The life blood of any business is its ‘Marketing Department’. Though it is a cost centre but its significance is unavoidable. An efficient marketing work force can make a business grow and diversify limitlessly. But it involves a huge amount of cost to the company. The cost includes hiring of professional marketers, training if required, salary to be given to them, and many more. Thus, smart business people are signing contracts with outsourcing companies that provide ready made trained professional marketers to handle the marketing and advertising department of the company. This can save cost of the company and it can also have more time to focus on things with a high priority. Stellar Concepts and Design is one such outsourcing company that accepts projects from different businesses and handles their marketing department. They offer many activities such as web design, online promotion, offline promotion, printing, branding, etc. and also charge a very reasonable price.  “We are a one-stop shop to fulfill your company’s entire marketing and advertising needs. If you have chose to outsource your company’s marketing activities, the best thing you did to the entire business is that you gave a professional direction and also reduced a lot of burden from your employees. Still there are companies that sign up outsourcing contracts with more than one company for their marketing and advertising, as they do not get an entire package deal from such companies. They will have to go to different company for their company’s website designing, printing, TV commercials, online promotion, etc. This consumes a lot of time and money of the business and also all the internal data is revealed in front of many other advertising companies”, says Anthony Giudice, President and Founder of Stellar Concepts and Design. “Instead of opting for two or three companies for your marketing needs, you can select a company that offers you a complete package. Stellar Concepts and Design has a competitive edge over many other marketing companies. Our customers can drop their entire burden of promoting their business to our heads, and then the job is ours to gain client satisfaction. Our employees are well-qualified and trained professional and they possess all knowledge, skills and experience to handle all tasks effectively and efficiently”, clarifies Anthony Giudice. Thus, if you want to take a smart go then start implementing your plans of outsourcing and get started straight away. About Stellar Concepts and Design: Stellar Concepts & Design is a full service marketing and advertising company specializing in all areas of marketing and advertising which include commercial printing, video production, website design and re-design, full service mail facility, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management), Graphic Design, 350,000 Promotional Products and many more at recession friendly price. For more information on Stellar Concept’s scope of services, Visit: http://stellarconcepts. com Stellar also offers active Affiliate Marketing program, 10 % of the buy amount, http://affiliates. stellarconcepts. com/Login. aspx Contact: Anthony Giudice, President 954. 489. 2250

Advertising – and its association to other concepts

Introduction:

An advertisement as an object and an advertising as a process has lots of contents and players to bring that concept. As an object it is the Ad designer or the agent who has the role to play, while as a process it is the beholder who has the responsibility to accomplish the objective. In between these two there are other players also to play their separate roles. While the whole issue is to manage and explore the benefits, the role of advertising, being used as a marketing tool can’t be ignored. This is an attempt to define what an advertisement is, and how it is related to other objectives.

Definition

Advertising is a process to communicate the desired message of the producer to the customers. In other words it is the process by which the message is being passed to the consumers by proper means of communication. In a well versed form it is one of the marketing mix to promote goods, services, companies and thoughts through an identified sponsor. One of the 4P’s of marketing is the promotion strategy. Advertising being a part of promotional mix helps a lot to the marketers to promote their products.

Elements of advertising Process

There are different elements of advertising. Their relevancy depends upon the demand of a particular situation and so can easily go in the priority list to fulfill the need of the situation. As enlisted and shown in the figure depicted above “an advertisement as a product has several elements to be judged (in the process starting from concept to reality) to come as a product to meet the objective of the company”.

The importance of advertising depends upon various factors such as nature of the product, Industry to which it belongs, competition in the market, market intensity, stage of the product or the brand in its life cycle, effect on per capita consumption, customer loyalty, brand credibility and media.

Advertising is a component of marketing mix has a lot to do in the market to meet an objective of the beholder. Being a communication process to place the information about the intended “thought or thought” to the target audience or defined customers in a manner to satisfy the intended need is not an simple task. In a very subjective way it is all to bring the concept into reality to work and meet the intended need. Through advertisement, the beholder tries to place their information into the market for their ready acceptance. The intensity of competition has led a lot of pressure on promoters and advertisers to make a creative, responding and effective advertisement.

The need of the market has made a different role for advertising to play in the area of marketing. For a well established product or brand, advertisement has to just communicate its relevance by transferring the information to the market. But, for a product or an thought which is either in an initiation stage or just to go, advertising has a lot to do in the market for that product. Nature of the product and its stage in its life cycle is also a fantastic determinant of advertising, to be designed and to get figured in the market.

