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Lecture 4 - Advertising

Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a Business Class.

Professor: Let’s get started. Um, last time we were talking about the need for advertising. Now, let’s look at how you can successfully call attention to the service or product you want to sell. To succeed, you’ve got to develop a systematic approach. If you don’t come up with a system, um, a plan, you risk making decisions that waste money, or even drive away potential customers.

But what does a systematic advertising plan look like? Well, it covers what we call – the ‘Four Ms’. The ‘Four Ms’: Market, Media, Money, Message. All are important areas to focus on when creating your advertising plan. We will look at them one by one.

The First step is to look at your market, that’s the people who might become customers, buyers of your service or product. You need to know all about your possible customers: Who are they? What age group are they? What do they like, or dislike? How do they shop? So, you got that? A market is a group of potential customers.

Next, Media. Obviously, the major media are television, radio, newspapers, magazines, um, the billboards, and so forth. They are all avenues of communication. And you need to figure out: Which media you should advertise through? Which media will reach your intended audience, your market? So, you do research, trying to determine which media will reach the most potential customers for the lowest cost.

For instance, if you have a product, that we’ll say teachers would like, then teachers are your market. So you ask yourself: What magazines do the majority of teachers read? What TV programs do teachers watch? Do teachers listen to much radio? At what times of the day?

Say, now your research turns up two magazines that teachers read. And it also shows that the majority of teachers, say ages twenty to thirty, read the magazine about classroom activities, while most teachers older than that read the other magazine, the one about, oh, let’s say, ‘Educational Psychology’. You think your product will appeal most to teachers ages twenty to thirty, so you decide to put your advertisement in their favorite magazine, the one about classroom activities.

You don’t waste money advertising in the ‘Educational Psychology’ magazine, you know the one that the younger teachers generally don’t read. And since you’re reaching the majority of the teachers in your target age group, you’re probably spending your money well, which brings us to the third M – Money. You have an advertising budget to spend, but how do you to spend it wisely. Again, research is the key.

Good research gives you facts, facts that can help you decide, well, as we already mentioned, decide the right market to target, and the best media to use. But also: When to advertise? Or…or how to get the best rates? Like, may be you’re advertising Sport equipment, and you have been spending most of your budget during the holiday season when people buy gifts for each other.

Now, in theory, that would seem a great time to advertise, but may be a research shows you’re wrong, that the customers who buy sports equipment tend not to give it as a holiday gift, but want to use it themselves. In that case, advertising during a different season of the year might give you better results. And, um, may be it even lower non-holiday rates. So you actually save money. But you need to get the facts; facts that come from good research to be certain and know for sure that you’re getting your money’s worth.

OK, finally, there is your message: What you want to say about your product?

Why buying it will make the customer’s life easier, or safer or better somehow.

Whatever the message is, make sure you get it right. Let me give you an example of not getting it right, Ha…ha…ha… you are going to love this one: There was this Soup Shop. The soup was really tasty, but there weren’t a lot of customers. The owner thought that may be if they give something away for free with each purchase, then more people would come buy soup. So they got some cheap socks, and they advertise to give a pair away with each bowl of soup.

But, then even fewer people came to the restaurant. Well, you can imagine why.

People started to associate the soup with feet; they began to imagine the soup smelled like feet. The advertising massage, “soup means free socks”, was a bad choice; it was a waste of money. And worse, it caused the loss of customers. Now, I want everyone to get into small groups and come up with some examples, not of good advertising messages, but of truly disastrous ones. Think of real examples or make some up, and talk about the reasons those messages are unsuccessful. And then we’ll get back together and share.