Introduction
There has been significant evolution in the advertising industry from traditional advertising methods such as newspapers, print media, and television to digital advertising based on the internet. Therefore, advertising research has moved from considering consumers as passive to interact-ability, where consumers are active (Rathi et al., 2022). This has been caused by a shift in the consumption habits of consumers. There has been a massive advertisement transfer from offline to online sources in the last few decades. With the new advancements in the advertising industry, innovations are occurring each year. It has created a large pool of advertising strategies leaving marketers with many challenges, including choosing the most effective method to reach their target audience (Pavlovskaya et al., 2021). This study aims to highlight the problems of advertising by identifying the causes, finding solutions, and evaluating the effectiveness of the solutions.
The Main Problems of Advertising
Budget Limits
One of the advertising problems is the budget limits of various companies and businesses. Unlike in the past when advertising was as simple as putting up a banner outside a shop or distributing fliers, with digitalization, it has become more expensive. Unless for multinationals and other high-revenue businesses that have big budgets, smaller-entities have limited advertising budgets restricting their advertisements. Most businesses ensure they give the most amounts possible, hoping their consumers will notice their efforts (Moorman, Soli, and Cardoso, 2022). However, effectively doing this requires getting the right audience, techniques, and platform to utilize the limited resources effectively. When businesses begin with a too-limited budget, they risk ending their advertising efforts without being noticed, while those who risk too much may lose their money (Moorman, Soli, and Cardoso, 2022). Therefore, not having the right budget is one of the most common problems facing companies, especially in their early development stages.
Compelling Content
The other problem that is facing advertising has compelling content. With the increased internet content, creating persuasive content for the audience that can stand out has become a challenge. Marketers are facing the problem of crafting a message and changing it into something that looks or sounds new (Koob, 2021). Sometimes the consumers may be interested in the characters of the advert and not see the main message; therefore, it is important to ensure that the message is directly linked to the characters, color, voice, and sometimes even the advertising channel (Sinclair, 2019). Thus, creating a compelling advertising message has become a significant challenge for marketers.
Choosing the Right Method
Another problem of advertisement that has come up is choosing the right method. The availability of many platforms and methods of advertising has made it challenging to select the most effective method for advertisers (Reinartz and Saffert, 2013). For a marketer to choose the right method, they must consider the target audience and how they can easily reach them. This process may involve having to do a trial test until the right advertising method is found. In some cases, they may be forced to combine two or more methods, which may involve both digital and traditional channels, making it even harder. This shows that choosing the right method of advertising is a major problem.
Measuring Effectiveness
The next problem with advertising is measuring the effectiveness of the adverts. A marketing campaign is made to lure customers to a specific brand. However, one of the most challenging things in advertising is identifying the marketing campaign’s effectiveness (Mafael et al., 2021). This problem worsens when a company has different adverts; therefore not easy to determine the effectiveness of each method. Since advertising is quite expensive, running ads that do not have significant returns to a company is very costly (Mafael et al., 2021). For instance, a company could waste much money running youtube ads for its audience only to find out a simple outdoor poster was enough to achieve its marketing purposes. This shows that measuring an advert’s effectiveness is a real problem; if not well done, a company may lose money in irrelevant adverts.
Raising Through Competition
The final problem of advertising is making it through stiff competition. It is very challenging for companies with limited resources to keep up with competition levels. These big companies have well-thought marketing strategies, but that does not mean that smaller businesses cannot beat them in the competition (Akbar et al., 2021). Advertising is a competitive business; thus, businesses and entrepreneurs should find out how to ensure they are competitive in the market. Thus beating the competition implies that the advertisement will get a good amount of attention; hence positive returns in terms of sending the message out.
Solutions and Evaluation of Effectiveness
Limited Budget
In solving the problem of a limited budget, businesses or entrepreneurs need to ensure that they keep their marketing goals clear and concise. This includes carefully identifying the right audience, technique, and platform to help handle the limited funds effectively. A business entity should enlist all the costs required to carry out the business and prioritize the most impactful ones (Eyada and Milla, 2020). In addition, they should divide the budget into weekly, monthly, semi-annually, or annually to ensure that they keep track of the advertisements and their returns.
To measure the effectiveness of this strategy, the business should conduct tests and tweak the campaigns. This will help them to identify if the allocated budget is enough for the advertisement and if it is effective in reaching the goals. If the budget is not enough for the ad, the business can change some strategies to make it more practical such as eliminating unbeneficial channels (Moorman, Soli, and Cardoso, 2022). In addition, the tweaks on the advertisement will help ensure that it aligns with the primary goals set for the business. If the budget is still too high or too low, the company can re-evaluate the set priorities to determine which are best aligned with the company goals.
