Major Functions of Advertising Agencies
Here are the roles and responsibilities of an ad agency. Advertising agencies generally are organizations skilled in the provision of crucial services of informing or enlightening people about other services and products. To benefit from services rendered by advertising agencies, a fee is charged by the agency.
Without advertisement, we will have an uninformed public who will find it difficult to access certain products and services. This article focuses on enumerating these functions and providing an explanation of their functions.
What Advertisement Means to Business
The two are inseparable. Every business venture requires one form of advertisement or the other. Businesses exist solely for profits. To get these profits, there needs to be an increased sale of its products and services.
To achieve this increased sale, the word needs to reach out to the buyers that such a service or product exists. Just as how humans cannot survive without water, so businesses would not stand without effective advertisement.
There are several functions these advertising agencies provide. These services range from the most basic to the very complex advertising tasks. The following are some of the structures and functions of an advertising agency;
Fostering Strong Beneficial Relationships
It is a fact that before there is any meaningful exchange of services between individuals and groups, a relationship has to be established. Advertising agencies carry out this function quite well by fostering strong and beneficial relationships among the cross-section of members of society.
This relationship covers the buyer, seller, shareholder, the employer, the employee, and every other group of people offering or exchanging products and services. They act as a junction for all these varied segments.
Conducting Research
This is a key function of advertising agencies as they use available data presented to them with the help of market researchers to draw out marketing strategies that will yield increased patronage of their client’s services and products.
Without the conduct of research, advertising agencies will act blindly and their functions will be uncoordinated, to say the least. Research enables them to strategize on the advert tools to use and to have a clear idea of who their efforts should be targeted at (target population).
Creating a Budget Strategy
Advertising agencies formulate a budget structure for the advertiser to work with. This budget structure minimizes wastages to the barest minimum, ensuring that the advertiser gets real value for money while maintaining the business relationship.
Here, all forms of leakages are well plugged to ensure a maximization of financial resources. The effect is a much-reduced advertising budget while maintaining high impact.
Creating a Plan
Advertising agencies create effective advert plans for businesses. This is possible through the analysis of current advert strategies in addition to using current and previous information on the market to draw out a projection for the future.
This plan provides deliberate actions to take to achieve the business goals of the advertiser. Having a plan in place ensures that decisions taken are devoid of guesses which may likely lead to costly errors.
Modification of Products and Services
Advertising agencies may choose to modify a new or existing product to fit the needs of the consumer while generating increased sales for the seller. This modification may be total or focus on particular features of the products.
The aim is to ensure that the product or service is stripped of any feature that inhibits its acceptance and the addition of helpful features that will enable it to sell.
The Promotion of Sales
After products and services have been modified to fit the needs of the consumer or buyer, sales promotion of these products and services is necessary. This is a function advertising agencies know how to do well. Through the promotion of these products and services, they highlight the strong points of the product or service to create new consumer patronage.
Not every media is suitable for effectively advertising a product or service. While some products may thrive when advertised using a particular media, others may require a totally different approach.
Hence, knowing which media to use, and when to use it are the functions of advertising agencies. The central idea here is selecting the medium that will achieve the best result (widest reach) while maintaining a low budget.
Developing Innovative Strategies
To achieve this aim, creativity is a necessary ingredient. Knowing what innovative strategies to use for a particular advertisement is very important. The consumer is always the target here.
A lot of effort is put into this area of advertising as it can make the difference between increased patronage of the advertiser’s products and services and a drop in sales due to a negative impression formed about the advertised product by the advertising agency.
Setting Up an Organized Advert Strategy
To function at optimal levels, advertising agencies map out advert strategies that ensure that all their activities are streamlined. Such coordination is a necessary tool that ensures high productivity.
This article has provided the functions of advertising agencies. These functions are a necessary ingredient that ensures that their productivity level is improved upon while increasing sales for advertisers, creating a win-win situation for both advertiser and the advertising agency.