Dealing with the details of advertising programs and topics such as the difference between an advertising program and an advertising campaign requires a lot of research, that’s why in this article, we will address the question of what are the 4 main reasons for advertising failure?
Among the subcategories of marketing management , advertising can be considered one of the most controversial parts. You can find both people who believe that a business without advertising will never taste growth and success, and others who insist that advertising, rather than being based on study and research, has become a kind of managerial habit and less of a manager. Accurately checking the success rate of your advertising programs takes time.
1- Not defining the goal precisely
Sometimes we fail because we don’t have a clear definition of success.
This issue is not limited to the failure of advertising programs. Always and everywhere, the unclear or ambiguous purpose of the program is one of the main causes of unsuccessful planning.
We have all heard that a favorable wind never blows for an aimless ship; Or that a traveler who does not specify the destination of his journey, no matter how much he runs and tries, he will not reach his destination in the end.
Not precisely defining the goal means the policy of “advertising for the sake of advertising”; And this policy has no meaning in the business world. We should also remember that pursuing a diverse set of goals at the same time will not be much different from being aimless.
Suppose a food manufacturing company wants to develop an advertising program .
Consider three different forms of goal setting as follows:
- We advertise. Because advertising is a good thing. It makes perfect sense to spend three percent of our income on advertising consistently. If you want to determine the purpose of the advertising program based on these sentences, what will you say? It can be said that the goal of the program is to spend 3% of the company’s income on advertising. Naturally, if everything goes well, we will achieve the same goal: three percent of our income will be spent!
- Advertise and try to make us known as a healthy product.
- Now that we are going to advertise, let’s try to be known as a strong brand, with knowledge and expertise, healthy products, high product variety and home and family friendly. In addition, under some billboards, let’s mention the next month’s lottery. At the same time, we must try to become the first choice of customers in the group of competitors, and also, to establish our logo in the mind of the customer so that we can be associated in their minds very quickly when they see it.
Unfortunately, we have to admit that the third form of advertising will probably not be much different from the first form in terms of effectiveness. Because the concentration of goals and even the alignment of multiple goals are not seen in it.
Sometimes we fail, because we confuse the two concepts of response and final result together.
An advertising program for an audience community is just like stimulating a system.
Systems produce responses to many stimuli. But are these answers exactly the end result you expect?
The answer of an advertising program can be more customer awareness of your brand, changing your rank in the list of competing companies in the customer’s mind, fading the bitter experience of using your previous product, or anything else of the kind.
But when we talk about the final result of the advertising program, we probably mean an increase in product sales or definite economic gains of this kind.
Sometimes, it is said that the management in a business is concerned with the response of all actions, but the financial unit only takes seriously the results that can be presented in the company’s financial statements.
The audience community will definitely respond to a strong advertising program. And the response of a strong advertising program should be measurable as much as possible based on objective criteria and indicators. But the expectation that the advertising program will lead directly to the desired final results of the financial unit can make us disappointed in advertising, or lead us to wrong and short-term methods.
When we advertise and expect its effect to be seen in the sales invoices of the company, we are looking for results. But all advertising programs do not show results in the company’s cash register in a short period of time, and increasing sales, although the ultimate goal of all advertisements, is not and cannot be the primary achievement of all of them.
From now on, whenever someone in your collection says: We didn’t get any results from the previous advertising program, it’s better to ask: We didn’t get direct financial results or that we didn’t get any measurable positive response from the audience community?
If the second case occurs, this means definite failure; But not achieving financial results does not necessarily mean that an advertising program is unsuccessful.
2- Improper distribution of resources in advertising program
The simplest advertising programs usually have different sections. For example, think about scheduling a movie premiere.
The budget and resources for the promotion of such a program will be divided between various actions, from TV teasers to urban billboards, and from SMS advertising to information on Instagram and social networks .
Or to attend an exhibition, the budget should be divided between the cost of booth design and implementation, attendance notification, promotional gifts, brochures, and other similar items.
