Securities Market Line

Before we get started, do you know who discovered the mere exposure effect? It was Robert Zanjonc, a social psychologist, who advocated the effect of a stimuli on a person that he was repeatedly exposed to. He said that when someone was exposed to a stimuli, with every exposure, the person was liable to become more familiar with the stimuli and fear it less than before, until a point is reached when the person does not react negatively on being exposed to the stimuli. It may also be said that the subject starts exhibiting positive reactions to the stimuli. This theory was applied more universally, than being specific to the effects of advertising, and pointed towards the cognition and affect relationship between the subject and stimuli. An experiment conducted by Professor Charles Goetzinger, in 1968, at the Oregon State University affirmed this theory. The experiment showed how human psychology works and reacts when an external stimuli is introduced in the environment. It starts with hostility and soon turns to inquisitiveness, eventually encouraging the subjects to adopt a more positive attitude towards it, following repeated exposure. When you have more face time with a product, prompted through advertising, you become familiar with it even before you have bought it. Constant exposure through television advertisements, print advertisements in journals and magazines, billboard advertising and even online ads create the effect that advertising is aiming for.

One of the best examples of the mere exposure effect is, as a matter of fact, advertising. However, take the example of online advertising itself, when you are surfing through a website and stop by at a particular web page, there is a high probability that there is at least one ad on it. It may be a flashy banner or a simple text ad of a few words. However, you cannot negate the fact that you are aware of what that ad is advertising. You cannot ignore an ad when it suddenly pops between the text that you are reading. In fact, the more attractive the online ad is, the more you are likely to get distracted by it and spend time viewing it. Over time, as a person repeatedly views the ad, he will expectedly show more inclination to the product that was advertised as compared to other products that he may not be familiar with at all. However, the mere exposure effect in advertising is not all that rosy. It comes with its cons. Although, advertising may successfully expose the product or service to more prospective buyers, it brings with it more associations which may or may not always be favorable. You ultimately end up buying what you really liked about the product, based on your perception of its advertisement, your need for the product and/or reviews from other sources. This is not totally contradictory to the previous statements. Advertising can indeed only entice you to make a purchase and in the end, it is up to the consumer’s buying decision to take that step. Read the rest of this entry »

Keep the Slogan Short: Remember that your target market will not stop by your billboard in a heavy moving traffic and read its content. So, you need to keep it as short and simple as possible so someone can gather maximum information in one glance. Keep your slogan as short as possible. Often, I end up reading only half the product slogan because it was too long. Succinct is effective. Also, it should be very catchy and reading it once should leave an impact on the commuter. The slogan should deliver the message and be informative. Don’t beat around the bush. Tell your customers what they need to know.

Color Combination: Colors are always an integral part of marketing in almost all types of businesses. I am sure, you are aware of the three traffic signal colors: red, yellow and green. Yellow stands for caution and we are conditioned to automatically pay attention to anything that is yellow especially while driving. Well, some clever advertisers have made a successful use of this fact by using yellow as a background color on billboard advertisements. For font colors, red is a great choice. Others include black, navy blue or dark green. The colors should be contrasting with the background. These tactics work as best practices for billboard advertising.

Location of the Billboard: This is one of the most important factors that you should keep in mind while opting for billboard advertising. Ask the advertising company about the location of the billboard and personally go to check it out and assess its visibility as well as the size of the traffic that can be expected each day. Do remember that as busy the road would be, as high would be the cost of the billboard. Make sure there are no trees in the surrounding area that obstruct the view of the billboard. Ideally, you should be inspecting the location of billboard prior to signing the contract for advertising with the company. This is one of the best practices for billboard advertising. In fact, if you are targeting a particular market, make sure that your prospective customers frequent to that location often in a day. For example, to market a real estate company, highways and commercial places are ideal.

Attractive Pictures: An attractive picture instantly catches everyone’s attention. It should be different, out of the box and must represent the company’s creativity while delivering the right message about the product. You don’t have to stick to the conventional picture format for your billboard. Dare to be different and try something drastic like an embossed image, a huge version of the product or a statue. The ultimate visual effect should be appealing and memorable.

Nature of Business
It is often seen that similar types of business entities are located in a common business area. Eg. Businesses dealing in jewelery manufacturing or women’s wear manufacturing are usually located in places similar to their business competitors. Similarly, you may observe that wholesale businesses are usually located in particular town or a particular suburb of an urban area only.

Availability of Facilities
A business cannot work smoothly without steady availability of facilities such as water, electricity and air-conditioning and communication systems such as Internet and telecommunication. All these or some more special facilities need to be available so as to make a business location ideal.

Location of Suppliers
A manufacturing or processing business cannot run without a steady supply of raw materials from the suppliers. To ensure a smooth and unhindered supply of materials, businessmen opt for locations very close to their suppliers. Eg., A dairy business is ideally located near the pastures, a food preservation and packing business is located near the place of cultivation while fisheries business is usually located in coastal towns only.

Business Zones
There are, at times, some business zones restricted for a particular type of business by the government. These businesses are issued licenses provided they operate from these specific locations only. At such times, a businessman has no choice but to opt for a location within the business zone. If a businessman fails to abide by these zoning restrictions, his business licenses may get confiscated.

Infrastructure
It is important that the business location is well connected by a good infrastructure. What is the use of a high investment on purchasing a business premise, if the business clients, suppliers and employees face a problem in approaching the business premises?

Speech anxiety is the general fear of public speaking that people develop. In its extreme forms, it is taken as a social phobia whereby people develop the intense fear of facing an audience and speaking. Why? Because they convince themselves of the fact that if they speak in public, they will bungle up the speech in one way or the other by forgetting something important, fumbling with the words and making a fool of themselves, or worse still, not being able to convey what they want to. It is the fear of undergoing an embarrassment that causes for this phobia to come about. But, why does a person end up feeling this way? There could be several causes of speech anxiety. What are the causes that lead to a fear of public speaking? Let us get into details of the same in the following section.

Speech Anxiety – Causes
•The fear of failure that leads to anxiety symptoms to make way. Which over time, leads to speech anxiety.
•An earlier failure in course of public speaking that has led to the conditioning of the mind to associate public speaking with failure, and therefore, the tendency to avoid the same comes about.
•Less preparation of the speech that causes for the anxiety of failure.
•A person, who has low self esteem and keeps feeding himself with negative and self depreciating thoughts (to the likes of him not succeeding at all) will find that he is setting himself up for failure and that is what will lead to speech anxiety.
•The nature of the audience can also lead to developing these feelings. If the audience is hostile, restless or seems disinterested in what the person is saying and the orator catches on to this, it could lead to the development of the symptoms of social anxiety. Similarly an unfamiliar environment or a very large audience could lead to feelings of the same.
•If a person has never spoken in a public arena before, it could definitely lead to the emergence of speech anxiety.
Speech Anxiety – Symptoms
•A cracking of the voice that lends to an uneven voice quality and lowered volume.
•There is an increase in the heart rate, pulse rate and blood pressure as well.
•Excessive sweating also comes about as a general rule. The hands and feet will get sweaty and sticky.
•The throat feels scratchy and dry and you keep feeling thirsty that no amount of water can eliminate.
•A person starts stammering and stuttering along with fumbling in his speech.
•A person gets very restless and fidgety. Which is apparent in his stance and the way in which he moves.
•There might even be the emergence of nausea and shortness of breath.
•There could be chances that you’ll end up forgetting more of your speech.