Contents
Meaning of Advertising Agency
Advertising agency is an independent running organization providing specialized services in the field of advertising and marketing. It is also referred to as ad agency and is a major component of advertisement industry. Advertisement agency provide a wide range services to its advertiser ranging from idea conception to final printing of advertising. These agencies have a team of experts of relevant fields who create, plans and monitor all marketing activities of their clients.
They charge remuneration from their customers in return for their professional marketing services. Experts of these agencies perform a detailed research about company and its products to formulate effective marketing plans for reaching out to target audience. It plays an efficient role in increasing sales of a company by attracting mass peoples and providing key information regarding people’s response from time to time. In addition to marketing services, these agencies also offer creative and advisory services to their clients.
Structure of Advertising Agency
Account department
It is a department that deals directly with clients of agency and focuses on strengthening their relationship with them. Officers working in this department assist customer in deciding their proper marketing activities and do all sort of negotiations with them for entering into a contract for carrying out an advertisement. Account department do not solely deal into accounts but manages all dealings with clients. It also coordinates with other key departments working actively behind the campaign.
Marketing services department
Marketing service department is one that acquire necessary market information for designing effective ads and promotional messages. It performs a market research and surveys for knowing about the attitudes of peoples and competition rate in market. This department assist in finding out the most suitable medium for carrying out advertisement campaigns.
Creative department
Create department is concerned with appropriate designing of commercial ads and promotional messages to be used in marketing campaigns as per the requirements of clients. It comprises a team of highly-skilled peoples like graphic designers, technical experts, art directors, system architectures, artists, computer programmers etc. These people develop create ideas and then those ideas physical shape using modern techniques and tools.
Media planning department
Media planning department looks for proper medium or a combination of medium for running advertisement campaigns for their clients. Every media for advertising varies in terms of their cost structure and overall effectiveness. This department focuses on choosing the best advertising media on behalf of their customers for yielding better results.
Internal services department
Internal service department is one that brings coordination in between distinct departments of agency for successful completion of advertising process. It aims at strengthening relations with internal employees for ensuring continuity and avoiding disputes. This department is further divided into three sub-departments namely: Traffic department, Human resource department and Finance department. Traffic department monitor all work flows of organization and focuses on raising efficiency. Human resource department look after all matters related to appointment, shifting and training of workforce. Whereas, finance department handles all finances of agency.
Client services department
Client service department is a unique type of department found mostly in large advertisement agencies. They offer promotional services to their customers other than the marketing ads. This department assist clients in their business promotion by arranging public relations campaigns, organizing exhibitions and performing research on their product demands.
Types of Advertisement Agencies
Full service advertising agencies
These advertisement agencies are one that offers comprehensive range of promotional services to their clients. It provides full range of advertisement services from starting till end. These agencies are of medium or large size having a capability of running complete marketing campaigns. These comprise of many experts and provide services such as T.V. advertisements, content creation, campaign management, radio commercials, social media management, print advertising, search engine optimization and strategic planning.
Traditional agencies
Traditional agencies are those agencies those that employs traditional techniques for carrying out marketing campaigns. They do not use new or digital medium of doing advertisement but are focused on traditional techniques like newspaper, radio, television billboard advertisements and magazines. These type of agencies are most favorable for companies willing to advertise at a local level.
Social media agencies
These advertisement agencies entirely use social media tools for performing advertisement campaigns. Social media agency consists of content creators and ads optimizers that focuses on yielding max results out of social channels. These channels are Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. These agencies make efforts for making content more interesting that leads to engage mass audience.
Creative boutique
Creative boutique are advertisement agencies that specializes in designing appropriate designs and graphics for brands. These agencies excel in designing a brand logo, letterheads, business cards, billboards and print marketing. They do not offer any other services expect designing of advertisement ads. Creative boutique is favorable for companies that want to place advertisement themselves but don’t possess creative talent for creating proper designs for themselves.
