Traditional mass marketers, expend huge advertising budgets to reach out to a large audience. The main argument in favour of the widely used methodology of mass marketing is that it attracts maximum potential consumers and has a wider reach. However these marketers are increasingly finding themselves with cost overruns and diminishing profit margins. This can be accounted to the gradual change in buying patterns and the changing consumer buying behavior. With the increasing proliferation of advertising and distribution, advertisers are caught up in an intense competitive scenario, where the costs are huge and the hit ratio is less.

This can be attributed to the fact that consumers buying patterns are changing and this has led to creation of various microsegments within a particular customer segment. For example, consider a market segment for compact sedans. A compact sedan may be targeted to various segments like young married couples or the unmarried buyer with high median income. The preferences of consumers within the particular segments vary, and hence automobile companies launch a wide range of variants at different price bands to satisfy a wide range of consumer needs within the same microsegment.

Maruti Suzuki’s portfolio consists of thirteen car models with at least forty variants, to cater to different needs of consumers. The base model of the vehicle may not have air conditioning or power steering, but for the models that have these features, the buyer has to pay higher prices. The key for marketers is to identify the microsegments that are willing to pay the premium for additional features and roll out newer variants to satisfy the needs of diverse consumer segments. The trend shows that consumer satisfaction is passé. Consumers want to be shocked, surprised and jolted out of the boredom of the routine product offerings. Consumer delight is the way of the future. This is why companies like P&G, McDonalds, and LG have used micromarketing techniques to satisfy a wide range of customer expectations.

Advertising is collective or impersonal salesmanship. Salesmanship deals with personal persuasion, individual persuasion. Advertising deals with impersonal persuasion, collective persuasion. Salesmanship and Advertising are closely related; in fact, Advertising may be called written Salesmanship. So close do these two professions draw together that there are times when one cannot be told from the other. And then there is the sales letter. Sent by email directly to a specific person it is a sales letter. The identical email, printed on a webpage, is advertising. Advertising is collective appeal. It is a method developed by modern industry by which selling arguments may be directed to millions of buyers at one time.

One of America’s foremost advertising experts differentiates between Salesmanship and Advertising with this colorful explanation, “Salesmanship blossoms- Advertising concentrates,” which is to say that as, a general thing, Salesmanship permits of elaboration-of the persuasion of personality – whereas, at so much per click, Advertising can afford no such luxuries. Concentration, conciseness, terse pictures and expressions- these are the requirements of Advertising. The profession of Advertising is possessed of numberless ramifications, and to the average young man or woman its inner workings are a complete mystery. For that reason there are thousands who enter it without the least idea of what it really offers and exacts, and many stay out who are especially fitted to enter because they do not understand its peculiarities-the very peculiarities they are naturally fitted to meet.

The advertising person is not as common to us as the salesperson. We see their work, but we do not see them. We hear that they are paid a tremendous salary for preparing wonderful “copy” and that such and such a company spends a million dollars a year advertising. There are two general classes of Advertising: Publicity and Appeal. Advertising that merely tends to make popular or explain a product is called publicity advertising. Advertising which makes a direct appeal that you purchase the article advertised right away, and includes the price and a coupon for mailing that price to the advertiser is Appeal advertising. Still other divisions of advertising are reader publicity, educational, display, outdoor and circular. The media used may be the newspapers, magazines, billboards, electric signs, placards, circulars, handbills, booklets, novelties, motion pictures, phonograph, PPC, banners, email blasts or even radio. Advertising is not limited to any one medium and the true advertiser must leverage all venues to be successful.