or the development of advertising and to get best results one need to follow the advertising

process step by step.

The following are the steps involved in the process of advertising:

1. Step 1 - Briefing: the advertiser needs to brief about the product or the service which has
to be advertised and doing the SWOT analysis of the company and the product.
2. Step 2 - Knowing the Objective: one should first know the objective or the purpose of
advertising. i.e. what message is to be delivered to the audience?
3. Step 3 - Research: this step involves finding out the market behavior, knowing the
competitors, what type of advertising they are using, what is the response of the
consumers, availability of the resources needed in the process, etc.
4. Step 4 - Target Audience: the next step is to identify the target consumers most likely to
buy the product. The target should be appropriately identified without any confusion. For
e.g. if the product is a health drink for growing kids, then the target customers will be the
parents who are going to buy it and not the kids who are going to drink it.
5. Step 5 - Media Selection: now that the target audience is identified, one should select an
appropriate media for advertising so that the customers who are to be informed about the
product and are willing to buy are successfully reached.
6. Step 6 - Setting the Budget: then the advertising budget has to be planned so that there
is no short of funds or excess of funds during the process of advertising and also there are
no losses to the company.
7. Step 7 - Designing and Creating the Ad: first the design that is the outline of ad on
papers is made by the copywriters of the agency, then the actual creation of ad is done
with help of the art directors and the creative personnel of the agency.
8. Step 8 - Perfection: then the created ad is re-examined and the ad is redefined to make it
perfect to enter the market.
9. Step 9 - Place and Time of Ad: the next step is to decide where and when the ad will be
shown.

The place will be decided according to the target customers where the ad is most visible
clearly to them. The finalization of time on which the ad will be telecasted or shown on
the selected media will be done by the traffic department of the agency.

10. Step 10 - Execution: finally the advertise is released with perfect creation, perfect
placement and perfect timing in the market.
11. Step 11 - Performance: the last step is to judge the performance of the ad in terms of the
response from the customers, whether they are satisfied with the ad and the product, did
the ad reached all the targeted people, was the advertise capable enough to compete with
the other players, etc. Every point is studied properly and changes are made, if any.

If these steps are followed properly then there has to be a successful beginning for the product in
the market.
Advertising Budget is the amount of money which can be or has to be spent on advertising
of the product to promote it, reach the target consumers and make the sales chart go on the
upper side and give reasonable profits to the company.

Before finalizing the advertising budget of an organization or a company, one has to take a look
on the favorable and unfavorable market conditions which will have an impact on the advertising
budget. The market conditions to watch out for are as follows:

 Frequency of the advertisement

 Competition and Clutter
 Market Share of the Product
 Product Life Cycle Stage

1. Frequency of the Advertisement

This means the number of times advertise has been shown with the description of the
product or service, in the granted time slots. So here, if any company needs more
advertising frequency for its product, then the company will have to increase its
advertising budget.

2. Competition and Clutter

The companies may have many competitors for its product. And also there are plenty of
advertisements shown which is called clutter. The company has to then increase their
advertising budget.

3. Market Share

To get a good market share in comparison to their competitors, the company should have
a better product in terms of quality, uniqueness, demand and catchy advertisements with
resultant response of the customers. All this is possible if the advertisement budget is
high.

4. Product Life Cycle Stage

If the company is a newcomer or if the product is on its introduction stage, then the
company has to keep the budget high to make place in the market with the existing
players and to have frequent advertisements. As the time goes on and product becomes
older, the advertising budget can come down as then the product doesn’t need frequent
advertising.

When the market conditions are studied thoroughly, then the company has to set up its
advertising budget accordingly. For setting advertising budget, there are four methods:

They are as follows.

  Percentage Of Sales: In this method, the budget is decided on the basis of the
sales of the product from previous year records or from the predicted future sales.
This is a pure prediction based method and best applicable to the companies
which have fixed annual sales. But if in case there is a requirement for more
promotional activities then this method has a disadvantage because there will be
decrease in advertisements as the budget is fixed.
 Affordability: this method is generally used by the small companies. Only the
companies which have funds and can afford advertising opt for this method. The
companies can go for advertising at any time in whole year whenever they have
money to spend. The amount spent also varies from time to time as per the
advertisements takes place.
 Best guess: This method is basically for newcomers who have just entered the
market and they have no knowledge or say they are not aware of how the market
is and how much to spend on advertising. Thus, this method is applied by the
higher level executives of the company as they are the only experienced people.

Planning

Every company, product, and service needs a marketing plan to succeed. No matter the industry
or merchandise, the guiding principles and strategies of every successful marketing plan remain
the same. This plan is the overall company road map for selecting a particular target market and
then satisfying consumers in that segment. Developing and managing a marketing plan is the
foundation of a solid business plan and can be achieved through a process of four basic steps.

One: Objective and Goal Setting

Like a project timeline, you have to have an end date before you can determine when to start.
This is your chance to think big and picture those profits or media recognition at the end of your
telescope. What is it that you want to achieve in one, three, five years? How does your marketing
plan fit into the overall business mission statement of the company? Who is your primary target
audience? Is there a profit margin you want to reach?

While the marketing planning process should be limited to the marketing arm of the company, it
doesn’t hurt to harness the experience of key stakeholders in the organization. Bring a few
people in from multiple levels of the company to help with this vision. Upper management may
have more overarching ideas, but they may not have the knowledge of the day-to-day
organizational structure that mid-level managers and coordinators have.