Compelling Content
Compelling content is essential in ensuring that an advertisement meets its objectives. Therefore, an ad needs to craft the right message for its audience. This process begins with identifying the target audience, the most effective channel to reach them, what they want to hear and what they need to know about the advertisement (Hsu, 2019). Marketers must create new sales pitches because the target audience is already used to the commonly used pitches, such as “limited products for a limited time.” In addition, consumers have increased their research capabilities and researched different adverts before purchasing (Eyada and Milla, 2020). Therefore, the advertisement should ensure that it earns the audience’s trust by aligning its content with its core values. When creating digital advertisements, it is essential to ensure that the person used in the advert represents the culture and values of the brand. This step is essential in enhancing trust and creating compelling content for the audience.
There are different ways of knowing if an advert is compelling or not. First, if the ad resonates well with the target audience in terms of creativity, it gains a competitive advantage over others. This implies that consumers will likely invest in the advertised product, even if it is just for trial purposes (Hsu, 2019). Secondly, the advert should connect with the target audience (Eyada and Milla, 2020). An advert is not made for everyone but only the target audience; therefore, a good, compelling advert should connect well with the target audience by using suitable language, colors, sound pitch, and influencers. When an advert is compelling to the target audience, it plays a key role in ensuring that the message that is being passed to the consumer is received positively.
Choosing the Right Method
Choosing the right method to advertise a business entity plays a significant role in determining the people who will receive the message. However, due to the increased number of advertising methods, many marketers have shown a problem choosing the right method. The first step in selecting the correct method is checking where its competitors advertise (Moorman, Ryan, and Tavassoli, 2022). Although not much information can be gained from this, it is important to note that many consumers like to go where they can find a lot of adverts. For example, if a customer is looking for a job, they are likely to visit websites that offer job opportunities, such as Indeed.com. The next step would be identifying prospective consumers and conducting pinpoint advertising. This is whereby the business identifies its products’ specific consumers and the most effective channel based on their gender, age, size, and physical location (Moorman, Ryan, and Tavassoli, 2022). For instance, if most prospective consumers are clustered in one place, creating offline adverts, such as billboards, and placing them in those places would effectively send the message.
There are many ways of measuring the effectiveness of different advertising channels based on their form. However, the common ones generalized for all advertising channels would be tracking leads from the marketing channel (Sinclair, 2019). This is whereby a business identifies the number of people converted from prospective consumers to buyers by the marketing channels. For digital channels, some factors to consider are click-through rates, website traffic, and cost per lead to determine the effectiveness of an advertising channel (Rathi et al., 2022). Businesses should ensure that they set a tracking system for their advertising methods and determine if they are working towards their goals. Effective tracking makes it easier to see the methods that are doing good and those that are doing badly in terms of advertisements.
Measuring Effectiveness
There is no perfect advertising campaign that is guaranteed to be effective. However, to achieve the best results, it is vital to keep testing different ads until the best is found. One of the hardest parts of a marketing campaign is measuring its effectiveness of the marketing campaign (Danaher et al., 2020). The best solution to this problem is finding a suitable method of evaluating the advertisement’s success. Some common methods that can easily identify an advertisement’s effectiveness include the return on investment, cost per conversion, customer lifetime value, cost per acquisition, traffic by source, bounce rate, number of viewers, social engagement, and impressions.
In determining the effectiveness of the method used in measuring advertisement performance, it is essential to consider the main goals of the marketing campaign. If the method used for measuring the advertisement’s performance is positive, then the company or business should be headed toward achieving the set goals (Eyada and Milla, 2020). However, if an advertisement is negative, it should be reflected in achieving the goals. Therefore, if the two results do not match, the chosen performance evaluation method is ineffective.
Rising Through Competition
One of the ways that advertisements can use to raise competition is ensuring that consumers know that the products they represent are more qualified than those of competitors. In this case, they can use comparative campaigning to showcase the unique factors of their products. When Apple fiercely competed with Microsoft in 2006, Apple started an advertisement dubbed, ‘I’m a Mac versus I’m a PC’ campaign (Akbar et al., 2021). This advertisement aimed to show consumers that Apple was cooler than Microsoft and the innovative technologies they have for their future generations. The same has happened for Coca-Cola and Pepsi, whereby Coca-Cola shows its consumers that it is classy while Pepsi demonstrates the image of being trendy. This method can help to raise an advertisement above the competition by showing superiority.
In determining the effectiveness of this strategy, one of the things to consider is the consumer perspective. Advertisements are about changing the consumer’s view of different products (Akbar et al., 2021). Therefore, a good reputation for a brand would show that an advertisement was successful in rising through competition. However, if a product is still highly advertised and consumers still have a bad perception of it, it is evident that the advert did not make it through competition.
Conclusion
Advertising is essential; for attracting and retaining customers in a business. This is why many companies spend billions on advertising so that they can ensure they update their consumers about their products. This study has identified problems associated with advertising which include budget limits, compelling content, choosing the right method, measuring effectiveness, and rising through the competition. In addition, the study has proposed solutions to overcome the challenges and how to measure the effectiveness of those solutions.
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