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Advertising Department Responsibilities

Advertising departments play crucial roles in building revenue, profits and market share in small companies and corporations. Most advertising departments have advertising managers or directors who create and manage department budgets and oversee all advertising functions. Creative staff members, including copywriters, artists and graphic designers, provide the written content, images and graphics for various ads. All advertising department employees are expected to work cohesively to meet their core responsibilities and accomplish key objectives.

Creating the Right Message

Before ad departments meet any of their objectives, they must create the right messages for their target audiences. Target audiences are consumers who are most likely to buy specific products or services. Consumers have primary motives for buying products or services, and advertisers must appeal to those motives to get consumers to make purchases. For example, consumers who want to lose weight are likely to respond to an ad that shows how other satisfied customers have lost weight using certain products.

Building Brand Awareness

Building brand awareness is an important responsibility of corporate advertising departments. Companies must get the message out to consumers that their brands exist before people can buy them. Ad departments use characters, slogans, logos and stories in their ads to build the awareness of their brands. Brand-awareness building is challenging because many messages get lost amid the glut of commercials and promotions. That's why many advertisers use the AIDA principle to get noticed. AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire and action. The most effective ads get readers' or listeners' attention by appealing to their needs. They then interest consumers by offering viable solutions to those needs. Ad departments may create desire and action in their advertising by showing how their products work, and offering special deals if people purchase within particular time frames.

Scheduling Advertising

Advertising managers or coordinators determine when certain ads will appear, whether they're using TV commercials, magazines, direct mail or social media. Many work with ad agencies or media companies when setting advertising schedules. Most advertising is scheduled months in advance to provide media sources with enough time to create ads, complete commercial shootings or print their publications. Advertising must be timely to elicit the desired results. For example, the advertising department of a toy manufacturer may start advertising in early November for Christmas.

Measuring Advertising Effectiveness

An advertising department usually allocates specific amounts of money for each type of advertising, but it must ensure that its advertising is effective to maximize returns on investments. Many companies measure advertising effectiveness through market research. They conduct surveys among consumers to determine who's heard or seen their advertising and whether it prompted them to buy their products or services. Generally, the more a consumer can recall about an ad, the more effective it is, as long as it meets other essential criteria: reaching the right target audience and increasing sales.