Advertising Plan for a Business - Case Study Example

The client we have chosen for the assignment is Vodafone.  Part Vodafone Group is one of the largest mobile companies in the world. Vodafone was started in the year 1985 and within 28 years they became one of the global leaders in the business. They have more than 400 million customers around the world. They are operating in more than 25 countries and they are in partnership with more than 50 network providers. In the current world, it’s not only about sending text messages and vocal communication; there is also the need to send photos, videos etc. Vodafone provides all these options. Because of all these facilities more customers are attracted to Vodafone. Their Broadband services are also used by most of the customers. Apart from the products and services they offer, they have started a Vodafone Group Foundation. The fund of this foundation is collected from the Vodafone Group annually. The Foundation has been started in more than 25 countries and they are involved in many community involvement and social activities.  Vodafone was awarded the UKs first mobile license in the year 1982. They started the first international mobile roaming service in the year 1991.In 2002 they started providing the facility to access internet in mobile. Apart from all these, recently they started the Vodafone money transfer service through mobile. Through this the customers can send and receive money through safest and easiest way. Vodafone have around 45% stake on Verizon Wireless services. They acquired a company named Telsim from Turkey in the year 2006 with an investment of around 2.5 billion Euros. In 2007 they acquired a company Vodafone Essar and entered into the Indian Mobile Market with an investment of around 5 billion Euros. The Vodafone Group is listed in the Stock Exchanges of London and NASDAQ and the headquarters of Vodafone is in London. Vodafone is mainly based on Middle East, Europe, Africa, United States and Asia Pacific. They have expanded their network in other countries also. Partner Market Agreements were made between Vodafone and their partners. With their co-operation, they entered into the marketing of global products and services with different levels of brand. By this strategy Vodafone enters into different countries and expanded their network and made their partners and customers getting more values and services. Also for the Vodafone customers who are travelling to other countries, they no need to invest again in that country because of this facility and they can make use of their partner network. The main products of Vodafone are Vodafone live, Vodafone Connect to Friends, Vodafone Euro-traveller, Vodafone Mobile Connect USB Modem, Vodafone 710, Vodafone Freedom Packs, Vodafone at Home and Vodafone Money Transfer. In 2009 Vodafone launched a new business unit for health named as mHealth.  In 2010, they launched another product named Vodafone 150. It is labelled as the worlds cheapest mobile phone. Some of the main markets of Vodafone are Germany, Spain, UK, Netherlands, Turkey, Portugal, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand etc. In these countries Vodafone have 100% ownership. In South Africa 94% of the stake is owned by Vodacom Group and from these 94%, 65% is owned by Vodafone Group. In Italy 76% of stake is owned by Vodafone. In India 65% of stake is owned by Vodafone. Vodafone also invested in a company named Safari com it is a market leader in Kenya and it has an ownership of 40%. They have around 25 million subscribers. They have an indirect investment of 4% in Bharti Airtel. Product & Service A wide range of services are offered by Vodafone. A few of them are 1) Voice 2) Messaging 3) Data and fixed line solutions and devices to assist customers in meeting their overall communication needs. Nowadays messaging is the most emerging service offered by each and every service providers. Most of the service providers stay on their foot by providing offers on messages as well as calls on customer satisfaction basis. Day by day a number of new companies are developing. So if existing companies will not meet customer needs then it will affect their existence. Besides all these most of the service providers like Vodafone exists by giving special offers like festival offers, seasonal offers etc. Every service provider has its own products also. Vodafone also have its own products. A few of them are listing below. 1) Handsets 2) Smart phones 3) Vodafone live 4) Vodafone Euro traveller etc. All of us know what a hand set is? Handset is actually the hardware part providing communication, messaging and all other service that they offered. Without handset we can’t do anything related to mobile communication efficiently. Vodafone has a wide range of handset that meets customer needs. Most of the customers wish to own a variety of designs. Vodafone provide a variety of design of handsets. Among that 66 new models of handsets released in the financial year 2010 and 23 exclusive handsets launched and the cost of handset ranging from Rs 999. One of the most advanced products in the evolution of mobile phone history is smart phone. Smartphone is differing from normal mobile phones. Smart phones provide access to internet and through internet it provides facility to access email. Hence smart phone differ from others. The cost of Smart phone starting from Rs 25,900. Vodafone live is a useful service to by which we can use internet on mobile and access WAP enabled sites. Through Vodafone live we can enjoy a bucket full of services include video clips to MMS services, high end gaming to polyphonic ringtones etc. But for the usage of Vodafone live, they will not provide as