In the world of competitive market, building a brand portfolio and advertising the products and branding has been a major concern for new budding entrepreneurs, start-ups as well as growing companies. So, here is a short and brief summary of the tools and methods you can use to promote and create a top awareness of your products and brands among your audience.
Basically, there are two ways in which marketers conduct promotional activities. They either advertise the product for the market as a whole or they create a focused communication for a specific customer group. Today, these marketing strategies fall into two distinct categories – Above the Line (ATL) and Below the Line (BTL) activities.
Let’s take a look at each of these approaches:
Above the Line (ATL) advertising
ATL strategies includes at directing the communication towards the mass market. All promotional messages are untargeted, meaning they do not focus on a specific target group. The idea of ATL advertising is to provide and inform customers about the existence of the product. ATL mainly strategize the companies to reach a large scale of audience and create brand visibility. It top goal is to create a brand or product awareness in the people mind.
Implementing ATL activities:
- Television: Advertising campaigns directed at the regional or national level
- Print media: Promotional messages in newspapers, online articles, and advertisements
- Radio: Pan-country or pan-city radio broadcasts
BTL Marketing
BTL marketing strategize towards specific groups of customers. They are highly targeted, with advertisements being created keeping in mind the demographic and psychographic characteristics of particular customer segments. The communication is highly personalized and the objective is to gain conversions.
Major Advantage of BTL advertising strategies is that the results of the campaign can be easily monitored, ROI is high.
Implementing BTL activities:
- Outdoor advertisements: Billboards, fliers, banners, sandwich boards, and so on
- Direct marketing: SMS, emails, social media posts, pamphlets
- Sponsorship: Events, competition
- Public Relations: Press conferences, viral marketing
- In-store promotion: Visual merchandising, retailer pop-ups, sampling, sales promotions
TTL Marketing
TTL advertising marketing strategies approach with the integration of both ATL and BTL The objective of TTL marketing is to get a 360 degree view of the market and communicate with customers in every way possible. Considering that both ATL and BTL activities are used here, all TTL strategies lead to better brand visibility and brand recall.
Major benefits of TTL marketing activities is that it provide the overall view of brand visibility and product awareness in mass as well as to the specific targeted audience.
Major drawbacks of TTL advertising is high in cost.
Implementing TTL activities:
- 360-degree marketing: Using both ATL and BTL activities – for example, a television advertisement supplemented with pamphlets of the product attached to newspapers.
- Digital marketing: Online banners and buttons, social media posts, blog articles.
In overall, there is not a fixed approach when it comes to marketing. While ATL activities may work for the companies, others may need to supplement it with BTL. Everything depends on how well the marketers analyze the market, and used the specific tools as per the need.
em Ipsum.