DAGMAR Model

Introduction
DAGMAR is Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results. It is basically an approach to advertising planning and a precise method for selecting and quantifying goals and for using those goals to measure performance. An advertising objective involves a communication task, intended to create awareness, impart information, develop attitudes or induce action. In the DAGMAR approach, the communication task is based on a specific model of the communication process, as shown below.

Communication Process in DAGMAR Approach The model suggests that before the acceptance of a product by an individual, there is a series of mental steps which the individual goes through. At some point of time, the individual will be unaware of the product or offer in the market. The initial communication task of the advertising activity is to increase consumer awareness of the product or offer. The second step of the communication process is comprehension of the product or offer and involves the target audience learning something about the product or offer. What are its specific characteristics and appeals, including associatied imagery and feelings? In what way does it differ from its competitors? Whom is it supposed to benefit? The third step is the attitude (or conviction) step and intervenes between comprenension and final action. The showroom action phase involves some overt move on the part of the buyer such as trying a brand for the first time, visiting a, or requesting information. The whole communication process is a bit more complex. And under different circumstances, it may differ slightly, but the the basic concept revolves around what is mentioned in the paragraphs above. The DAGMAR approach emphasises the communication task of advertising. The second important concept of the approach is that the advertising goal be specific. It should be a written, measurable task involving a starting point, a defined audience, and a fixed time period. Now that the basic theory is told, how to apply in your specific situation? We are mainly traders dealing with products from other reputed and not so reputed companies and sitting here, we cannot dictate the company's advertising strategy. So, we look forward to developing a model which can reasonably applied in our case. Let's build your scenario and have the advertising brief: You are a dealer or distributor and want to sell products of a reputed company. You don't have to worry about the image and perception of the brand. You are just worried that customers might not want to buy from you. And, instead, buy from a competiting shop next to yours dealing with the same kinds of products. In such a case, what should be done? What should be your advertising objective? Should you have a advertising strategy? What would be the ingredients of such an advertising plan? What should be the budget?

Let's discuss some of the issues related to your promotion/advertising related activity. You must first distinguish between advertising from your marketing objectives. And DAGMAR is aimed at setting your advertising goals/ plannings and not marketing goals.

A Measurable Objective
The DAGMAR approach sounds impractical once we talk of measurements, surveys, questionnaires and all that staff. After all, who'd go for a survey! But, as the approach emphasises the importance of objectives, we must have some form of measurement to indicate the effectiveness of the advertising/ promotional campaign. So if you are thinking of a promotional campaign, it must have an objective. And an objective that is measurable. For a yellow page advertisement, the measurement could be the number of phone calls received before and after the ad was published or the number of referrals through yellow pages. Many of our advertisers are pleasantly surprised by orders/ offers received through phone calls, which were later found to be through advertisements in yellow pages. Now, the question is, if they did not advertise in the yellow pages, would they have received those orders/ offers? That's another matter, though. Your measurable objective must be written, clear and unambiguous. Goals like 'Improve store image'/Increase awareness of our store' etc are too vague and do not lead to anywhere. A good starting point to work on the goal would be: Increase awareness of our store by 10% Notice the missing fullstop? We still have to construct our campaign objective.

A Conceivable Benchmark
When we talk of measurement, its both current and future. We must, first, know where we stand now, and know in quantitative terms. The current position is your starting point which will help in establishing a goal and selecting a campaign to reach it. Getting more customer into your store might not be an optimal goal, if you already receive a large number of visitors. So, have an objective analysis of where you are and then start working on your objective. If you know that already many customers are visiting your store, you may probably have some idea of their behaviour related to purchases. (If you don't, that's a pity). Now you know that your advertising can be aimed at converting your visitors to customers. Let's reconstruct our goal now: Increase awarenes of our store from the current level of 20% to 30%

Well-Defined Target Audience

Perhaps, the first lession you should learn in marketing is target audience. Not everyone is going to buy your product. Not everyone needs your product, its another matter that some needs are latent and needs to be aroused. So, identify your target audience, to whom you are going to aim your ad campaign. Most likely, this is going to be your user segment as well.