Four P’s of marketing and advertising

Product and Advertisement: There are three kinds of products shown in an advertisement. They are General Products, Esteemed or logical products and Competitive Products. To advertise a general product information used in an ad is all the benefits of the product and its appeal to the target audience. For logical products the information to be conveyed through the advertisement is the need or satisfaction level to which the product is designed. For competitive product the comparative appeal is used in an advertisement to promote the product.

Place and Advertisement: To convey information through advertisement place strategy covers culture, age, gender, emotion, demography, geography, society, class of people, Income class to be shown in the advertisement and through that to target the desired audience. By this an advertisement helps to promote the product and to reach the targeted audience.

Price and Advertisement: In an advertisement pricing strategy usually designed to convey the comparative benefits and price structure with the competitive products and to target the desired customers to meet the objective.

Promotion and Advertisement: An advertisement is usually defined as a promotion strategy to promote the intended thought and meet objective. When all the other 3 Ps gets compiled in an advertisement it is the advertisement (a part of the promotional mix) which has to serve the intended need.

Advertising budget and cost

There are different categories of advertising media to be used for advertisement. A company has to go through a thorough search of different available options, budget for advertisement, mass effect of the media and analysis of cost and benefit of the available media to meet the objective. The choice of the option depends upon available options, different objectives subject to the restriction of resources to be used. For example to meet the objective in terms of its effectiveness television advertising is used, for others such as for fantastic branding and reach a large audience magazines are used, while to help in cornering the market mail order and leaflets are used. By advertising one’s business with internet marketing strategies one can save on his advertising budget and one can run his advertising budget into arrears if he starts up his internet marketing with the incorrect advertising company. To opt certain media one has to thoroughly evaluate the objectives, resource constraints, target reach, accessibility and per capita effect.

There are different types of advertising. It covers Television, Newspaper, Magazine, Mailorder, Banners, Cost per click, Google SEO, Weblinx etc. While their effect is respectively, mass effect, budgetary effect, cost justification effect , an simple lead access effect, brand development effect, simple access and lesser cost effect, website promotion effect and in budget advertising effect. The criterion to select an option to advertise is restricted with the purpose, the obligation, the resource constraints and the earlier outcomes of those options.

All the efforts for advertising are to place the information in the market and get the desired objective fulfilled. Though the definition is very subjective the outcomes are a mix of qualitative and quantitative one. Examples of subjective outcome is supporting the branding process, place the informations at the right place, stimulating intention and motivation to buy etc while the measurable outcome is sales growth, increase in per capita consumption etc. The measurement of an outcome of a selected option becomes a base for evaluating the choice of the company or the organization went up with that choice. While the same outcome, becomes an evaluating parameter for others to use, as to evaluate that available option.

An ad campaign has different issues to meet the target. Its content covers, message, appeal, slogan, words, celebrities, media, kind of satisfaction etc. An ad is a complete justification of the need and the requirement. Though the justification has several grounds to get a trade off among different available options, the need to serve and manage that trade off cant be ignored. It is the resource capacity, which ultimately talks about the whole of the advertisement. The other factors which affects the choice is available options and the need.

Advertisement has an vital role in marketing to meet the objective of the beholder. For an organization or the beholder for whom it is designed, for the ad designer, for the sponsors, and for the customers as a whole advertising has different meaning. For the sponsor it is the communication, for the beholder it is the objective, for a customer it the rationale to choose. To serve different needs of the society it is designed and used differently. The significance of advertising cant be ignored as it is the mean to communicate and get the desired result. As a mean to inform and to add to the credibility the strategy behind designing an advertisement and its content, there is a lot of factors to be judged and to comply with. Being an effective marketing tool advertisement is used to meet several needs and hence to fill the gap in the market.

Advertising : Different players their association and role :

Manufacturer/Initiator

1. What?

2. How?

3. Where?

4. To Whom?

5. By Whom?

6. How much?

Ad designer/ Ad agencies

1. What?

2. How?

3. By whom?

4. Where?

Sponsor

1. Where?

2. To whom?

3. When?

4. How?

Customers

1. What?

2. How?

3. Who?

Evaluator

1. Shift in per capita consumption

There are five main players playing with an ad concept to come as a product. They are manufacturer, Ad designer, Sponsor, Customers and the Evaluator. These different persons have different roles in formulating the purpose. As shown in the above picture they are concerned with different parts as to play in this process. Though the start and end point is not restricted but it all depends upon the requirement and available options. To enrich their role they have different role criteria either to be place to initiate the concept or to evaluate the same on different grounds, in an advertisement process, as shown in the below mentioned diagram. The terminology and the contents that have been used to define the roles of each head have the effect of their responsibility, the stage where they have to play or contribute and their part in the whole communication process to lead the concept of advertisement into reality.