Media buying Agency
Media buying agencies deals in buying advertisement places and selling it to advertisers. They formulate all media related plans and monitor all advertisement activities for getting better results. It ensures that all ads are displayed at optimum locations and for proper time frame within the recommended budget.
Functions of Advertising Agency
Attracts clients
Advertising agencies aims at attracting more and more clients i.e. advertisers for earning revenue. Without the presence of their clients, these agencies cannot survive as these are the source of profit for them. They grab attention of advertisers by providing them wide range of quick services at cheap price. Advertising agencies focuses on strengthening their relations with clients by providing them full satisfaction that leads to build up customer loyalty.
Research function
Advertisement agency conducts a detailed research related to advertiser product for gathering all required information. This research is carried out for knowing about features, qualities and limitations of product, market competition rate, methods of distribution, preferences of buyers, present and future market possibilities.
Advertising planning
Advertising planning is a primary function performed by ads agencies. It involves making a proper blueprint of whole advertisement campaign to be performed. This function is performed after doing research about the client products, its competitors, target audience, market area etc. Once this plan gets approval by clients, it is executed to derive better results.
Prepares advertising budget
These agencies prepare an advertising budget for its advertisers. Preparation of right budget enables in carrying out all advertisement activities economically with the best possible use of all resources. In absence of advertising budget, client funds may get wasted and incurs heavy losses. Client may lose trust in agency and will not bring new business to an ad agency.
Brings coordination
Advertisement agency brings coordination in between all people associated with marketing campaigns such as clients, itself, media, sales force and distributors. Proper coordination ensures long-term success of advertising campaigns and avoid any disputes. It is a key function performed by agency as it would lead to enhance the sales of product.
Media selection
It perform a crucial function for choosing an appropriate media(platform) for its advertisers. Media selection is a highly specialized function where decision regarding choosing media for communicating the content is made. Right media has more potential for giving best results at lower cost. Ads agency must maintain good relations with the media once they are finally selected.
Creative function
This function involves putting advertising plans into action as is termed as a key function. Creating function involves making a proper design, layout and illustrations of ads messages. A team of experts like designers, copywriters and artists perform this function to make advertisement more appealing. Agency must use creative and innovate ideas for creating ads that would increases the sales of products.
Non-advertising function
These agencies also provide a wide range of non-advertisement services to their clients. Advertisement agency assist its client in designing the product, fixing its price, determining the discount amount, designing the labels, trade mark, packaging etc. All this enables in raising the sales of product.
Importance of Advertising agency
Wider experience
Advertisement agency have wider experience in the field of marketing. They have team of expert possessing a long-term specialized knowledge regarding advertisement of products. These agencies via their expertise suggest the best suited media to their client for carrying out promotion campaigns. Advertisement agency formulates an effective advertisement plan after conducting a proper research that lead to provide valuable service to its clients.
Economical source
It is the cheapest source available to a company for carrying out promotional campaigns. Setting up an own advertisement department and hiring a team of experts with specialized knowledge related to advertisement process is quite expensive for business. These agencies a comprehensive range of marketing services to advertisers at a feasible rate.
Saves time
Another major importance played by these agencies is that it saves business from involving into a complex advertising process. When you hire an advertisement agency, you and your staff do need to get involved in advertisement campaign. Whole of the advertising work is planned and carried out independently by agency itself. This saves the precious time of company thereby enabling to focus more on key activities of business.
Independent institution
Advertisement agency is an independent institution available to business for doing advertising work. They do every activity with seriousness and there is no partiality taken on its side. Effective decisions are taken by its teams of specialist at right time for attaining desired outside objectives.
Brand development
These agencies assist business in their brand development which is a very complex task. Advertisement agencies create wide awareness of brand by designing logos and carrying out marketing campaigns. They conduct research in market and communicate business about people preference that helps in targeting the market efficiently. Customers get better products which leads to improve their satisfaction level thereby enhancing the overall position of brand.
