Transcript
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MANAGING COMMUNICATIONS: ADVERTISING AND PERSONAL PERSUASION
Key Points
Advertising (nonpersonal communication through paid media under clear sponsorship) must be planned strategically — objectives, set budgets, set messages, defined media selected, and evaluation established. Advertising objectives must fit earlier decisions about the target market positioning and other elements of the marketing mix. A clear response from the target market should be sought. Usually a response moves forward through six phases: awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction and action.
Nonprofit advertising budgets can be set several methodologies: affordable, percent of sales, competition, or the objective and task method. This later method is recommended. The total advertising budget is set and allocated to market segments, geographical areas and time periods. Budgets must be allotted to the media categories and the media vehicles depending upon the advertising objectives, intended target audience, and planned message and media costs.
Media timing must be decided, whether ads are scheduled seasonally or cyclically to reflect audience interest. Continuous, intermittent or clustered ad placement must be determined based on audience turnover, frequency of the behavior and rates of forgetfulness.
Evaluation research is needed for pre-testing and post-testing advertising. Pre-testing techniques include comprehension studies; mailed surveys, recall tests, physiological tests, focus group interviews, or self-administered questionnaires. Post-tests are based on recall, recognition or some behavioral response such as inquiries or sales.
Personal persuasion is essential in nonprofit areas such as fundraising and volunteer recruitment. Personal communicators must be carefully selected to have the right traits. Many personnel who might normally think of themselves in this role can do personal marketing to build long-term relationships. Internal marketing to this group is important.
Chapter Outline
Campaign Communications
Advertising
Setting Advertising Objectives
Target market selection
Target Response
Target Reach and Frequency
Advertising budget determination
Paid media selection
Choosing among major media categories
Selecting specific media vehicles
Deciding on media timing
Advertising evaluation
Personal Marketing
Establishing Personal Influence Objectives
Selecting personal communicators
Relationship marketing
Internal marketing
Recruiting allies in personal persuasion
Vignette: AARP Magazine – The largest circulation magazine in the world
At a time when circulation and readership of magazines is falling, one magazine is bucking the trend. In 2006, AARP had nearly 37 million members and each household gets a copy of AARP—The Magazine six times a year. Advertising revenue grew at double-digit rates in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
The magazine has three major segments — those in their 50’s, folks in their 60’s, and people 70 and older. Each of the group gets a different “version” of the magazine with a different cover and different articles featured. AARP has partnered with advertisers to segment and target messages aimed at the needs and wants of each of these very different groups within the “older” demographic.
This vignette is designed to point out the role of advertising and importance of segmentation and targeting – even within traditional market segments – in order to meet the nonprofit organization’s strategic and tactical needs.
Chapter Summary
The purpose of this chapter is to focus in on the “promotion” element of the traditional “4 ps” of Marketing (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) with explanations and elaboration of the elements of advertising and personal persuasion tools. In carrying out communication to its target audiences, the nonprofit manager has seven main tools:
Paid Advertising — any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of an offer by an identified sponsor through a formal communication medium.
Joint Advertising — any form of advertising where a partner pays for the message placement, often as part of the partner’s own advertisement.
Direct Mail or Internet Promotions — Short-term incentives to encourage the performance of a behavior such as the purchase of a product or service.
Personal Persuasion — Oral presentation of information about an offering in a conversation with one or more prospective target audience members for the purpose of securing a desired transaction.
Unpaid (public service) advertising — Any form of advertising in which space or time for the placement is free
Publicity — Nonpersonal stimulation of behavior by securing the reporting of significant news about the offer in a published medium or on radio, television, the Web, or movies that is not paid for by the sponsor.
Blogging (and social media) — Informal communication tied to the World Wide Web where communication is controlled more by the target audience members than the “sponsoring” organization. (Includes Blogs, Online Social Communities, Online Video-Sharing such as on YouTube, etc.)
Nonprofits that are organization centered tend to rely too heavily on advertising and promotion to achieve their objectives and, in effect, equate marketing with advertising. However, advertising is primarily useful for creating awareness and applies mostly to the first two stages of change. Advertising goals must be realistic and fall within the organization’s reach. Ethical issues must be carefully considered so that the public’s trust is not abused.