After fulfilling the initial criteria these all have to stick towards different parts of their role within a predefined set to bring advertisement concept to work. The role of these players and the requirement of their role gets judged with the whole issues as defined in the below mentioned figure.

Ad designer/ Ad agencies

1.Message

2.Content

3.Language

4.Media

5.Target audience

6.Slogan

7.Methods

8.Brand association

9.Customer loyalty

10.Brand acceptance

Manufacturer/Initiator

1.Product/Thought

2.Concept

3.Budget

4.Segments

5.Gender

6.Value addition

7.Associated benefits

8.Celebrities

9.Media

10.Language

Sponsor

1.Budget

2.Cost/benefits

3.Media

4.Timimng

5.Target audience

6.Brand loyalty

Customers

1.Brand value

2.Valueaddition

3.Offerings

4.Ad association

5.Need satisfaction

6.Ad message

7. Earlier experience.

Evaluator

1.increase in per capita consumption

2.Customer acceptance

3.Market credibility

Advertising: Evaluation

Now about the product or the theme which get informed through the advertisement has to take the market acceptance. If the requirement of all meets properly the intention of the message gets served with proper acceptance in the market. Being a challenging and required issue of the market all parts of the process have to meet effectively. Based upon the results in terms of sales growth, market acceptance, and credibility as desired initially the advertisement also required to be evaluated in terms of its effectiveness. There are different methods of evaluating advertisement effectiveness. Few of them are rating point (rp) and target rating point (trp). It tries to show the percentage of the universe of the existing base of users/customers that can be reached by the use of each media outlet in a particular moment of time. The difference in these methods is because of the size of the sample and their dimensions. Hence we can place that these methods could be used to make an advertisement to fulfill the segmentation strategy with the more refined method i.e. trp.

To sum up

Advertising has a critical role in marketing. It helps in promoting the product, improves sales growth, puts the information into the market, effects people to initiate the action. Apart from its role for a beholder for whom it is designed it has a fantastic contribution in generating a sector with employment opportunity and by that making its contribution to the society. The affect, credibility, and the requirement all could be easily measured by its current role in the market and the economy. From both as a need and as a competitive requirement, advertising serves a lot in the market. Being an vital marketing tool it servers the need of all the players and by that proves its credibility to contribute towards the needs and objective.

The one who wants to enter in this web world and desires for a long time survival, then he/she should be familiar with each and every terminology used in this field. If user considers all the vital factors before choosing a hosting plot then only he/she will be able to have a successful future in this world .User should not choose any of the plot, rather he/she should opt the best and most suitable one and this can only be made possible by fetching more and more informations and also by studying properly all the requirements. New comers should start from the basics .They should learn the meaning of each and every term used and also in addition those factors that can affect his/her selection.

Web Host

Web host refers to a computer connected to the internet. Web host can also be termed as ‘web server’. The computer that is playing the role of the web server needs to be more powerful than normal PCs and the function of this web server is to serve up websites.

The website content of the user will remain will on this computer, so as the people who are surfing on the internet can get a way to access his/her website.

There can be three main categories in which the web host can be classified based on the economic factor and common features:

1. Free Hosts:

The users who are not professional but are making website only as a leisure activity then for them free hosting can be a excellent option. In free hosting space, bandwidth and other features provided are very limited. With free web hosting one can not only make his/her website successful but is also suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage. Generally free hosting enforces pop-up, text or banner ads. Reliability, best performance and customer support lacks in case of free hosting as well. When a user registers for a free host then the word free host gets added with the user’s domain name that gives an adverse effect in the eye of the visitors.

2. Shared Hosts:

The next type of the web hosting to be discussed is shared hosting. This hosting service is used by many of the web sites .This type of hosting service is Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. This service can be used by paying $1 to $25 per month. The features provided by this service vary from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. The users host their website by this type of hosting service and it has its own top level domain facility. No doubt that shared web hosting is quite better than free hosting but still it does not provide 100% satisfactory services. In case of shared hosting one server is shared by the number of websites so its performance and availability gets affected. More websites usually means less performance. If less number of websites are hosted by one server then it will be more expensive, but in this case there are more chances of reliability. There are many companies allowing customers to host multiple websites with different domains under a single account.

