Various Methods of Advertising and Their Effectiveness

Today, advertising is part of our daily life.  It is the difficult business of making information reach large numbers of people.  The purpose of advertising is to make people react to an idea, to some product or service which is offered.  There are now various methods of advertising – some taking up space while some time – their effectiveness varying according to how the publicity was shaped.

A widely-used form of advertising is undoubtedly through magazines.  Companies who want their product to be known to the market and promoted at the same time often buy space for the purpose.  In so doing, the companies are actually sponsoring the magazine as well since a page costs them a small fortune.  It is the same case for newspapers, radio and television.  Magazines mostly make use of pictures of glamorous models, actors and well-known sportsmen to trick people into using the product.  For example, Claudia Schiffer using Loreal creams, wearing an expression of bliss on her face.  People would certainly want to resemble her, to reflect her fame and beauty and they would go and try the product.  This type of publicity often gets the desired results. 

Similarly, newspapers and pamphlets use our visual senses to pass on information.  Here, slogans and capturing offers are printed in colour so as to attract our attention and also our imagination.  For example, the advertisement of a machine which helps the individual to lose weight will first show a photograph of a person with a relatively big belly and the next picture will be that of that person supposedly with a noticeably smaller belly.  An obese person would immediately be tempted to buy the machine but people are aware that most of the time, the results are deceiving and therefore will buy it only if his friend or relative or his doctor has advised him to do so.

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Two other means of advertising is the radio and the television.  The radio sports witty comments and catching proposals which will appeal to the listeners while the television combines voice, scenes and some music at one go.  Although publicity via television is more effective than that through the radio, it cannot be denied that we listen to more advertisements.  On radio since it is portable, it is found in cars as well as at the workplace.

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Outdoor advertising is yet another way of doing publicity.  Billboards can be seen on every road now and sometimes, we unconsciously buy the product we see on the boards: it just haunts our mind.  Outdoor advertising are usually very colourful and have refreshing sceneries which lure the public to buy the item.

Electronic mail is nowadays becoming more and more common with the progress in internet.  Almost every minute, the netizens are faced with pop-ups which are at times annoying but are nevertheless attractive.

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Finally, according to me, direct marketing is the most effective type of advertising.  Salesmen hired by companies go from door-to-door to show the product, its uses and viability and here the consumers are not deceived.  They can judge whether the product advertised will come in handy or will be useless.  Unfortunately, it is a time-consuming and costly form of publicity and so only few advertisers chose this method.  There is no doubt that in the future, people will be exposed to new and maybe more efficient methods of advertising – only time will tell.

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