Advertising is defined as: “Any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of an offer by an identified sponsor through a formal communication medium.” Nonprofit advertising includes: political, social cause, charitable, govern, private-nonprofit, and association advertising. Media include magazines and newspapers, radio and television, outdoor, novelties, cards, catalogues, directories, programs, circulars, Web sites and direct mail. Purposes for advertising include long-term build-up of an organization’s name, long-term build-up of a particular offering, brand information dissemination, and so forth. Decisions about five major issues must be made when developing an advertising program: objectives setting, budget determination, message decision, media selection and evaluation. The previous chapter considered message decisions and this one examines the other elements.
Advertising objective setting flows from how the marketing strategy defines the target market positioning, the marketing mix and the role of advertising in the marketing mix. The marketer must start with a clear definition of the target audiences in order to determine who should say what, how, and when. Secondly, the target response objective must be defined with the ultimate response sought being behavior, although intermediate responses such as awareness and knowledge may be needed to move people through the Stages of Change. The third objective is to set the optimal target reach and frequency of the advertising — what percentage of the audience to reach at what exposure frequency per period. This should be based on what number of exposures is needed to create the desired response, given the market ‘s state of readiness.
Advertising budget determination is best done through objective and task budgeting. It also involves allocating expenditures to market segments, geographical locations and time periods. This tends to be done using indications of market potential, but, in theory, should be done according to each segment’s expected marginal response to advertising.
Media selection allocates the advertising budget by choosing among major media categories, choosing among specific media vehicles and timing. Decisions are based on which will deliver optimal reach, frequency and impact cost effectively. It is important to find the aperture (opening) when the audience is likely to be most receptive to the message, which depends upon audience characteristics such as the Stage of Change. The first step is to choose which media categories to use. They include: newspapers, television, radio, magazines, movies, outdoor advertising and Internet.
Marketers choose among the media categories by considering the following variables:
Target audience media habits
Product, service, or behavior to be marketed
Message, and
Cost
The text outlines advantages and disadvantages in exhibit 13-1, p 307. In the U.S., television would be the preferred method (although its cost shuts out many nonprofits) while in developing countries, the preferred medium is often radio because it is ubiquitous and does not require literacy. Direct mail is frequently used by nonprofits for events and fundraising because it is focused, confidential, available, low cost, measurable, suitable for market tests, readily assessable in terms of behavior and gives measurable results. In developed countries, a vehicle more and more often considered in the promotional mix is the Internet, particularly for access to upscale markets and young people. (In 2006, the Pew Internet organization (http:/www.pewinternet.org) indicated that 70% of all Americans were “wired”, with more than 80% of those aged 18 – 49 and 90% of those earning more than $50,000 having Internet access). The twenty-first century explosion of “social media” sites such as MySpace and YouTube holds great possibilities for custom-tailored behavioral interventions and communications. Web advertising also offers significant advantages in tracking, easily modified or changed messages, ease of tailoring messages and low cost following initial hardware and software investment. Another niche medium of interest is video games where nonprofits and government agencies have been creative in creating games around social issues such as “hungryredplanet” teaching healthy eating and “archimageonline” which focuses on teaching about obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Next, the specific media vehicles within each category must be chosen to cost effectively produce the desired response and convey appropriate qualitative impressions such as credibility and psychological impact. Professional media planners using tools such as Standard Rate and Data or Simmons Choices can assist in providing nonprofits rich data on demographics and psychographics of readers, listeners, and views of major media vehicles. The third step in selecting media is timing, with the macro decision focused on cyclical or seasonal timing and the micro issue being the short run timing — burst, continuous, or intermittent advertising in a pattern.
Timing decisions hinge upon audience turnover, behavior frequency and forgetting rate. Marketers must also decide how to sequence various types of advertising in an overall strategic program or campaign.