3. Dedicated Hosts:

The next type of hosting is dedicated hosting. This type of hosting is most reliable hosting. In this type of hosting a full server is dedicated to a single customer. Generally this type of hosting is used by large businesses, professionals and very active websites dealing with thousands of visitors daily. The customers having dedicated hosting can have their total control over the server as well as able to make as many websites as they like. Customers can run their own hosting company on a rented dedicated server. Payment module is mentioned according to specifications and services provided with the server, which varies from $100 up to about $800 dollars per month.

4. Collocated Hosts:

Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. This service is very much similar to dedicated hosting. The difference between collocated hosting and dedicated hosting is that in collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this service the server will be placed in provider’s data center. This service is more expensive than dedicated hosting.

5. Reseller Hosts:

In reseller hosting the providers offers web server storage to their customers, and resells the web server storage to them. Generally providers offer resellers a discount price.

6. Other Hosts:

Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article.

Domain Name

Domain name is the name which shows the place where one’s website is located. The actual address of the website is a set of numbers. Each and every web server has its own unique address. Domain name indicates the real addresses of every websites. One can easily remember the domain name of any of the website. Remembering domain name is simpler than recalling the IP addresses.

Space / Storage

Space is one of the services provided by the web host. It plays a very vital role in the website development. It happens many times that the customer requires more space but the host fails to provide it, so customer should be very careful while choosing the web host. Storage is the amount of web server’s disk space available for customer’s website files, images and databases. Space can be according to the requirement; it can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as huge as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Earlier prices of the space were very high but prices reduced significantly during the last few years. The hosting plans offering 3GB of space for less than $10 a month can be easily available.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data transferred from web server to clients’ internet browsers. When ever a person outlook a page the data is transmitted from the server to that person’ PC. If any one is having audio, video and images in his/her website then the bandwidth consumed is more in comparison of the website having only text contents. The bandwidth available in free hosting can be as low as 100MB per month where as in some dedicated servers the bandwidth available is as high as 2000GB a month. The customers who don’t want to pay more for bandwidth can easily find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.

Server Type

Generally server means the operating system than runs the web server. Some common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type refers the server side scripting and database types. The difference between Windows server and Linux/UNIX is that Windows runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases where as Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with MySQL or Oracle databases. The other difference is that Windows servers are more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.

Databases

As server type is discussed earlier also, we are able to know that there are different types of databases available. The mostly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, rather its features are limited. MySQL is sufficient for small concern but it is not powerful for the complicated large business sites. Large business requires more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.

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Server Side Scripting

Usually the new comers prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason behind this is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that are able to fulfill the webmaster’s requirements. But PHP also has some limitations in features required by advanced websites same as in the case of MySQL, due to this limitation some professional web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Some other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.

Email

Now the next very vital aspect to be talked about is Email. At present no one can go further in this computer world with having his/her Email account. The one who is plotting to do any kind of activity through computer such as to run a business or to provide any kind of service, then the first thing he/she need to do is to open an Email account. There are many hosting plans that include the feature of having some email accounts with customer’s domain. The availability of number and size of email accounts really depends on the hosting plot one opted. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting. Small plans provide only about 10 accounts where as huge plans do not have the limited number. Usually those email accounts are web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

The other service is FTP. File Transfer Protocol is a usual way of transferring files across the Internet. Most of the webmasters used to upload and download their websites contents through FTP. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software. Webmasters require FTP username and password so as to access their web server. There are any hosts who use to provide more than one FTP account to their customers as per their requirement. Rather FTP is unspecified; it is not advisable as per the security reasons.

Control Panel

Control panel is the service available by many of the web hosting companies to their customers. It is a web based application that helps in managing websites. Some vital functions performed by the control panel are that it used to manage email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and sub-domains and managing databases. The control panel application that is mostly used by the user is cPanel. There are many companies who use to develop their own control panel application.

Uptime

Now after having all the services, the thing of concern which remains is how the user keeps his/her website uptime most of the time. If anyone is having a website with brilliant features but it remains down most of the time it will be of no use, as when ever the visitors visit his/her website and found it down then later on they will reckon twice before visiting it. In result he/she will suffer the loss of visitors. Uptime is very vital feature of web hosts and that is usually measured in percentage. If a server remains down near about 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. If any of the business website is not having at least this percentage of uptime then that website is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to say web administrators immediately when an outage happens.

Price

Finally the factor left is price. In this option also there is a fantastic variability found like for example customer is having option to choose between the prices ranging from 0 to $1000 per month. For most personal, small and medium websites the total amount of cost involved is just $15 per month. Thus its not at all advisable for business website owners to select very cheap plans let say less than $5 because this price can lead to huge cost indirectly afterwards.