Chapter 7 is concerned with objectives and how we measure advertising and promotions effectiveness. Objectives help keep a promotional campaign focused to help with planning and decision making. Marketing objectives are established which helps to set your IMC objectives which are developed into objectives for each portion of the promotion mix. Sales and communication objectives are established from these. All objectives should be specific, measurable, quantifiable, realistic and attainable.
Sales objectives are good to use when the primary goal of a promotional activity is to increase sales or produce a quantifiable result that is easily traced. Sales objectives are often sought after by management because of the quantified results tied to the bottom-line, but they aren’t always appropriate. Several problems are associated with using sales objectives. The promotion of a brand does not happen in isolation and particularly with advertising’s effectiveness can happen over a long period of time. This is related to the carry-over effect and can be very important to the long-term strategy. Sales can also be influenced by a variety of environmental factors including technology, the general economic climate, competition as well as the production quality and price.
Sales objectives are most appropriate when using promotional activities like sales promotions or direct marketing. Any promotion where you are trying to generate a sale or response. Let’s take a look at this progressive commercial.
There are several aspects of this advertisements which makes it a good choice for a sales objective. You can measure the increase in request for the snapshot, number of calls to the 1-800-progressive and to progressive.com. There's a definite call to action in the commercial - to hook-up snapshot to your car. Where's the problem? A consumer may see this commercial and days later check out progressive after seeing a banner ad with Flo on a website that reminds them of their initial interest in snapshot.
Let’s take a look at BMW Films - a classic web-based, advertising campaign. BMW wanted to establish itself in its future target market’s mind - so they wanted to appeal to 18-50 year-old men in this campaign. This large age range includes a younger target that they wanted to build the BMW brand over time to be the brand they would buy when they had achieved success. Before the BMW Films were discontinued, they also released comic books specifically targeting this younger demographic. Sales objectives would be inappropriate for this campaign, but communication objectives would be a great fit. You can measure the increase in brand awareness among the younger demographic as well as attitude toward the brand and future purchase intention across the demographic groups.
Communication objectives are best when your goal is to increase brand knowledge or awareness, interest, favorable attitudes or create a brand image in the mind of the consumer. Immediate response is not expected and instead a long-term strategy of creating favorable predispositions related to your brand. You do need to establish who you are communicating too (target market!). Let's take a look at Lancomé's latest perfume ad with Julia Roberts.
This main objective of this ad is to establish awareness of the new perfume from Lancomé. In order for a consumer to consider a brand for purchase it has to be in their awareness set. Advertisements that focus on awareness do just that. A good objective would a % of awareness within their primary target market. Don't forget good objectives are concrete and connected to a measurable task that has a well-defined audience and specifies a time period for evaluation.
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