Advertising Agencies and its Excellence in Sales Promotion

An advertising agency is a service provider work for clients and represents the company by planning, creating and handling advertisements in order to maximize the brand image and sales. Ad agencies work for different clients such as profit oriented organization’s non-profit organizations, business to business organizations and Government.

Globalization brings many revolutionary changes in the creation of advertisements due to the availability of different media and severe competition. Many ad agencies realize the opportunities associated with the internationalization and expanded their business operations beyond the borders by establishing various subsidiaries and by maintaining proper relationships with the clients at overseas.

Ad agencies are goal oriented service providers aimed at representing clients in order to maximize the customer’s positive attitude towards brands. Advertising agencies analyze the markets and target customers for better positioning in their minds. Developing an advertisement plan, creating an effective strategy, execution and implementation are the primary services of advertising agencies.

The primary focus of advertising agencies is promoting and creating the brand image for the client’s products and services. These agencies work for fulfilling the client’s goals and objectives by delivering better advertisements and creating sales. They find answers by raising questions such as

• What are the unique features of the client’s product?
• What are the benefits associated with that products?
• Who are the target customers?
• What media is suitable to deliver the message?
• How to prepare text and create an advertisement in order to differentiate from the similar products?
• What is the advertisement budget?
• What is the cost associated with delivering the advertisement?
• What are the defined parameters of their clients?

Types of advertising agencies

Full-service agency

Full-service agencies provide a range of marketing services which are directly related to advertising such as media planning, production of advertisements, artwork and copywriting etc. It also provides other services such as market planning and direct market promotional programs. These are large sized agencies and deal with the various stages of advertisement and having creative skilled and expert manpower for various departments.

Full-service agencies involve incomplete market research, identifying target customers, ad planning, ad creation, producing advertisements and media planning etc.

Some full-service agencies also involve in completely non-advertisement services such as pricing, distribution, product design and packaging also.

Creative agencies 

Usually, creative boutiques are small sized ad agencies and these agencies are specialized in creative or design based business models, copy writing, production of ads and artwork etc.

These agencies can create advertisements which are interesting and imaginative. Most of the creative agencies do not perform administrative functions related to advertising. So the clients have to approach another advertising agency to carry out these functions. Some creative agencies merge with other agencies in order to provide wider range services. These creative boutiques have their own directors, copywriters, creative and skilled employees.

In-house agencies 

In-house advertising agencies completely focus on selling the company’s products and services and it is a dedicated team within a company. These ad agencies are completely owned by the advertisers and who prefer to have closer control over advertising.

In-house ad agencies perform all the functions of advertising agencies like a full-service ad agency, so it is referred to as full-service ad department of the advertiser. These agencies can undertake to serve other clients if the advertiser so desires.

Generally, big organizations prefer such agencies because of cost constraints and these are dedicated to working only for the firm. These in-house agencies have the skilled, creative, talented and dedicated manpower and work as per the organization’s requirement.

Interactive advertising agencies 

Interactive advertising agencies use modernized modes of communication which are very interactive and innovative.

Online advertisements, personalized messages, interactions through mobile phones, advertisements through social media etc, come under this category. The advertisements created by these interactive agencies can grasp the target customer’s attention and creates brand awareness.

Specialist advertising agencies 

Specialist advertising agencies who undertake advertising work in some specialized areas. These agencies generally work for clients who belong to the same industry or to the related areas.

Such agencies have the specialized creative manpower in order to deliver better advertisements and to represent the client’s products and services.

Media buying agencies 

Media buying agencies actively participate in identifying the suitable media for promoting the client’s products or services. These agencies buy a place for advertising from different media and sell it to the suitable advertisers. Here some ad slots are only suitable for specific products or services, so the advertisers show more interest to pay for such slots.

Media buying agencies have also specialized teams who are engaged in buying, allocating, supervising and checking advertisement slots and they also check whether the advertisements have been telecasted at opted place and time or not.

Services offered by advertising agencies 

• Creative ad development
• Media services (placing ads in media)
• Sales promotion
• Market research
• Event marketing
• Customer relations and feedback
• E-business consulting
• Search engine marketing (SEM)
• E-promotions
• Integrated media services

Benefits of approaching advertising agencies

• Highly professionals in order to deliver messages effectively
• Able to buy media in bulk at lower rates
• Each department of ad agencies have the creative, skilled, talented and dedicated manpower, it facilitates better advertisements to reach the target customers.
• Approaching ad agencies result in cost reduction and maximization of sales and it acts as an external competitive advantage to the firms.
• Ad agencies are experienced in designing suitable messages to grasp the customer’s attention and it can motivate them to repurchase the products and services.

Payment

Though there are many ad agencies throughout the world still there is a need for ad agencies and creative heads due to the severe competition between similar products and brands. These ad agencies strive hard to get rid of the customer confusions and to maximize sales. These are also one of the highly paid services and the payment may vary on the basis of the method of payment such as commissions, pay for results, markup charges and fee system.

Examples of various advertising agencies

• Ogilvy & Mather – consumer analysis, consumer engagement and digital marketing
• BBDO Worldwide – print advertisements and commercials
• DDB worldwide – Motion graphics
• Droga5- Brand strategy, prototyping, experiential marketing, integrated campaigns
• Wieden+Kennedy – Music videos, commercials
• Mullen Lowe Group  – Digital marketing, performance analytics and public relations.