The Advertising Plan

Advertising planning and decision making depends on internal and external factors. Internal factors are situation analysis, the marketing program, and the advertising plan.

The three legs of advertising planning concern are the

• Objective setting and target market identification,
• Message strategy and tactics, and
• Media strategy and tactics.

As pointed out earlier, advertising plan and decision making focus on three crucial areas; objectives and target selection, message strategy and tactics, and media strategy and tactics. Let us elaborate on these points:

1. Objectives and Target Selection

Objectives in advertising can be understood in many ways. An important part of the objective is the development of a precise, disciplined description of the target audience. It is often tempting to direct advertising at a broad audience; but everyone is a potential customer. It is best to consider directing the advertising to more selected groups to develop stimulating copy. It is quite possible to develop several campaigns, each directed at different segments of the market, or to develop one campaign based on multiple objectives.

2. Message Strategy and Tactics

Messages strategy must decide what the advertising is meant to communicate – by way of benefits, feelings, brand personality, or action content. Once the content of the campaign has been decided, decisions must be made on the best-most effective-ways of communicating that content. The decisions, such as the choice of a spokesperson, the use of humor or fear or other tones, and the selection of particular copy, visuals, and layout, are what we call “message tactics”

3. Media Strategy and Tactics

Message strategy is concerned with decisions about how much is to be allocated to create and test advertising copy, media strategy concerns decisions on how many media rupees to spend on an advertising campaign. Media tactics comprise the decisions on which specific media (television, radio magazines, etc.) or media vehicles (Reader’s Digest, etc.) to spend these dollars.