Many organizations are utilizing the S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and
time-specific) format to identify their achievable goals. After gathering these S.M.A.R.T. goals,
use and compare these with the greater vision you have for the marketing plan to shape your
final plan.
Two: Assessing Your Current Situation

Before you set out to gain, you must first identify what you already have. It can be more useful –
and economical – to use or restructure a current environment than to bring in outside talent.
Gather your team and use the S.W.O.T. (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis to
assess your team’s current status. This will help you consider whether the marketing objective is
attainable. If the marketing objective is not attainable with the current team or resources, it is
time to re-evaluate and a different set of objectives should be considered. Make sure to ask
questions that generate meaningful information for each SWOT category to make the exercise
useful to find your company’s “competitive advantage”. Conducting market research, analysis,
and segmentation will come useful for you. There are many outside consultants that can provide
this service if you don’t have the capability in-house.

This is also the step where you evaluate risks along with opportunities. External factors such as
the political climate, competitors, state of the economy, and technology also influence marketing
opportunities. Emerging new technologies opens doors for more active email and social media
marketing, giving rise to traditionally underrepresented products and more channels to reach out
to your population. For instance, with the tremendous growth of smart phones, promotional
emails need to accommodate the smaller screen and navigational restrictions of this population.
Therefore, marketing managers are utilizing more mobile-friendly avenues such as phone apps
and matrix barcodes as part of their strategy.

Three: Writing the Plan and Strategy

Whether it is two or thirty pages, as long as the plan recognizes your target customers and has
steps to take action towards delivering your product or service to them, it is a solid plan. The
strategies you and the company stakeholders choose must be directed toward establishing
marketing strategies that are affordable and flexible. The famous four P’s come into play here:
Product, Place, Price, and Promotion.

What is right product? Yours, of course, given that it functions and has a good appearance.

What is the right price? An amount that will entice consumers to buy a larger quantity, as your
bottom line is profit.

Where is the right place? Your product or service must be desired in a certain marketplace at a
certain time.

What’s the most suitable promotion? Your target audience will determine the most appropriate
marketing mix that will bring the most profit.

As mentioned before, selecting your target market is one of the first major points of your plan, as
it will dictate your entire marketing strategy. After selecting your target market, the plan must
identify effective ways to use the marketing mix tools of product, promotion, price and
distribution to reach and influence prospective buyers.
If it applies, be sure to separate each of your company’s units, commonly referred to as Strategic
Business Units (SBUs). Your plan should have a way to identify which parts of its services or
product lines to support and which to reduce or sell. A company should see its different SBU’s
the way an investor sees her portfolio of investments. Compare these results with how well the
industry is doing (market growth rate) and how well the company’s brand is doing within the
industry (relative market share).

A standard Table of Contents for a thorough marketing plan should include:

 Executive Summary
 Marketing Objectives
 Internal SWOT Analysis
 External factors
 Current Marketing Performance
 Marketing Strategies for: Target Markets and Marketing Mix
 Implementation
 Marketing organization and allocation of responsibilities
 Evaluation and Monitoring Protocol

Your plan should also include a section on forecasting your results. Identify the expected volume
of sales to flow from each marketing effort, the cost of goods sold attached to that sales volume,
the budget, and any other financial figure that you expect to achieve as a result of accomplishing
your plan. Learn more from the Essential marketing strategy skills guide.

Four: Implementing and Managing Your Plan

Now that you have your plan, it’s time to put it into action! The steps that you’ve outlined (or
thoroughly defined) serve as the guide for a series of actionable items needed to move the
organization toward the objectives that you set during the first step of this process. At every step
of the marketing planning, marketing managers should use evaluation periods and feedback to
assess if the current strategies are meeting goals and expectations. Remember to stay flexible –
the opportunities and risks you established in your S.W.O.T. analysis may not coincide with
expected results. Changes such as consumer demand, channel diversification, competitive
responses, and supply costs changes might affect outcomes and should be factored into the
management of the plan.

A company's advertising budget generally depends on the company´s marketing goals and
objectives. A business can use any of several allocation methods to create its marketing budget.
The objective and task method is a method of allocating funds to advertising. Using this method
requires the advertising budget to reflect the desired result and the promotional tasks.

Marketing Methods

Four common strategies of budgeting for promotional expenditure include the percentage of
sales method, affordable method, competitive parity method and objective and task method. The
percentage of sales method is used by companies that prepare sales forecasts to set budgets. This
method allocates marketing expenditures based on past or anticipated sales. The affordable
method, on the other hand, allows a company to invest what it can afford toward advertising.
Companies that use the competitive parity method attempt to match advertising spending to
competitors’ budgets.

Objective and Task Method

Businesses that use the objective and task method for determining advertising expenses allocate
the marketing budget based on set objectives. To use this method, a company must define the
desired results of advertising and the strategies and tactics required to achieve these results.
Additionally, the business must assess the costs associated with these strategies and tactics. If no
financial restrictions exist, a company can build its marketing budget by examining each goal or
objective and the tasks necessary to reach these objectives. A primary challenge associated with
this method is the difficulty of accurately assessing the advertising costs necessary to accomplish
the goals.

Creating a Marketing Budget

To develop a marketing budget using the objective and task method, a company must determine
its marketing objectives and the tasks required to perform those objectives. To calculate the
promotional expenditures, the business must evaluate the costs of each task. Additionally, when
using this method, businesses should monitor competitors’ activities and compare internal results
against industry averages. Further, businesses must specify when to make advertising
expenditures while maintaining an element of flexibility. Finally, the objective and task method
requires the business to monitor the actual results against forecasts.

Other Factors

Before deciding on an advertising campaign, a company should always assess current market
conditions. The factors a firm should consider when creating a marketing budget include the
nature of the market, the profile of target customers and the position of the company´s products
or services in the market. The company also must evaluate how much profit it can expect to earn
for each dollar spent on promotion. A company can also choose to combine several marketing
methods to achieve the best possible results from marketing efforts.