As an example, if you are selling premium car accessories, you should target customers who are either stylish, sophisticated or own premium cars. Working further on the advertising goal, we now have: Increase awarenes of our store from the current level of 20% to 30% among the owner of product X

Fixed time period

Your advertising campaign should not run for eternity, without having milestones to achieve over the future time frame. You should have a fixed time period, six months or a year, within which you should aim at attaining certain goals. There should also be some time allocated td to test the campaign, make amendments, if required to the campaign. A time should be fixed upon the arrival of which the campaign can be evaluated. So, we finally have our advertising goal as follows: Increase awarenes of our store from the current level of 20% to 30% among the owner of product X before the launch of product Y which is expected within the next six months. DAGMAR model suggests that the ultimate objective of advertising must carry a consumer through four levels of understanding: from unawareness to Awarenessthe consumer must first be aware of a brand or company Comprehensionhe or she must have a comprehension of what the product is and its benefits; Convictionhe or she must arrive at the mental disposition or conviction to buys the brand; Actionfinally, he or she actually buy that product. Awareness Awareness of the existence of a product or organization is necessary before the purchase behavior can be expected. Once the awareness has been created in the target audience, it should not be neglected. If there is neglect, the audience may become distracted by competing messages and the level of awareness of focus product or organization will decline. Awareness needs to be created, developed, refined or sustained, according to the characteristics of the market and the particular situation facing an organization at any one point of time. Awareness grid

Involvement High Awareness HIGH Sustain current levelsRefine awareness of awareness Low

LOW

Build quickly.

awarenessCreate association of awareness of product with product class need

In situations where: Buyer experiences high involvement: Is fully aware of a products existence, attention and awareness levels need only be sustained and efforts need to be applied to other communication tasks. sales promotion and personal selling are more effective at informing, persuading and provoking consumption of a new car once advertising has created the necessary levels of awareness. The LG golden eye ads that are repeatedly shown inspite of high awareness to ensure top of mind awareness and retain the existing awareness levels. Where low levels of awareness are found, getting attention needs to be the prime objective in order that awareness can be developed among the target audience. Sahara Homes ad that features Amitabh Bachhan saying jaha base Bharat. Awareness level is low, however it is a high involvement decision. Thus adequate attention is required and awareness levels are raised with use of well-known and trusted celebrities. Buyer experiences low involvement: If buyers have sufficient level of awareness, they will be quickly prompted into purchase with little assistance of the other elements of the mix. Recognition and brand image may be felt by some to be sufficient triggers to stimulate a response. The requirement in such a situation would be to refine and strengthen the level of awareness so that it provokes interest and stimulates greater involvement during recall or recognition. Parle G ad that talks about it being the largest seller Duniya ka sabse Zyada bikne waala biscuit. Parle G as a brand already enjoys high levels of awareness and requires low involvement decision, thus communication is mainly intended to refine awareness. If buyers have low level of awareness, the prime objective has to be to create awareness of the focus product in association with the product class. When coils were popular in use and then the different repellants entered the market, awareness had to be created about their benefits and use. Comprehension Awareness on its own may not be sufficient to stimulate a purchase. Knowledge about the product or the organization is necessary. This can be achieved by providing specific information about key brand attributes. In attempting to persuade people to try a different brand of water, it may be necessary to compare the product with other mineral water products and provide an additional usage benefit, such as environmental claims. The

