Effectively Strategize Advertising for Procurement Managers
"The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be."- David Ogilvy
Creativity without strategy is called 'art.' Creative with strategy is called 'advertising.'
- Jef I. Richards
A company may need a
lot of raw materials and goods to manufacture their product. A procurement
manager is in-charge of getting all the items that a company needs. The
procurement may not only be in the form of goods but also in the form of
property or any license.
There may be several
methods for procuring a product or raw material. Advertising is one of the
methods. In general, advertising is the placing of an enticing description of
your need or product in a newspaper, TV channel, radio, or even in a billboard.
Online advertising is also very prevalent these days. Advertising is mostly
paid. The idea of advertising is to reach the maximum audience who are relevant
to the business.
Not all procurements
will need advertising. You may already have a standard set of sellers and
vendors who supply you with regular goods. But there might be a new requirement
for a raw material that is very rare. Or it may be a standard procedure to
advertise for every product you want to buy. Then advertising is a very helpful
tool.
Advertisements can be
text only or a combination of text and images. In online advertising, videos
and images are also used. Blogs are a type of online advertising medium. A
Tender is a common type of advertisement that is placed in the newspapers and
other printed media for reaching out to suppliers. Several suppliers will bid
for the tender. The procurement manager has to evaluate each supplier for quality,
experience, dependability, price and other factors and choose one of the
suppliers. While a tender is a term mostly used in government organisation,
Request for Proposal (RFP) is the term used in the private sectors.
Advertisement can be
developed by an in-house team or can be outsourced to consultants or creative
houses that specialise in advertising. The experience, cost, creativity, and
other factors must be decided while determining upon who will do the
advertising. Alternatively, some projects may be done in-house while other
projects can be executed by external people.
What are the benefits
of Advertising for Procurement? They are as follows:
- Cost Reduction
- Agency/Supplier performance improvements
- Process Improvements
- Risk Mitigation
- Internal Stakeholder Satisfaction
- Innovation
- Industry Intelligence
- Improve Marketing ROI
- Sales/Market Share Increases
- Improve Brand Health Metrics
The choice of medium,
content type, reach, and supplier choices received will determine the success
of an advertisement for procurement. A procurement manager must decide the
appropriate mix for every advertisement.
The Project
Management Body of Knowledge guide has a chapter on Project Procurement
Management. In the chapter, advertising is also clearly dealt as a task
accomplished by a Procurement Manager. PMP Exam Prep Course provides a bird's
eye view of this particular topic.
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