareness. Advertising needs to capture people’s attention and make them aware of the products or their features in the market.
Example: Most of the Bank ads that you see are awareness campaigns. The ads that advertise the benefits of savings / mutual funds or benefits of credit and debit cards are all awareness-building ads.
6. Acquiring Customers or Brand Switching
One of the significant objectives of advertising and the first objective of many advertising campaigns is to acquire more customers. It is also known as making the customers switch brands. It happens by passing on a solid message, so the potential customer leaves the brand he is attached to and comes to your brand.
Example: Most telecom companies launch plans and strategies to acquire customers and then advertise these strategies in the market so that the customer switches brands. There is hardly any differentiation in the telecom market – consequently, advertising is a major way to acquire customers.
The Jio Free Campaign was just that – Influence the customers and create passion in such a way that they do brand switching,
7. Differentiation & Value Creation
A crucial aspect of Advertising is to differentiate (USP) the product or service from the competitor’s. A customer can only differentiate between services based on the firm’s value over that of competitors.
If a competitor is advertising features while your firm advertises promises and commitments, naturally more customers will “trust” other brands rather than yours. This is why advertising is commonly used to create value and differentiate one brand from another.
Coca-cola, Toyota, and Amazon are the few most trusted brands in the market. Undoubtedly, these brands are also amongst the top advertisers in their respective segments. These brands target value creation as well as differentiation via their advertising campaigns.
8. Brand Building
When a brand regularly advertises and delivers quality products and meets the promises it makes, the value of the brand is automatically built. However, there are many other aspects of brand building. One of the first ones is advertising via ATL and BTL campaigns.
Brands have different objectives for Advertising. Brands like P&G and HUL regularly invest funds in building a good brand value for the parent brand. By doing so, even if one brand is affected, the parent brand is untouchable.
Recently we observed the problems of Maggi in India, where Maggi was banned due to high lead content. However, this did not affect Nestle’s parent brand, nor did it affect other brands like Nescafe, which had done their own brand building and were independent of the parent brand. This brand was built by good products and constant advertising to build brand equity and connect with the audience.
9. Product Positioning – Product and Brand Recall
One of the critical factors in the actual purchase of a product is the products recall and the brand recall at the time of purchase. Among the advertising objectives, one objective is to position the brand in the minds of the customer correctly.
Examples include premium brands like Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Hermes, and others that are positioned premium. This position is achieved by first having a very premium product line that is high priced. Still, it is also achieved by buying premium advertising and placing the ads in media vehicles that are very premium.
Besides premium marketing, we can also look at niche marketing. Kent is a company that has focused all its advertising on its purification capability. They claim they are the masters of water purifiers. Their repeated advertising creates a high product and brand recall in the customers’ minds, thereby positioning them as the top purchased brand in the water purifier segment.
10. Increase Sales
Naturally, with so many steps being taken to advertise the product. There is no doubt that one of the objectives of advertising is to increase sales. Many times, this objective is achieved via advertising. However, if the campaign is improper or the audience is not targeted correctly, advertising can fail in its objective.
Still, there are many seasonal products wherein an immediate increase in sales is observed due to advertising. The best example is Ice cream brands which advertise heavily during the summer months because they know that advertising will immediately influence the sales figures. They do not waste money on advertising during the winter season at all.
Similarly, you will see many ads for raincoats during the rainy season and ads for winter wear during the winter seasons. All these ads are placed to increase the sale of the product immediately.
11. Increase Profits
With the value being communicated, the brand being differentiated, and sales being increased, there is no doubt that advertising can significantly increase profits. Advertising should never be looked at as an expense or a liability. It is an investment for a firm, just like a brand.
Look at the likes of Siemens or Bosch – Brands which have invested heavily in positioning themselves based on their German engineering. As a result, today, they demand high profits in whatever segments they operate in or whatever products they sell.
12. Create Desire
Again, referring to the AIDA model, one of the main factors in advertising is to create a desire for the product so that the customer wants the product. Brands known to do this are BMW, Audi, Harley Davidson, Adidas, and others. These brands are master of advertising where they create so much desire for the product that the customer wants a product even if he doesn’t need it.
There are many stories of Harley Davidson as a brand wherein customers have saved money for years to buy a particular bike of Harley Davidson. Same stories about Audi or BMW. A unique example, in this case, is the bottles of Absolut Vodka. Absolut Vodka is so famous for its bottles that there are collectors who desire to collect all different bottle types of Absolut Vodka. Such desire creation is an effect of advertising + brand building + fan following over time.
13. Call-To-Action
One of the most common objectives of digital advertising and digital marketing is to get a call to action. Brands invest in banner ads, link ads, and social ads to get their potential customers to take action. This action can be filling up an Email form, clicking on a link, watching a video, giving a survey, or not.
Some brands have done ATL advertising and shown half the ads and then attracted customers to their YouTube channel so that they could track their viewers and get them to take action. A call to action is also one of the objectives of advertising, in which case the actions differ from time to time based on what the marketer wants to achieve.
Final Words
In the end, these are the 13 objectives of advertising for business. Advertising can be more objective for the society, if we do advertisements to solve social issues like child labour, poverty, pollution, corruption etc.
If you notice that we have missed something in this article, please let us know in the comments section.