The final step in media selection in the effective use of advertising is advertising evaluation — both before and after execution. The most important components are copy testing, media testing and expenditure level testing. Before putting an ad in the media, its copy can be pre-tested using methods such as comprehension testing, formal questionnaires, portfolio recall tests, physiological tests and focus group interviews. Post-testing assesses an ad’s impact and weaknesses using recall tests, recognition tests and direct response.
Nonprofit managers typically believe that whatever they are recommending is inherently desirable and needs simply brought to the attention of the target audience to be happily embraced by a grateful public. They also often believe that planned personal influence strategies are unethical and synonymous with manipulation and negative perceptions of “hard-sell” marketing. With the exception of political advertising (which helps to reinforce the negative stereotypes) nonprofits are reluctant to use or focus on personal marketing. Yet, whenever a nonprofit member interacts with a member of a key public, there is an opportunity to advance (or hinder) progress toward the organization’s goals. In fact, almost everyone in a nonprofit is a boundry person whose personal communication style affects the organization’s success and would benefit from management and focus.
Personal marketing is “attempts by an organization staff member or volunteer to use personal influence to affect target audience behavior.” Personal marketing can be very effective as a tool for lobbying, fundraising, and volunteer recruitment, and for moving people forward through the Stages of Change. It has three distinctive qualities compared to advertising: personal Adjustable interaction (a living, immediate, and interactive relationship); real-time evaluation (persuaders receive important clues to audience response); and Follow up (persuaders can determine on the spot what follow-up is necessary and do it). Personal communicators can perform several tasks, prospecting, communicating, persuading, servicing and information gathering. Once the objectives have been set, the organization should get its representatives to set specific goals to reach them and measure their performance.
The next steps in personal marketing include recruiting and selecting, training, supervising and evaluating the people whose primary responsibility is to influence target audience on a person-to-person basis. McMurry cites six qualities, first among them: “a habitual wooer, an individual who has a compulsive need to win and hold the affection of others.” McMurry’s five additional traits include: a high level of energy; abounding self-confidence; a chronic hunger for rewards; a well-established habit of industry; and a state of mind that regards each objection, resistance, or obstacle as a challenge. According to Mayer and Greenberg, personal communicators have at least two basic qualities: empathy (the ability to feel as the target audience member does) and ego-drive (a strong person need to make the “sale”).
Empathy is particularly important in social marketing, which often deals with extremely delicate subjects. For this reason, using personal communicators or change agents from among the target population can be very effective.
A major recent trend in private sector marketing is the shift in selling approaches from transactional marketing to “relationship marketing.” — shifting from a focus on target audience in the Contemplation and Preparation/Action Stages to those in the Maintenance Stage. Personal communication can play a major role in relationship building, particularly in such areas as fundraising or behavioral commitment s like blood donations. Getting an individual to take a small supporting step such as stuffing envelopes often ties the person to the organization’s team and creates a long-term commitment and stream of future transactions. Relationship marketing means focusing on select target audience members and giving them continuous attention. For instance, colleges and universities were once mainly interested in just getting students to enroll in their institutions. Now they realize that these students can be lifetime target audiences – future donors, mentors, active alumni or candidates for advanced degrees. Such an approach not only pays off in long-run loyalty, but also creates favorable word of mouth.
The organization should also develop an internal marketing program to optimize the impact that organizational members have on target audience members in the course of everyday work. First, the organization should audit what points of contact it has with the outside world. Secondly, it should convince those that those who have contact that having a “customer mindset” is crucial to job success. Changing internal staff behaviors is just another marketing challenge and involves a well-thought-out approach. The text cites the example of the American Cancer Society, which has developed internal marketing to the extent that it has extended to external marketing offering information on community programs and services to cancer patients and their families as well as the public. This effort has resulted in significant increases in donations.
