Another place that may be successful in advertising the proposed new business is in newspapers and magazines, particularly in magazines which target working women. This would be an effective place to advertise as, again, this would be directly targeting the right market. Magazines such as Ladies’ Home Journal and Woman’s Day would be good magazines to advertise in as they target mainly affluent, working class women. High quality magazine paper permits for full colour advertisements to be used, allowing the attention of your target market to be attracted and appealing to their interests. Also, newspapers are read by a very wide range of people, allowing the business idea to be communicated across a wide area. Advertisements in newspapers tend to be much larger, with the business having the freedom to decide where to place the ad in the paper and of course the size of the ad. Furthermore, newspaper ads are placed rather regularly and quickly, so they do not need to be planned a long time in advance.
However, placing an advertisement in a magazine entails a very long lead time, which means planning is needed months or weeks in advance, which opens up time/ space for competitors to launch ad campaigns or release competing products/ services. Also, advertising in magazines tends to be quite expensive. This can also be the case with newspaper ads, whereby the advertisement is often overtaken by the large number of other advertisements in the paper. Newspaper photo quality is never as good as that of magazines and may not look as appealing/ detract from its desirability/ attractiveness. Also, not everyone that reads the newspaper may be interested in the product/ service being advertised. This especially depends on the type of newspaper as, if the newspaper is a free paper such as The Metro, the desired target market of young affluent working women are less likely to read this, leading to unnecessary spending on an ineffective advertising campaign.
Other forms of advertising include:
- Television
- Radio
- Posters & Billboards
- Cinemas
- Internet Website
Promotion is all about the way in which you communicate your product/ service to your customers. The key to a successful promotion campaign is figuring out which of the communication strategies will most appeal to your target audience and which will attract the greater number of customers, generating higher levels of sales. Also, if the business does not fully understand its target market, it is less likely to promote the product aimed at them effectively. Promotion is an important way for a product or service to gain recognition and can be equally as effective as any advertising campaign. It is the job to make sure that the promotion method is the most suitable for their desired target market and will ensure the most sales/ success of the product or service.
Direct mail can be an effective way of promoting a product/ service. It is thought of as one of the most effective ways of generating a large customer sale response. Common ways of promotion through direct mail include free samples of a product or money off/ percentage off coupons which encourage those to whom they are delivered to go and try out the product or service. This also ties in with the questionnaire results, where most people said that they would prefer the service to be promoted through the use of ‘money off coupons’, ‘price reductions’ and a relatively large number of people said that they would prefer ‘free samples’. These three are also very fast and easy to send to potential consumers by mail.
However, again, some people may not like receiving promotional offers in the mail and will not pay attention to the message of the promotion. As well as direct mail advertising, direct mail promoting can be very expensive as it may also involve the use of publishers, photographers, copywriters etc. and a newly built up company/ a company in the process of setting up may not be able to keep up with such costs. Again, bearing in mind the target market (affluent working women), the type of promotion used needs to be very specific and appeal to their needs and wants. This means that their responses to the questionnaire must be taken into consideration. Most women, when asked what type of promotion would most encourage them to buy the product/ service, answered ‘free gifts’. Therefore, in order to produce a promotion campaign that will be fully effective and lure the most people into buying the product/ service, free gifts should be given to these women through the mail. Unfortunately, the cost of producing these gifts and packaging them etc. will be too high. So, if direct mail is chosen as the final promotional method, an alternative to free gifts will need to be found and sent in the mail.
Price reductions and money off coupons came joint second in the questionnaire results, where for each method; four women said that they would prefer this as the promotional strategy for this service. Although these two methods will not generate a very high profit for the business, they seem to be popular amongst the target market and will potentially generate large customer sales by increasing awareness of the service and encouraging more people to try it for a smaller price. This way, if those temporary consumers enjoy their experience and are satisfied with the fashion advisor service, they may revisit and tell friends and family about the service. Money off coupons are also very simple and cheap to print, so the cost is manageable. Furthermore, considering the type of service being offered and the fact that it is the only one of its kind in the area, people will be more keen on using the discounted service, even if the price is still quite high as they will see it as an advantage that this price has been lowered, understanding that this opportunity may not come again.
However, using money off coupons and price reductions on the service may generate huge losses if the service is used by many while the promotional offers are in place and not used again because of low customer satisfaction or poor service. Furthermore, discounts may create uncertainty about the value of the service whereby a customer becomes convinced that the service may not be worth its price. Maintaining a consistent price for the service will maintain a consistent value in the eyes of the consumer.
Other types of promotion include:
- Competitions
- Point of sale displays or demonstrations
- After sales service
Other types of research which could have been used include secondary research. This may have helped to inform a better conclusion on the types of promotion and advertising which could have been carried out by the firm. The theory on secondary research has already been presented on (page with diagrams). Applying this to the prospective business, using forms of secondary research such as newspapers or websites, the firm could have investigated/ researched the way in which another business has marketed or promoted/advertised their product. This will have maybe affected the decisions being made with regards to advertising and promotion in the proposed business, generating possible new ideas and possibly helping to inform a better marketing campaign. The firm could have also looked at government reports and statistics and examined figures which reveal the success (i.e. sales) of a particular product and relate this to the advertisement used by the company (i.e. look at how it was affected by advertising, whether advertising increased sales or not). The type of advertising used by the company(s) being looked at could have then been used to inform future decisions made by the prospective business on advertising and promotion.