free of cost. They are inducing a small amount over their service as its browsing charges at 10p/10kb. Euro traveller helps us to stay in touch when we are out of the country. Euro traveller gives us the freedom to take UK price plan anywhere in Europe zone. It includes standard voice call using our minutes, standard texts using our allowance, and standard data using our allowance for sending and receiving emails. Euro traveller service provides for extra £3 per day. Product life cycle is defined as the stages through which a product or its category passes. Our product is in the stage of maturity. If a product reaches maturity, it means that the product has already gained acceptance in market. In its maturity, the products growth rate and sales slows down. So in order to compete, newer firms want to resume experimenting new models of product. At the end of growth stage, a decrease in profits as a result of competition results in market leads to the beginning of maturity stage. Besides all these maturity stage is most essential. In the case of our product Vodafone, if it reaches maturity, it implies that the products of Vodafone are accepted in market thus decreasing its sales and growth rate. Most of the people have an eagerness about the life span of products they bought. Almost all people prefer a product with maximum life span. Vodafone products provide maximum life span. The maximum duration of the working of a product is termed as its life span. Most of the companies worry about the market value of their products. If the market value goes high then only the market share in stock market goes high. But according to latest market statistics the share of Vodafone has fallen slightly. It will affect the company economically very badly. Current Advertising Strategy Vodafone uses different advertising strategy for marketing their products. It includes print, media, digital advertising, social network etc. One of advertisement which makes Vodafone popular was the pug and their campaign “Wherever you go our network follows” and then came the zoo zoos. Currently in the advertisements they are giving more priority for the network quality, uninterrupted conversations and voice quality. Vodafone is spending around 45 million Euros for advertising and marketing for their 20 market areas. They launched a campaign "pay-as-you-go" and for that they spend around 15 million Euros with one third from its budget for ads. Also they are spending around 16 million Euros for Press since Press was their main medium of advertisement and there is increase of 30% comparing to the amount they spent on the same in 2006. But for television they reduced the amount spent to half comparing to earlier years which is around 10 million Euro. The advertisement through internet took 2.6% of Vodafones budget which is around 1.2 million Euros. Like Vodafone, all service providers invest a considerable amount in advertisement. They have a fixed annual budget for advertisements. The current campaign of Vodafone is “Isn’t it nice when someone makes you feel special”. The current campaign is nothing but heart touching. It keeps in touch with our day-to-day life. That’s why it will result in success. Part 2 Objective for media strategy based on customer consultations The main goal of Vodafone is to become the communications leader. One of the main thing is to meet customer needs to achieve the goal. Customer prefers good customer support, good network coverage, affordable monthly plans etc. All service providers not only Vodafone competes for giving all the needs. Apart from these in the case of handsets, smart phones etc. customer gives his vote for minimum cost and maximum quality of products. The other main objective is its colour and design in the case of a handset or smart phone. Besides these most of the customers prefer all in one handset which means almost all facilities in one handset like for calling, messaging, accessing internet etc. Vodafone uses different advertising strategy for marketing their products. One of advertisement which makes Vodafone popular was the pug and their campaign wherever you go our network follows and then came the zoo zoos. Zoo zoos also get equal appreciation, just like pug. But now the situation got changed. Now Vodafone shows interest in expressing their products through human life .Because current campaign is a celebration related to annual party in school. A girl was searching for her friend and at last she saw that her friend reserves seat which is next to her for her friend. While seeing that, she was full of joy and seated next to her and started talking each other .The advertisement is followed by a campaign “Isn’t it nice when someone makes you feel special” .The current campaign is nothing but heart touching. It keeps in touch with our day-to-day life. That’s why will result in success. One of the vital parts for developing marketing strategy is market research. Market research means collecting information from customers about their objectives and expectations regarding a product and thus understands the needs of customers. It will helps the companies to develop products and make their products a moving one in the market .The main goal of any service provider like Vodafone is to make their product a moving product in market. Otherwise they don’t have any existence. Market research will help service providers to know the market trends and hence to compete with others in the same industry. One main thing necessary to do is before starting market research we want to search what all data we have. It will help to reduce time as well as money. If we know the existing information then it is easy to collect other information. Existing