Many nonprofit programs can only succeed if others help carry their messages to the right audiences. This approach of reaching “others” focuses on the “O” of the BCOS Model. Others can help reinforce behaviors at the Maintenance stage of change or encourage action in the Precontemplation and Contemplation and Preparation/Action Stages. The power of others can replace that of external marketing, particularly at the later stages of the diffusion of a new behavior. This may be because when many people are doing a new activity: (1) many pass information along, (2) many are demonstrating or modeling the new behavior, and (3) the new behavior has become the community norm. Research shows that nonprofit marketers should not underestimate the power of others. In many cases, they can be a powerful ally, and in other cases, they can derail an entire program – such as in the example of aggressive health behavior programs in Africa running afoul of the tradition of women learning from and bonding from their mothers-in-law immediately after marriage.
Teaching Suggestions
Continue to attempt to vary the lecture environment and style and introduce variance into the reading assignments and reading assessment to reinforce traditional retention. This is a good chapter to incorporate Internet searches or use of a computer lab to seek out examples during the lecture.
Continue to try to find new ways to incorporate visual and audio elements into the class. This is a good class to show videos or DVD’s of sample nonprofit advertising.
Demonstration in this chapter lends itself to guest speakers, “case studies” and online research projects. Invite the creative director of a local advertising agency to speak about nonprofit ad campaigns, invite a media buyer to come in and discuss frequency and reach and the research required to select and buy the “right” media. Invite the marketing director of a nonprofit who has worked on an ad campaign – did he or she run into any problems along the way, such as difficulties in communicating the organization’s mission to the ad agency or convincing management or board members of the desirability or importance of advertising.
Frequent discussion helps to illustrate key points – discussion of text points can lead to the next text point or key learning. Possible discussion points for this chapter include:
Have the class discuss Question 5 at the end of the chapter (pp 323). Using the list of alternative media (fig. 13-1) (Strengths and weaknesses of alternative media for nonprofits) have he decide which media would be best to use to recruit student volunteers at a university to help a local homeless shelter.
Have students talk about nonprofit advertisements they have seen (or assign them to research and collect ad samples) and ask them to discuss the ads in terms of the list of strengths and weakness of the various advertising methods in (Exhibit 13-1) (Strengths and weaknesses of alternative media for nonprofits). Did the advertisers select the “best” medium for the message? Were there other media better or equally suited for a particular message?
Ask students to bring to class promotional material from nonprofit organizations, and have the students conduct mock focus groups pre or post testing the ads. This exercise should be assigned well in advance to allow students to allow time for collecting examples.
Have students conduct an online search of Social Media ( GoogleSearch, Blogs, FaceBook, MySpace, YouTube, SecondLife, etc.) to find examples of nonprofit organizations using the new media. Discuss the relative strengths and weakness of these new media types in the same manner as the strengths and weakness of traditional media illustrated in (Exhibit13-1) (Strengths and weaknesses of alternative media for nonprofits).
Short Answer Questions
How do the advertising objective categories, to inform, to persuade and to remind, relate to the Stages of Change?
To inform (Pre-contemplation Stage)
To persuade (Contemplation Stage and Preparation/Action Stage)
To remind (Maintenance Stage)
All elements help to know the decision process involved
Stages of Change helps determine to which stage the target audience needs to be moved
Stages of Change can suggest segmentation targets and be used to track progress
When and how can copy testing be done for advertising evaluation?
when copy testing can occur — both before an ad is put into the media (pre-testing) and after it has been printed, broadcast or put on the Web (post-testing)
How — Pre-testing methods include comprehension tests, formal questionnaires, portfolio recall tests, physiological tests, and focus group tests
How — Post-testing methods include recall tests, recognition tests and direct response.
What tasks can a personal communicator perform for a nonprofit organization?
Prospecting – finding and cultivating target audience members
Communicating – sharing useful information about the organization
Persuading – approaching, presenting, answering objection and inducing action (sales)
Servicing – counseling problems, technical assistance, reducing service times
Information gathering – supplying marketing research and intelligence to the organization
What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of the key mass media types of television, radio and newspapers?