Sometimes, both the targeting of an advertising program is correct, and the appropriate actions within that program are defined. Even the budget and benefits are generally appropriate and sufficient. But the allocation and allocation of funds and other resources are not done properly, and the program eventually fails.
Suppose your company is going to be present at a specialized exhibition and you are setting up a complete advertising plan for this presence.
In all media, you do extensive advertising and invite people to attend this exhibition.
The fact is that few people decide to visit an exhibition just to see a particular booth.
Many of those who intend to visit the exhibition will visit the exhibition regardless of your presence, and those who do not intend to visit the exhibition are unlikely to change their decision just because of our presence.
Of course, you may say that the presence in a specialized exhibition is valid for us, and even if no one comes and visits our booth, it is still useful for them to know that we were present at this exhibition.
Assuming that such justification is reasonable in your particular situation, now we can say that out of every hundred people who see the ad, maybe one person will come to the exhibition and 99 people will only know about your presence.
Have you tailored your advertising message to those 99 people? Or have you allocated all the message and advertising space to the address and sketch of the booth establishment (target: the one person out of a hundred people)?
3- misdiagnosis of advertising time period
Misidentification of advertising time is also one of the known causes of advertising program failure.
Deciding on the start time and duration of the advertising program can easily change the success rate of an advertising program or change its fate from success to failure or vice versa.
Two advertising programs with the same audience, and involving completely similar actions, may experience very different fates simply because of the difference in the time frame of the program implementation.
Suppose a travel agency wants to run different domestic and foreign tours for Nowruz.
The marketing manager may use two different approaches to choose the time to run the advertising program:
The first method is to wait for everyone to advertise and for the ads to be published throughout the winter, and then in the last days of March, when the minds of the audience are ready, in a concentrated and compact way, and in a short period of time, we take over all the available media and the customers We attract
The second method is continuous advertising long before the arrival of Nowruz. The extreme form of this method is to advertise Nowruz tours from the end of autumn and try to see our name and brand wherever customers are looking for tour options.
The first method is a bit optimistic.
Changing the decision is not so simple, and with a late advertising program, we will probably lose a part of the audience who have already made their decision.
The second method, which is a long and early advertising program, is likely to succeed in attracting customers. But due to the high cost of running the program, it may reduce or eliminate the profitability of running tours.
One of the key indicators in evaluating the success of an advertising program is the cost of customer acquisition .
Late advertising programs are not successful in terms of the number of customers attracted, and early programs may raise the cost of acquisition to such an extent that the economic benefits of the business are limited or threatened.
4- Incorrect choice of audience
Another common reason advertising programs fail is advertising to people who will never become our customers.
Suppose a car trading company, whose car prices start at one billion Tomans and increases, chooses radio and television as one of its advertising media.
Although this claim of ours needs research, but at least as an assumption, let us think about whether the potential customers of this company watch TV at all?
Can someone who spends his time watching TV have such capital to buy a car? Or in another way, who has this level of income, does he dedicate a place to radio and television in his entertainment basket?
As a mere assumption, such a person may be more easily found in seminars or specialized journals.
I emphasize again that what I presented is not a research report; Rather, it is a proposition that can be investigated.
But isn’t it bad, at least as an intellectual challenge, to think about the issue that it might not be possible to advertise in a specialized medical magazine or construction industry exhibition, more defensible than airing a TV teaser before a TV news segment?
Clearly, if time and money were unlimited, even teaming up with a company like Space X to promote mustard sauce on Mars to potential spacewalkers is defensible.
But if there are limited resources, which is the case in every business, choosing the right media and trying to reach the target audience is a basic and unavoidable challenge.
However, there are many examples of mustard sauce advertisements on Mars, on our own planet and in our country. Just look around a little.
I would appreciate it if you could share with us an example of an advertisement you have seen recently that did or did not meet one or more of the above.