information is known as secondary information and primary information is the collection of new data. No products can exist without advertisements. Customers are mostly attracted towards a product by seeing the advertisements. One of the prime factors for the success of a product is reachable advertisements. But they don’t have to invest a lot in advertisements. A number of factors we want to take in consideration while going with advertisements. One of the major factors is Media Selection. Media selection is the process of choosing most cost effective media for advertising the products with high coverage and exposure. We can choose different media for advertising our products. Few of them are 1) Television 2) Newspaper 3) Radio 4) Cinema 5) Internet advertising 6) Mobile advertising through mobile phones etc. Television is one of the most effective advertising media and is costly. Teenagers will get suddenly attracted by advertisements in television. If the advertisements are effective then it will probably help the product to reach an extreme in marketing. Another effective media is Newspaper. Every home has at least one newspaper. The behaviour of a human being is to read newspaper early morning and if we advertise in newspaper colourfully it will become more attractive and noticeable. Besides television and newspaper, other effective media in this fast going life is internet advertising and mobile advertising. While browsing internet if the web page has a space for advertisement, then it will become the most noticeable media. Another one is mobile advertising. Personal mobile phones now became one of the most attractive advertising media to network operators. Before selecting media many things should have to notice. A few of them are listed below. 1) Budget 2) Campaign Objectives 3) Target audience 4) Timing One of the main issues is to set the budget. Most of the companies prefer low budget with perfect quality. Before taking advertisements we have to initially set the budget and then go ahead with that budget. Then plan according to the budget. After that, what to take into account is “will the budget meet the coverage we want?”. A firm that has limited budget should focus on the coverage of the advertisements. Another main thing is Campaigning. If the objective of the campaign is most attractive and is easy to understand, it will help each product significantly. Wherever you go our network follows is the earliest campaign they used and it is established into action with the help of pug. Then came the zoo zoos. Now they are using advertisement as the annual party function in schools. The current campaign is “Isn’t it nice when someone makes you feel special”. Like other service providers Vodafone is differ from others. They differ from others in the relation to the products which they had launched, their monthly plans, their heart touching advertisements etc. Most service providers focus only on their product while advertising but in the case of Vodafone their most attractive feature is their heart touching advertisements. Most of their advertisements have in touch with humans’ day to day life. Other main difference is their logo. Their monthly plans for talk time as well as internet usage charges also differ from others. Target market is the main strategy of marketing. It is actually a bunch of customers and is well defined. It is used in business and is aimed in marketing efforts. The four elements of marketing strategy are: 1)Product 2)Place 3)promotion 4)price These elements determine the success of product in market. For achieving a success in target market, four basic strategies needed 1) undifferentiated marketing or mass marketing 2) differentiated marketing 3) concentrated marketing, and  4) micro marketing or niche marketing. The target market of our product Vodafone is "People of Qatar" Media plays a major role in the marketing. Nowadays social media marketing is used by the companies to popularise their product. Qualified leads can be produced by the good social media marketing program. Social media has the power to attract more customers to the brand. We can get the feedback from the customers and the company can include their suggestions to improve the quality. We can alert the customers by giving support, giving answer to their problems, explain about the issues etc. Part 3 Media plays an important role in the existence of products through advertisements. Advertisements must be colourful and interesting. Besides all these it has a story in it and it must be lively. Customers are attracted towards products by watching advertisements. Different types of media now exist for advertising a product. A few of them are 1) Television 2) Internet advertising 3) Mobile advertising 4) Newspaper 5) Radio etc. Behind the development of advertisement a lot of efforts are put into use. A lot of creative ideas are needed to develop an advertisement that is effective. The factors needed to develop an advertisement are story, actors/actress, location to shoot the advertisement, costumes, photos, etc. The main factor of an advertisement is idea behind the project. The more creative the idea is, the more attractive the advertisements are. Another most innovative factor is story of the advertisement. In all advertisements, they developed a script / story board before developing the advertisement. It includes dialogues needed in the advertisement like the script/story board of movies. In the case of television, advertisements appear in between all TV programs like game show, serials, movies, talk shows etc. Then comes the selection of person who acts in the advertisement. In almost all advertisements popular actors/actresses should appear. Models