ad of Ganga mineral water, featuring Govinda, which banked on the purity aspect. They related the purity of the water with that of river Ganga. If buyers have low level of awareness, the prime objective has to be to create awareness of the focus product in association with the product class. When coils were popular in use and then the different repellants entered the market, awareness had to be created about their benefits and use. The next step is to establish a sense of conviction. By creating interest and preference, buyers are moved to a position where they are convinced that a particular product in the class should be tried at the next opportunity. To do this, audiences beliefs about the product have to be moulded and this is often done through messages that demonstrate the products superiority over a rival or by talking about the rewards as a result of using the product. Many ads like Thumbs Up featured the reward of social acceptance as grown up. It almost hinted that those who preferred other drinks were kids. Action Communication must finally encourage buyers to engage in purchase activity. Advertising can be directive and guide the buyers into certain behavioural outcomes, Use of toll free numbers, direct mail activities and reply cards and coupons. Tupperware, Aqua Guard, are famous in Indian cities as a result of its personal selling efforts. For high involvement decisions, the most effective tool in the communication mix at this stage in the hierarchy is personal selling. Through the use of interpersonal skills, buyers are more likely to want to buy a product than if personal prompting is absent. Characteristics of Objectives A major contribution of DAGMAR was Colleys specification of what constitutes a good objective. Four requirements or characteristics of good objectives were noted Concrete and measurablethe communications task or objective should be a precise statement of what appeal or message the advertiser wants to communicate to the target audience. Furthermore the specification should include a description of the measurement procedure Target audience a key tenet to DAGMAR is that the target audience be well defined. For example if the goal was to increase awareness, it is essential to know the target audience precisely. The benchmark measure cannot be developed without a specification of the target segment Benchmark and degree of change soughtanother important part of setting objectives is having benchmark measures to determine where the target audience stands at the beginning of the campaign with respect to various communication response variables such as awareness, knowledge, attitudes, image, etc. The objectives should also specify how much change or movement is being sought such as increase in awareness levels, creation of favorable attitudes or number of consumers intending to purchase the brand, etc. a benchmark is also a prerequisite to the ultimate measurement of results, an essential part of any planning program and DAGMAR in particular.

Specified time perioda final characteristic of good objectives is the specification of the time period during which the objective is to be accomplished, e.g. 6months, 1 year etc. With a time period specified a survey to generate a set if measures can be planned and anticipated. Written Goal - finally goals should be committed to paper. When the goals are clearly written, basic shortcomings and misunderstandings become exposed and it becomes easy to determine whether the goal contains the crucial aspects of the DAGMAR approach.

STEP WISE EXPLAINATION

DAGMAR Step One: Defining Advertising Goals
It is important to understand that DAGMAR is aimed at setting advertising goals and not more general marketing goals. Elements of a good advertising goal include being a written, measurable task involving a starting point, a defined audience, and a time limit.

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To measure the effectiveness of advertising a business must know the current state before advertising starts and then the new state after the campaign has finished. This means surveying the target audience to measure current awareness, comprehension and conviction. This helps to establish realistic goals for the campaign. For example, to increase product awareness from 10% to 35%.

DAGMAR Step Two: Awareness Comprehension Conviction and Action

The second part of the DAGMAR model attempts to explain the process customers go through before they buy a product. The process is as follows: 1. The first step in advertising is to raise awareness of the product. If customers do not know the product exists then they will not buy it. To ensure that an advertising campaign is effective, it is vital to identify the target audience for the campaign not everyone will be interested in every product. 2. Comprehension is the next step and the aim is that customers understand what the product will do for them. Advertising that helps a customer understand the benefits and features of the particular product offered will increase comprehension about the product. 3. Once a customer is aware of and understands a product, then building conviction and a positive attitude to the product is the next phase. According to David Mercer in the book Marketing this stage is about persuading the customer to adopt a positive attitude to the product. It is about much more than understanding the benefits. Why should a customer buy this particular product from this particular outlet? 4. Action. The whole point of marketing and advertising for small business is to generate increased revenue. That means the customer must buy or, take any action which is a step towards buying. For example, making a phone call, purchasing in a shop, sending off for more information, etc. An understanding of marketing touches will help to define realistic action steps for advertising campaigns.

DAGMAR Step Three: Measure Advertising Effectiveness

In step one of the DAGMAR advertising model, goals were established for the campaign. The final step is measure the results and effectiveness of the campaign by evaluating whether the goals were met or not. This may require another survey to measure awareness comprehension and conviction levels. Advertising can be an important part of marketing for small business and understanding advertising models such as AIDA and DAGMAR can help improve marketing effectiveness.