What is advertising ?
Advertising is an audio or visual form of marketing communication to convey message to the targeted audience for promoting or selling a product, service or an idea. It is communicated through various mass media including newspapers, magazines, television, radio, outdoor advertising or through direct e-mails blogs, websites or text messages.
Objectives of Advertising
- To create demand for the products, attract attention and create interest among the customers.
- To face competition in the market and to build up permanent customers. It wins the confidence of the customers.
- To build goodwill for the enterprise and its products.
- To educate the customers and give them information about the product so that it helps them in taking decision to buy that particular product.
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Role of Advertising
Advertising plays a key role in every business as it creates a market for the product which is going to launch soon. Every businessman’s aim is to make profits out of his investment and to make such profits he/she needs to work on each and every aspect of promoting the product.
In a business, customers already get prior information about the product or services that they choose to use. Companies use advertising to highlight the benefits of the product they provide and attract customers.
Good advertising conveys a desired message to customers in a simple way by demonstrating it through television media and with catchy lines and tags in the print media. Public relations is often used in combination with advertising to ensure that customers are getting complete information about the product, if not complete atleast an idea about what the product is and what purpose it serves. Advertising helps the businessman to get more customers, and also makes him aware of the thoughts of his customers about the product.
As for every aspect and idea, there are pros and cons, in the same way advertising too has some pros and cons that every businessman should keep in his mind before adopting a certain type of marketing strategy along with the content that they need to promote their product in the market.
Pros and cons of Advertising
Some of the pros of advertising are –
- It saves time by presenting it to the media. To simply put it, it helps spread the information about the product easily to many people
- It helps the businesses to target many people at the same time
- Facing competition in the market
- Introduction of new products in the market with the help of advertising
Some of the cons of advertising are –
- Advertising today involves huge expenditure and thereby increases the cost of distribution.
- It amplifies the need of customers and encourages wasteful consumption. It persuades people to buy the products which are not needed by them.
- Sometimes it misleads the customers by false claims made in the advertisements.
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Ethics in Advertising
Advertising plays a key role so it must be useful and easily understood by the customers.
In every field, ethics plays an important role, as businesses are focussed towards promoting their products to attract customers and attain profits in their work. But to attract people, unethical methods should not be entertained. For instance:- some advertisements are not understood by a lay man as he does not have the knowledge about the technical details of the product. Also, some advertisements are full of vulgarity where the elders are forced to change the channel when kids are with them in front of television while some are totally unrelated to their product usage.
Promoting the products is natural and need of the business but as a responsible citizen it is also required to follow some ethics in their marketing of products as people should not buy it based on certain facts presented in the ad and later on realize the facts were untrue or false. This will lead to dissatisfaction and distrust among customers which inturn will lead to the decline in the sales of the product and it might eventually be kicked out the market.
As we all know, nowadays not many people blindly get attracted and use the products, they are also getting aware of products as to what to buy and what not to buy. And also, many are not keen on watching ads on TV, they change the channel and in the case of print media they simply turn the page. So, people cannot be fooled like before to just see the advertisement and buy it based on the presentation. They are looking for the benefits of the product and it’s usability for them. So, advertisements must be in such a manner that they are easily understood and show what the actual product is about, how it can benefit the customer and how to use it.
“Truly, You must advertise to attract the customers towards your product, not to distract their mind so that a permanent relationship of trust is build with the customer”
