Operational Aspects of Advertising

Advertising strategy is a natural outgrowth of marketing strategy, so the result from any advertising strategy should be closely connected with the overall marketing objective, which should be based on situation analysis. After that, the advertising objective is designed, considering all the important variables for an effective advertising campaign.
In this circumstance, the process of developing an advertising strategy involves the following eight core steps:

Although more or less activities might be required in the actual advertising strategy, these eight activities can be considered the essential steps in the process of advertising strategy. The diagram of these activities as well as brief descriptions of each activity will be shown in the following section.

[Image Map of Essential Activities]

As the first step in any advertising strategy, advertising agency should conduct a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the advertised product or service) by obtaining background information on the market, product, competition, and distribution.

Advertising objectives identify the effect that the message is intended to have on the target audience within a certain period of time based on the company objectives and the marketing objectives.

This procedure decides how much will actually be allocated to different parts for the campaign, such as media cost and the operating expenses of each department.

Based on the planned ad budget, this procedure decides what types of media will be used and outlines reach, frequency, and continuity goals considering the ad objectives.

In this procedure, the advertising agency finalizes and presents what the advertiser wants to say in a way that will win the target audience's attention and interest.

After completing the first draft of the ad, several areas of the ad as well as other aspects of the advertising strategy are diagnosed prior to the campaign period. With such pretesting, the advertising agency tries to increase the likelihood of presenting the most effective advertising messages and to prevent possible problems in the actual implementation.

After the campaign period, the effectiveness of the advertising is evaluated to provide useful guidelines for the next advertising strategy.