Television:
Strengths: extensive reach, impact of visuals, multiple target groups reached
Weaknesses: Expensive, complex, not as pervasive as radio (e.g. cars, and public)
Radio
Strengths: large specific reach, lower cost at target level, timely and repetitive, literacy not an issue,
Weaknesses: high costs if multiple stations, no guarantee of public service time, no visuals, limited to station reception
Newspapers
Strengths – large reach, information can be kept or shared, works with complex messages
Weaknesses – literacy implications; low emotional appeal – limits to visuals, cost barriers
Multiple Choice Questions
Advertising for state lotteries overstated the odds of winning. This is an example of
a. relying too heavily on advertising
b. advertising goals that are unrealistic
c. the ethical implications of advertising (Moderate; p 302) (AACSB – Ethical Understanding and Reasoning Abilities)
d. influencing changes in behavior
e. advertising objectives not being in the reach of the agency
A television station donates a commercial to announce a local blood drive. This is called:
a. joint advertising
b. public service advertising (Easy; p 303) (AACSB – Reflective Thinking)
c. sales promotion
d. publicity
e. personal marketing
Bradford College in Iowa is interested in recruiting new students from Nebraska. First it must decide
a. whether to aim its communication at high school counselors or high school students (Moderate; p 304)
b. whether to use direct mail or Web
c. whether to offer a fee weekend visit to the campus
d. How much money to use in different media
e. what advertising copy to use in which media
A symphony will place ads on radio or TV. The decision should be based on
a. the media that have been used before
b. how much money it has to spend
c. the media habits of the target audience (Moderate; p 306) (AACSB – Reflective Thinking)
d. the type of advertising copy desired
e. all of the above
A nonprofit decides to buy a print ad in either Time Magazine or a local magazine. The best decision is based on
a. the ad size and placement in the magazine
b. The lead-time available for placing the ad
c. whether to offer a fee weekend visit to the campus
d. the cost per thousand persons reached (Moderate; p 306) (AACSB – Reflective Thinking)
e. whether or not the board chairman reads Time or the local magazine
In the summer, colleges advertise very little. This is a decision about
a. media placement
b. media timing (Easy p 312) (AACSB – Reflective Thinking)
c. media availability
d. media category
e. media evaluation
Mayer and Goldberg identified two qualities that are exhibited by effective personal communicators:
a. be a habitual “wooer” and a chronic hunger for rewards
b. ego drive and being a habitual “wooer”
c. empathy and ego drive (Moderate; p 318)
d. be a habitual “wooer” and have empathy
e. high energy and empathy
Which of the following is NOT an advertising “pre-testing” method:
a. comprehension tests
b. recognition tests (Easy; pp 312-313)
c. portfolio recall tests
d. physiological tests
e. focus group interviews
Once a new behavior has passed a certain point in the diffusion process, the influence of nonprofit marketers diminishes because
a. there are many more people to pass along information about the behavior (Moderate; p 322)
b. everyone is persuaded, so persuasion is not needed
c. they no longer have the right “target audience mindset”
d. some people can only be influenced by others
e. the old behaviors are so established that nothing will change
The preferred method for long-term cost-effective fund-raising is
a. making transactions
b. special fundraising events
c. relationship building (Moderate; p 320)
d. telemarketing
e. direct mail
When a nonprofit member interacts with a member of an important public, there is an opportunity for
a. advertising reach
b. comprehension testing
c. a donation
d. personal persuasion (Moderate: p 316)
e. focus group interviews
Nonprofit marketers can reach young people and upscale markets through custom tailored behavior interventions in a social networkng Web site community such as:
a. Netflix
b. MySpace (Easy; p 310)
c. Yahoo
d. Hungryredplanet
e. Twitter
A personal marketing quality that is particularly valuable for social marketing is
a. a strong personal need to make a sale
b. a hard sell, never-give-up approach
c. empathy, the ability to feel as the target audience member does (Moderate, p 318)
d. aggressiveness
e. a college degree in social marketing
Probably, the most difficult challenge for nonprofessional staff of nonprofits, like telephone operators, security officers, cleaning staff and the like, in internal marketing is
a. to get them to have the right target audience mindset (Moderate; p 321)
b. to get them to call on potential donors and ask for money
c. to get them to listen to the professional marketer on staff
d. to get them to recognize the fact that they have marketing influence
e. to get them cooperate in a personal marketing audit of the organization
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