Advertising is important as it helps to keep consumers informed about new and existing products that are available on the market. Furthermore, advertising helps to spread awareness about products that would be of use to consumers and potential buyers (Arora, 2016). The main aim of advertising is to sell, and therefore by spreading the word across various platforms, a business is more likely to sell their products.

Online advertising is vital as it aligns with the way consumers make purchasing decisions. Online advertising enables relationships to be build through low-cost personalised communication, and further increases audience reach and convenience to gain a social and competitive advantage (Linton, 2017).

Advances with Internet technology mean that even the smallest of businesses are able to efficiently and successfully advertise online and take techniques to the next level. There are a number of advantages to advertising online that are listed below:

• Cost Efficiency (advertising online is much more cost-effective than using traditional forms of advertising such as print and television. Internet advertisements can be viewed by millions as well as only being viewed by your specific and targeted audience if desired),
• Target Marketing (market segmentation and target marketing are highly effective on the Internet compared to other mediums. Strategically placed online advertisements can achieve 100% of relevant views, which means that businesses are able to raise awareness of their brand and products, and furthermore, gain consumers and increase sales),
• Interactivity and Feedback (due to the development of Web 2.0, as well as consumer receiving media, they are now able to respond to and create media. This means that online advertisements can benefit from two-way communication. Having interactive advertisements online mean that businesses are able to gain statistics, survey and comments which in turn maximises their effectiveness and increases awareness),
• Captive Audience (due to technology advancing, traditional forms of advertising such as television and radio don’t have the same impact as they use to. This is because people are now able to skip advertisements with on demand services and recorders. Therefore, a advertisements online are still proving highly successful as advertisement such as banner ads remain in the visitor’s peripheral vision as long as they are reading the website information. These advertisements cannot be skipped, allowing marketers to take advantage of a captive audience).

As part of the marketing plan, I decided advertising was a big part of Kontor’s journey into people homes. Online advertising is a vital and successful form of marketing, therefore I decided to create individual online advertisements for each product, as well as an advertisement for the whole collection.

All of these advertisements have an interactivity element where it asks to ‘click here’. This is an easy portal to the Kontor’s website to aid consumers purchasing decisions. The advertisements ask a question: ‘would you like this product in your home office?’, therefore, consumers have to read this and analyse whether its a product they would like, hopefully influencing them to click the link. Furthermore, each advertisement still has the QR code, enabling consumers to have a ‘fun’ and ‘interactive’ elements if they chose to scan it.

The Kontor collection’s Facebook page and Instagram account is stated on every advertisement. This means that if consumers are interested, they are able to look up Kontor’s profile and find out more information about what it is, and what products it has to offer. The use of social media in advertisements is vastly important in todays society as there are over 39 million users at the start of 2017, and estimated to reach 42 million (Statista, 2017). Furthermore, Facebook and Instagram are the two main platform Kontor posts on. This is because Facebook has more than 2 billion daily active users (Osman, 2017) demonstrating that a vast number of potential consumers are able to access information about Kontor for free. Furthermore, at current, only 28% of marketers use Instagram, with 200 million monthly active users (Bendall, 2017). This illustrates how Kontor has a competitive advantage ahead of local competitors by existing on this platforms with the amount of users Kontor can reach.

The products are the main focal point of the advertisement, therefore, they are in the middle. This will stand out to consumers and will further embed into consumers minds, therefore, when they are not looking at the advertisement, they will still remember the product.

In a 2017 e-strategy trends report, it is stated that 15% of consumers respond to banner ads and 7% of consumers respond to billboards from small businesses. This is reflected in the amount on months in the year that Kontor will look into these marketing services.

Above is a banner advertisement to raise awareness of the Kontor collection. This advertisement focuses on who whole collection, and further offers the same elements as the online advertisements. The different with a banner ad is where it is placed on the internet. Banner ads are more difficult to eradicate as they pop up and cannot be out of the consumers eyesight until they leave the whole webpage that they are on. This is a successful marketing method that proves successful and therefore will aim to raise awareness of the Kontor collection, the Kontor brand, and gain consumer interest.

Bibliography:

Arora, D. (2016) Why is advertising so important to business? LinkedIn. Available from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-advertising-so-important-business-diwakar-arora/ [accessed 11 December 2017].

Bendall, C. (2017) 16 Sttistics to Show Why Instagram Marketing is Crucial. Our Social Times. Available from http://oursocialtimes.com/16-statistics-to-show-why-marketers-need-instagram/ [accessed 11 December 2017].

Linton, I. (2017) Six Benefits of Internet Marketing. Chron. Available from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/six-benefits-internet-marketing-31382.html [accessed 11 December 2017].

Osman, M. (2017) 28+ Powerful Facebook Stats Your Brand Can’t Ignore in 2017. Sproutsocial. Available from http://sproutsocial.com/insights/facebook-stats-for-marketers/ [accessed 11 December 2017].

Statista (2017) Social media usage in the United Kingdom (UK) – Statistics & Facts. Statista. Available from https://www.statista.com/topics/3236/social-media-usage-in-the-uk/ [accessed 11 December 2017].