who selected their profession as modelling also appear in advertisements. Another important factor is their costumes. Costumes that are not adaptable to the current scenario will adversely affect the success of advertisements. Then comes the location to shoot the advertisements and the back ground music behind the advertisements. Nowadays it is most important to provide a music that is nice to hear for an advertisement. Background music is the most attractive factor behind an advertisement. Another main thing to notice is not to repeat the idea for the second advertisement. Repetition needs to be strictly avoided. The second advertisement should be new and improved. In addition to these, the tagline should be catchy, short and sweet. The advertisements should be memorable. Apart from all these the clarity of visuals is the most amazing one to notice. Visuals should be colourful and it should be crystal clear. The audience should understand what the company is trying to deliver about their products. If any wrong message about the product reaches the customers, then it will affect them significantly. The visuals of the advertisements must be nice to see. For developing an advertisement, the people who work on the backend of the project wandered for a location to shoot the advertisement. Or instead of exact natural locations they design artificial temporary arrangements for shooting an advertisement. While developing the story of the advertisement, it needs to focus to think big. Nowadays all the media are flooded with advertisements of various products. Among them if a product wants to be noticeable, then its story should be strong and also all the information regarding the product should be included. Regarding the theme of the advertisement it needs to be fresh and it should not be a repetition. Media: Television In television between the programs they show advertisements of various products. In the case of Vodafone, it has a specific logo and a theme behind the advertisement. In all time they will try to tell a meaningful story through the advertisement. The earliest actor of Vodafone advertisement is a pug. Cute and amazing performance of pug attracted various people towards it. Then comes the zoo zoo. It is an interesting idea that ever developed. In both cases the story board / script is to quote the idea of the advertisement and the scenes they want to shoot are quoted in it. Afterwards, the annual party done in schools is organized. In that, a girl is searching for her friend to sit close with her. On all these advertisements they intelligently choose various topics to express the behaviour of their products. Most attracted feature is its visual. They give more importance to visualising the advertisement in a really beautiful way. Media: Radio In the case of radio it has no visual impact. They also play advertisements in between their programs. The advertisements played in television as well as radio is the same but in the case of radios as it not a visual media, it gives more importance to audio. So it is necessary to have a good clarity in what information they deliver. Because audience cannot see what they are trying to tell, audio should be crystal clear. And if the advertisement includes some meaningful background music in it, then it will be more reachable. If the lyrics of the music should be the information they want to pass, then it will be more effective than any other. Here also consistency with theme is important. But repetition should be avoided. Since no visual is there, we cannot see the logo of the company. Again it is proved that the clarity of audio plays an important role in advertisement through radio. Television and radio are most effective media to advertise products. Newspaper is also effective like television and radio. Part 4 Advertisement plays an important role in society. It affects both human life as well as the life of products. All products get publicity by verbal as well as visual advertisement. By watching the advertisements people judge the quality of products. Since most of the people are forced to buy product by seeing the advertisements, they won’t get eager about the quality of the product. The impact of advertisement is more than its quality. Other than these many bad effects are also there for advertisements. Children get more impressed by these advertisements and they try to imitate them. Sometimes it results in adverse effect. Advertisement has high visual impact. We can test these visual impacts by using a software method “Attention Tracking”. It is created at Cal Tech and developed by Media Analyser. It allows online testing to measure visual impact of advertisements. It is tested in real time. It has a pointing device like PC’s mouse used to record the impact of responses when the respondents see the advertisements. Attention tracking software records the clicks of respondents when an image is shown on PC screen. When an image is shown on the PC screen, the persons who are under testing called respondents continuously click at what they are looking at. Hence it will record the clicks. While seeing some advertisements we all get cognitive responses. Sometimes it will affect us emotionally. Some advertisements will laugh us, some will show a way to think, some will affect us sentimentally etc. These all are due to our response towards an advertisement. Seeing the advertisements will stimulate our brains and make us react according to the stimulation. Advertisements focus mostly on marketing. Advertisement’s directors will try and go for newer ideas. In present days, more and more advertisements are released. Another most important thing is the existence of a particular advertisement not