Advertising significantly affects the success of a brand. Advertising profession has its own lingo which a brand manager must understand. Some of these terms are explained here.
Target Audience
It is the market segment you have chosen to cater to. It is often described in terms of :
demography, say our market consists of teenagers or young girls or working women or urban youth. The basis could be age, sex, profession, geographical area etc.
psychography, such as life-style
benefits sought, such as tooth decay prevention and bad breath fighting from toothpastes.
The market consists of several segments each of some homogeneous customers. Out of this total market, we select a few segments and target our product to them. In targeting, we see how far the product and segment suit each other.
The target audience is reached by a mix of media. Each media has its own target audience, say Femina is read by women of substance, and some men too; Living Digital is read by techies. We have to match our target audience to the media’s target audience as far as possible.
Reach
It is a measure of how many of the target audience views or hears the ad.
Frequency
It is a measure of how many times the audience reached by an ad during a specified time period. If an ad of a car is seen by 50 percent of audience, its reach is 50. If this ad is seen 3 times during a week of the flight by the audience, it has a frequency of 3. If we multiply the reach by frequency ( 50×3 ), we get rating points ( 150 in this case ). Ad flights cover specific time periods.
Advertisers also talk in terms of Gross Rating Points ( GRPS ). Gross rating Points are measured by how many people of the general population ( rather than target audience ) in total saw the ad and how many times on average they saw it. GRPs have nothing to do with our target audience. Rating points calculated with reference to our target audience are called Target Rating Points ( TRPS ).
Advertising cost is measured in terms of cost per thousand ( CPM —cost per millenium or thousand ).The less it costs to reach, the more attractive it should be but not always. The cost varies considerately for different media because of the nature of audience being reached and the quality of impressions.
Brand managers must also understand whether the organisations wants to sell directly, or tie into retail promotions with super markets. The objectives of promotion must be understood — to build brand awareness, to create brand preference and loyalty etc. The objectives affect the content of the advertising and its execution.
Share of Advertising ( SOA )
It is the actual measured share of advertising rupees spent for competing product going after the same product customers in the same media markets. In a nut-shell, it indicates what share of the ad media spending is ours.
Share of Voice (SOV)
It is the measure of viewership shares as a result of longer term campaign. To put it differently, it indicates how much voice of all the advertising run against that product and market our advertising gets.
Share of Market ( SOM )
It is the bottom-line based on actual sales outcomes. To simplify, it means who sold what percentage of a given category of product in a specified market segment over a specified time period. This is what advertisers want to achieve. Share of Market is where the money is made. Other measures just show how much is being spent for how much relative noise it makes.