for many years. It is necessary to change advertisements within limited period of time. Otherwise audience get bored by seeing same all time and they go for new one. Wrapper of the product is also noticeable. Attractive and suitable wrapper has to be selected for every product. It also affects target market of the product. Since this is a competitive world everything related to a product is attractive and competitive. Most advertisement typos include: a) Duplication b) Omission c) Transposition d) Substitution A professionally presented advertisement should be free from mistakes occurred due to spelling and grammar. Proof-readers work by it looking for the increment of text on the copy and then compare it with corresponding typeset increment and if any errors found then mark the errors using typical standard proof-readers marks. Typesetting refers to the retrieval of stored letters. Recommended Advertising Strategy The best advertising strategy for Vodafone is a type of strategy that will not only create awareness of their products to customers but also persuade them to acquire the services. An ideal marketing strategy for this company should focus on the services that are most used by subscribers while not forgetting those that are not yet well known. Network quality, uninterruptable communication and voice quality are some of the basic services that should be promoted. However, with the tremendous rise in usage of Smartphones, data and fix line services are growing to become the most widely used services and therefore should also be highly regarded. The strategy should therefore promote data services with a promise of good customer support. This strategy cannot be a success without assuring people of affordability in the services provided. The best way to gain more customers is by first ensuring that they are comfortable with your network and service charges. This is what this strategy focuses on among other things. Target Market This advertising strategy focuses on attracting new subscribers to Vodafone’s services. Vodafone aims at providing efficient mobile services to internet users, ordinary prepaid plans subscribers and other various handset users. This strategy is based on attracting millions of data users who now use the internet to access information. As is the current world trend, many people have embarked on electronic services. This requires focus on both the younger generation and the older executive personnel. The advertisements used should first attract attention of subscribers and inform them of the services that Vodafone offers. This should clearly outline radio the quality of data, voice, messaging and affordability of monthly plans, a strategy which will be able to gain more attention across all generations. Objectives In order to come up with an advertising strategy that will boost the performance of Vodacom, considerations should be made so that an effective advertisement scheme is developed and put into practice. The objectives of this marketing strategy are to: a) Boost the confidence of consumer b) Overcome advertisement objections c) Leverage emotions d) Set a deadline With these objectives considered, the advertisement methods will prove successful in increasing the overall sales of this company. Action plan The method of achieving an ideal advertisement strategy requires the methods used to be thoroughly evaluated and analysed. The media for relaying information should be determined in accordance to the number of users with majority given the first priority. For data users, advertisements that are relayed over the internet should be created and posted in social chat rooms and forums. Vodafone, in a bid to convince more subscribers, should have the heart touching adverts embedded in television programs as this way a larger population of home viewers will also be reached. The advertisements are to be made in a way that creates first impression of the Vodafone and quality of content improved. Better and convincing information concerning good customer service, network, plans affordability and availability of ideal handheld devices advocated for. Recommendation Vodafone has always advertised their prowess in providing telecommunications services. The advertisements used today should focus on the quality of the services they provide and the relevance to the concerned audience. For instance, advertisements made towards data users should be able to highlight their developments in providing better data connections and plans. Subscribers also tend to focus on the affordability of the available voice and data plans. These should be well outlined in the future advertisements and should be easy to understand. There are also millions of people in social chat rooms and blog forums, therefore, Vodafone should take this into account and design advertisements which target the social media users. This implies that relevant marketing methods should be used to target relevant audience. Radio and Television advertisements should be straight forward and eye catching. While also advertising, the company profile should be touched using a sense of their objective or just using the company’s colour representation. Conclusion Vodafone is part of a group of some of the largest mobile companies in the world. They provide the best services compared to other operators. They differ from other operators in their products like Vodafone live, Vodafone connect to friends, Vodafone mobile connect USB modem etc. They provide their products long life and varied in models. We can choose according to our needs. They provide broadband services also. After all they are customer friendly. So I recommend choosing Vodafone than any other operators. Read More